http://www.revenuegirl.com/long-tail-traffic-why-you-need-it-and-how-to-get-it/Most are familar with the concept of the long tail. For those that aren’t, the idea is basically this: the “big keyphrases” out there, even if they were all combined, don’t even come close to the number of obscure queries that are made only once or perhaps twice a month. Even the queries that are made only once a year, or one time period. Or in Danny Sullivan’s words, “all the onesies and twosies add up!”
Why You Need Long Tail Traffic:
1) Long Term Traffic is Stable. It’s about diversification. If all of your traffic comes from your placement for one keyphrase, losing it means losing all your traffic. If your traffic comes from random long tail searches, your site’s traffic is much, much more likely to be stable. Whether it’s new competition, changes in the search engine algorithms, or losing some vital incoming links, you won’t take as big of a hit.
2) Long Term Traffic Means MORE Traffic: In one of my niches, I spent ages trying to rank for “widget name.” I built content, I got incoming links, I got links from authority sites, I did everything I could to promote it. Eventually I not only got into the top 10, but I actually got the #1 position for “widget name.” Although there was a vague sense of pride that came with it, the change in traffic was tremendously disappointing. It increased less than 10%. Long tail queries made up 90% of my traffic.
3) Long Term Traffic Can Improve Your Site: If you let it, anyway. Long tail traffic reveals not only what your users want that’s already on your site, but it reveals information they may want that you don’t yet have pages about. It gives you ideas for content– sometimes great ones. Without thinking on one page I dropped a specific keyword inside one of the pages, even though the page wasn’t about that word at all. I started getting long tail queries for it. I made a page for what they were searching for… That single page accounts for 20% of my traffic to that site now, and it’s no small site. The long tail gives you incredibly powerful insight. Long tail traffic gives you insight. Examine your log files; see what users want that isn’t available.
4) Long Term Traffic Is Easy Traffic: With the long tail, you don’t need to worry about trust, having an absurd number of incoming links, the sandbox, or how to beat your competition. It comes naturally and without effort. It requires no maintaince.
5) Long Tail Traffic is Worth More: People who do PPC campaigns should hopefully already know this. It’s easier to get someone to convert if they landed on your page searching for “Dell 3007WFP LCD Monitor reviews” than if they landed on your by searching for “monitors.” Not only is the traffic from the long tail easier to get, but it’s more valuable– much more valuable. Long tail users know what they’re looking for. As long as you can give it to them (and provide related ads, services, or products), you’ll make more money.
6) Discover Bait Words: After a while, you’ll start realizing certain words (free, pictures, coupons, etc.) will almost always consistantly drive more traffic to your pages. This varies by niche. If you’re running a site about the TV series Lost, it might be “downloads” or “torrents.” Those are fairly obvious. There are always bait words in every niche that won’t be obvious, however. To discover those, you need to dissect your long tail search queries. From there you can purposely drop the bait onto more and more of your pages. Now that you’ve noticed “torrents” seems to work well, mention torrents on each episode’s page, the page for each season, or the page for each actor. This will have a tremendous impact on your incoming traffic from search engines.
How to Get Long Tail Traffic:
1) Quality Content. And Lots of It: It’s cliche, and it seems like this is the supposed answer for everything, but when it comes to the long tail, it’s really the truth. When you write lots of content and have long articles, the combinations of words that you’ll end up getting traffic for will really surprise you.
2) On-Page User Contributions & Comments: If appropriate, set your site up so users can add content directly to the pages. Think Amazon reviews. Think blog comments; but keep in mind this strategy can be applied to a whole lot more than just blogs. It’s not just about more content, it’s about the fact that it’s someone else writing; different people pick different words, even when conveying an identical idea. Their different choice in words may land long tail traffic your style of writing may not have ever touched on.
3) Start Forums: This builds on the idea above, but it goes beyond it. It doesn’t have to be restricted to commenting on the topic of discussion pages you make are about. With forums, users get to decide what they want to talk about. Get your forums up and running, then dissect the logs. Find bait words, find new topics, and go back and modify your pages and add new content.
* Yes, it really works. You never know what weird phrases or words people key in to search
