The Secret to the Search Engine Long Tail

What is your single biggest source of traffic?

Whomever said “Content is King” forgot to tell you that your king content amounts to about three people a month per post.

On my sites, almost half of my traffic comes from search engines, but the top 10 referring key phrases account for less than 15% of the search engine traffic.

The majority of the keywords that drive traffic to my sites number in the thousands, but only get 1 or 2 searches each. To top it all off, most of these keywords are for things that are said in passing in an article, or that were never intended the article to be about. You say “Pink Donut Safety Measures” and 3 weirdos out there search for it every month and you are the top site.

Just like this search engine traffic is the long tail, the articles they are hitting are all part of the long tail of the content on my sites. They are the everyday posts that most people look over once and then without any additional opportunities would probably leave only to never come back again.

So what can you do knowing all of this?

1. Create Anchor Content

First, your sites all need that special something that sets you apart – You need that killer

• Plug-in
• Extension
• Theme
• List
• Advice
• Web Tool
• Picture
• Project

– what ever is the most popular thing on your site that you can use to convert that long tail traffic to someone who’s going to come back to read you again.

2. Add Lots of Additional Content

This is the daily grind. You add content everyday to your sites, you get a few comments here and there and a little link love. Most of what’s written gets archived away almost never to be seen again except from those one off, odd search engine referals. All of that said, it still needs to be focused quality content. Don’t think for a second that your hard earned readers won’t dump you if you start filling their RSS feed readers with rubbish.

3. Convert!

Now you take those long tail referrals and make sure they know about the #1 most important thing on your site. You throw the giant RSS feed icon at them and tell them that you’re not just a flash in the pan. But, this is the curse of running ads on your sites – By converting well with ads, you are potentially losing a lifetime visitor.

If you haven’t already looked at Aaron Wall’s Book on SEO(Aff), I highly recommend you take a look at it. If you’re making any money from your sites, the book is filled with 300+ pages of solid tips for increasing your profit.