SEO Tactics & Metrics for the Long Tail

1. SEO Tactics & Metrics for the Long Tail By Stephan Spencer,Founder & President, Netconcepts

2. SEO Tactics for Your “Head” Terms • Focus a page on no more than 3 keyword themes – place targeted term in the title tag, H1 tag, & high up in the body copy • Build link gain (PageRank) to that page through internal links & inlinks • Consistent keyword-rich anchor text from internal links • For deep inlinks, vary the anchor text a bit

3. SEO Tactics for “The Long Tail” • Focus on unbranded search markets • Leverage your website scale & authority, brand strength • Employ testable strategies that scale • Site-wide optimizations to HTML templates, internal linking structure, URLs, etc. • Treat consumers as co-creators • Measure against Long Tail KPIs

4. Long Tail Anatomy

5. The Long Tail of Search The Brand “head” The Unbranded “tail”

6. Why Care About the Tail? • The Retail Brand Dilemma: • Brand keywords drive most traffic • Merchant name, derivatives, URLs, or products • Few unique pages yield results • Predominantly yielding brand search traffic • Most retail sites have tens of thousands of unique pages • Our GravityStream proxy data reveals: • Non-brand keywords drive most traffic • Non-merchant terms • Many unique pages yield results • Predominantly unbranded keywords

7. Why Care About the Tail? • How many search terms should drive traffic? • How much traffic should any keyword drive? • How many searches are performed for such terms? • How does this compare to brand searches? • How could we estimate such market potential? • What kinds of SEO strategies can help capture the long tail opportunity?

8. How Long Should It Be?

9. Ways to Size the Tail • Keyword Research • Tools like Keyword Discovery, Google Insights for Search • Random combinations = unpredictable research • PPC Extrapolation • Multiply PPC results by 5-6 to estimate potential • Buying cycle and mapping ratios = incomparable estimates • Page Yield Theory • Estimates long tail potential as a function of website size • A more relevant and objective metric

10. Applying Page Yield Theory • Requires special data, across significant sampling of websites: • Total unique pages • Percentage of pages that did / not yield keyword traffic • Average number of keywords yielded per page • Average number of visits received for each yielded keyword • Effective click through rate per keyword to estimate total searches

11. Key Research* Findings • Average merchant profile: • 73,000 unique pages (210,000 indexed in Google) • 14% yield search traffic • Each page produced 2.4 keywords which yielded 1.9 visits/month • 189,000 brand searches per month • Total potential for unbranded keyword traffic exceeds 7,000,000 • Nearly 40 unbranded searches for every brand search • For large dynamic sites, nearly 100 searches for every unique page * From Netconcepts study “The Long Tail of Natural Search”

12. Key Findings - Words Per Search • Evaluating 1.2 Million Unbranded Searches • 3 word search terms accounted for 36% of searches • 2 to 4 word searches accounted for 81% of searches. • 95% of these terms were referrals generated from Google, MSN Search, or Yahoo Search.

13. Key Findings – Size of the Tail

14. Estimating Your Tail • Multiply brand searches by a factor of 40 • eg 100,000 brand x 40 = 4,000,000 unbranded searches • Multiply pages of site by 100 searches per page / mo • eg 100,000 pages x 100 = 10,000,000 unbranded searches

15. Attack Your Freeloaders • Most merchants have 80%+ of their pages driving no search traffic • Most don't even know this, or why it is a problem (no javascript based analytics package will tell them this either) • It’s a red light that they lack a long tail of unbranded keyword traffic • The # of searches for unbranded keywords is nearly 40x as great as searches for the brand name (put another way, 97x the # of pages onsite) • Tapping that opportunity means leveraging the size of the website and the brand strength to convert unbranded searches into clicks • How to achieve this tail?

16. Capturing Long Tail Potential • Measure Long Tail KPIs • Scalable SEO Tactics • Commit to Iterative Testing

17. Long Tail KPIs • Brand Searches: 189,000 • Yielding Pages: 14% • Keywords per Page: 2.4 • Visits per Keyword: 1.9 • Click Through Rate: 4.7% • Index to Crawl: 3.1

18. Page Yield Matrix • Estimate your pageyield based on themix of brand andnon-brand keywordspresently experience

19. Page Yield • Pages yielding search traffic • How many searchers clicked ad • Measures ad effectiveness • Think: Email click through • Yield Example with Google: • 6,600 pages (25%) • Non performing: 19,400 (75%) • Non-performing pages • Need to identify and optimize

20. Identifyingnon-performingpages

21. Phrases per Page • Search phrase per page • Reflects on-page keywords and internal anchor text • Surgical optimization • Title, meta, content • Total Phrase Yield: 43,300 • 4.5 phrases per ad

22. Leveraginguser-generatedcontent

23. Visitors per Phrase • Search visitors per phrase • Reflects brand strength and ranking • Influenced by internal PageRank flow, link buying / building • Search Visits: 114,200 • Total Phrase Yield: 43,300 • 2.6 per phrase • Search visitors per page • 4.5 x 2.6 = 11.7 • Indicates ad reach and rank

24. Visitors per Phrase • Static URL Structure: • Old Style: • http://catalog.hsn.com/shop-134/fa/1585/hp!sf.htm • New Style: • http://catalog.hsn.com/fashion.htm • URLs Treated: >600 • PageRank: PR0 --> PR4 • Traffic Increase: 550% • Top-Page Distribution: 49%

25. Management Framework • Page Yield (sub X-axis) • Keywords per Page (X axis) • Visits per Keyword (Y axis) • These combine to createthe long tail

26. Sample KPI Report Sample KPIs

27. Iterative Testing and Measurement • Only utilize the strategies/tactics that follow if you can test and measure the effects • You can't just quantify effects on sales alone • Incorporate new KPIs in order to view the whole channel more holistically (vs. just looking at your rankings on 100 trophy keywords)

28. Scalable Long Tail SEO Tactics • Page Yield Theory: • Goal: Maximizing unbranded natural search traffic is a matter of predictably increasing the yields of thousands of pages • Mass optimization: • Single techniques capable of creating cascading effects throughout large websites – template pages for instance • Rewriting URLs: • Simple and static keyword URLs have a profound impact • “Thin Slicing”: • Touching key elements across thousands of pages quickly, monitoring, and expanding based on results

29. “Thin Slicing” • Make quick decisions. Don’t overthink. • Only really works if you’re an expert • E.g. hand-optimize title tags across hundreds of pages quickly (prioritized) • Focus on your title tags, H1s and URLs • Don't obsess, doesn’t have to be perfect. Instead, iterate. • If you don’t have an admin interface, use a spreadsheet and do a database import

30. Thin slicingtitle tags

31. URLs • URL affectssearcherclickthroughrates • Short URLsget clicked on2X long URLs(Source: MarketingSherpa, used with permission)

32. URLs • Further, long URLs appear to act as a deterrent to clicking, drawing attention away from its listing and instead directing it to the listing below it, which then gets clicked 2.5x more frequently. • http://searchengineland.com/080515-084124.php • Don’t be complacent with search-friendly URLs. Test and optimize. • Make iterative improvements to URLs, but don’t lose link juice to previous URLs. 301 previous URLs to latest. No chains of 301s. • WordPress handles 301s automatically when renaming post slugs • Mass editing URLs (post slugs) in WordPress – via the “SEO Title Tag” plugin! (www.netconcepts.com/seo-title-tag-plugin)

33. Thin slicingURLs

34. Optimize Internal Linking Structure • Anchor text is critical • Hierarchical • Through good site-wide navigational design in a header, sidebar or footer • Breadcrumb navigation • Good for users and good for search engines • Reinforces which pages are the most important • No flash-only navigation. Alt text on graphical links. • Mouseover nav - CSS, not Javascript • Most important deep pages should be minimal # of clicks from home page

35. Optimize Pagination • Excessive pagination can cause numerous pages of product listings to not get crawled. Reduce # of pages in pagination system to improve crawlability & indexation • Next/Previous vs. page number list vs. Show All • Consider disallowing “View All” links and forcing spiders through subcat pages. Display as many products per page as possible (max 120) within 150K file size. • Fewer products per subcat = fewer pagination pages to crawl at subcat level for max product indexation

36. Attribute Navigation • Attribute navigation, a.k.a. faceted navigation, provides clickable product inventory breakdowns, by brand, color, price range, etc. By doing so it creates into a huge number of permutations for the spiders to follow. • The problem is exacerbated by having column headings clickable for resorting • Nofollow all links that do price range breakdown, re-sorting and re-pagination

38. Scalable Long Tail Tactics - Web 2.0 • User generated content (e.g., product reviews, forums, wikis) • Freely append searcher vocabulary into your website • Tagging and social bookmarking (e.g., Flickr, del.icio.us) • Listen and create feedback loops – using search terms • Use cloud taxonomy to flatten your structure using good link text • RSS and Blogging • Long tail is driven by efficient distribution of pages • Create link bait rather than soliciting link targets • Provide lists of most searched keywords • Long tail optimization means outsourcing … to your users

39. Tagging • Great for deep internal linking, interlinking • Generates keyword-rich links • Display tag clouds of most popular tags • Link to "related tags” • Allow visitors to tag your stuff? (ie. “folksonomies”) • Customers use their own terminology / vocabulary • Mine your own weblogs to look for most frequently searched keywords and use those as tags • Also tag externally: reddit, delicious, digg, Technorati

40. In Summary • Huge untapped potential lies in… • your unbranded search markets • your website size • the Long Tail • your consumers as content creators • links • Employ testable tactics that scale • Measure against a new set of KPIs

41. Q&A! • For a research report on the Long Tail of Natural Search, e-mail your request to seo@netconcepts.com • To contact me: stephan@netconcepts.com