Running an agency comes with many privileges, including a first-hand look at large amounts of data on how clients' sites behave in search, and especially how that behavior changes day-to-day and month-to-month.
While every niche is different and can have subtle nuances that frustrate even the most hardened SEOs or data analysts, there are undoubtedly trends that stick out every so often which are worthy of further investigation.
In the past year, the Zazzle Media team has been monitoring one in particular, and today's post is designed to shed some light on it in hopes of creating a wider debate.
What is this trend, you ask? In simple terms, it's what we see as a major shift in the way results are presented, and it's resulting in more traffic for the long tail.
2014 growth
It's a conclusion supported by a number of client growth stories throughout the last 12 months, all of whom have seen significant growth coming not from head terms, but from an increasing number of URLs gaining search traffic from organic.
The Searchmetrics visibility chart below is just one example of a brand in the finance space seeing digital growth year-over-year as a direct result of this phenomenon. They've even seen some head terms drop backwards by a couple of places while still seeing this overall.
To understand why this may be happening we need to take a very quick crash course into how Google has evolved over the past two years.
Keyword matching
Google built its empire on a smart system; one which was able to match "documents" (webpages) to keywords by scanning and organizing those documents based upon keyword mentions.
It's an approach that has been getting increasingly too simplistic in a "big data" world.
The answer, it seems, is to focus more on the user intent behind that query and get at exactly what it is the searcher is actually looking for.
Hummingbird
The solution to that challenge is Hummingbird, Google's new "engine" for sorting the results we see when we search.
In the same way that Caffeine, the former search architecture, allowed the company to produce fresher results and roll worldwide algorithm changes (such as Panda and Penguin) out faster, Hummingbird is designed to do the same for personalized results.
And while we are only at the very beginning of that journey, from the data we have seen over the past year it seems to be crystallizing into more traffic for deeper pages.
Why is this happening? The answer lies in further analysis of what Google is trying to achieve.
Implicit vs. explicit
To better explain this change let's look at how it is affecting a search for something obvious, like "coffee shop."
Go back two or so years and a search for this may well have presented 10 blue links of the obvious chains and their location pages.
For the user, however, this isn't useful—and the search giant knows it. Instead, they want to understand the user intent behind the query, or the "implicit query," as previously explained by Tom Anthony on this blog.
What that means, in practice, is that a search for "coffee shop" will actually have context, and one of the reasons for wanting you signed in is to allow the search engine to collect further signals from you to help understand that query in detail. That means things like your location, perhaps even your brand preferences, etc.
Knowing these things allows the search to be personalized to your exact needs, throwing up the details of the closest Starbucks to your current location (if that is your favourite coffee).
If you then expand this trend out into billions of other searches you can see how deeper-level pages, or even articles, present a better, more refined option for Google.
Here we see how a result for something like "Hotels" may change if Google knows where you are, what you do for a living and therefore what kind of disposable income you have. The result may look completely different, for instance, if Google knows you are a company CEO who stays in nice hotels and has a big meeting the following day, thus requiring a quiet room so you can get some sleep.
Instead of the usual "best hotels in London" result we get something much more personalised and, critically, something more useful.
The new long-tail curve
What this appears to be doing is reshaping the traditional long-tail curve we all know so well. It is beginning to change shape along the lines of the chart below:
That's a noteworthy shift. With another client of ours, we have seen a 135% increase in the number of pages receiving traffic from search, delivering a 98% increase in overall organic traffic because of it.
The primary factor behind this rise is the creation of the "right" content to take advantage of this changing marketplace. Getting that right requires an approach reminiscent of the way traditional marketing has worked for decades—before the web even existed.
In practice, that means understanding the audience you are attempting to capture and, in doing so, outlining the key questions they are asking every day.
This audience-centric marketing approach is something I have written about previously on this blog and others, as it is critical to understanding that "context" and what your customers or clients are actually looking for.
The way to do that? Dive into data, and also speak to those who may already be buying from or working with you.
Digging into available data
The first step of any marketing process is to collect and process any and all available information about your existing audience and those you may want to attract in the future.
This is a huge subject area—one I could easily spend the next 10,000 words writing about—but it has been covered brilliantly on the more traditional research side by sites like this and this.
The latter of those two links breaks this side of the research process into the two key critical elements you will need to master to ensure you have a thorough understanding of who you are "talking" to in search.
Quantitative concentrates on the numbers. Focus is on larger data sets and statistical information, as opposed to painting a rich picture of the likes and dislikes of your audience.
Qualitative focuses on the words and on painting in the "richness." The way your customers speak and explain problems, likes and dislikes. It's more of a study on human behavior than stats.
This information can be combined with a plethora of other data sources from CRMs, email lists, and other customer insight pots, but where we are increasingly seeing more opportunity is in the social data arena.
Platforms such as Facebook can give all brands access to hugely valuable big-data insight about almost any audience you could possibly imagine.
What I'd like to do here is explain how to go about extracting that data to form rich pictures of those we are either already speaking to or the very people we want to attract.
There is also little doubt that the amount of insight you have into your audience is directly proportional to the success of your content, hence the importance of this research cycle.
Persona creation
Your data comes to life through the creation of personas, which are designed to put a human face on that data and group it into a small number of shared interest sets.
Again, the point of this post is not to explain how to best manage this process. Posts like this one and this one go over that in great detail—the point here is to go over what having them in place allows you to do.
We've also created a free persona template, which can help make the process of pulling them together much easier.
When you've got them created, you will soon realize that your personas each have very different needs from a content perspective.
To give you an example of that let's look at these example profiles below:
Here we can see three very distinct segments of the audience, and immediately it is easy to see how each of them is looking for a different experience from your brand.
Take the "Maturing Spender" for example. In this fictional example for a banking brand we can see he not only has very different content needs but is actually "activated" by a different approach to the buying cycle too.
While the traditional buyer will follow a process of awareness, research, evaluation and purchase, a new kind of purchase behaviour is materializing that's driven by social.
In this new world we are seeing consumers driven to more impulsive purchases that are often driven by social sharing. They'll see something in their social feeds and are more likely to purchase there and then (or at least within a few days), especially if there is a limited offer on.
Much of this is driven by our increasingly "disposable" culture that creates an accelerated buying process.
You can learn this and other data-driven insights from the personas, and we recommend using a good persona template, then adding further descriptive detail and "colour" to each one so that everyone understands whom it is they are writing for.
It can also work well to align those characters to famous people, if possible, as doing so makes it much easier to scale understanding across whole organizations.
Having them in place and universally adopted allows you to do many things, including:
- Create focus on the customer
- Allow teams to make and defend decisions
- Create empathy with the audience
Ultimately, however, all of this is designed to ensure you have a better understanding of those you want to converse with, and in doing so you can map out the key questions they ask and understand their individual needs.
If you want to dig into this area more then I highly recommend Mike King's post from 2014 here on Moz for further background.
New keyword research – personas
Understanding the specific questions your audience is asking is where the real win can be found, and the next stage is to utilize the info gleaned from the persona process in the next phase: keyword research.
To do that, let's walk through an example for our Happy Couple persona (the first from the above graphic), and see how things plays out for this fictional banking brand.
The first step is to gather a list of tools to help unearth related keywords. Here are the ones we use:
- 1. SEMRush
- 2. Soovle
- 3. Keyword Tool IO
- 4. Google Autocomplete
- 5. Forum searches
There are many more that can help, but it is very easy to complicate the process with data, so we like to limit that as much as possible and focus on where we can get the most benefit quickly.
Before we get into the data mining process, however, we begin with a group brainstorm to surface as many initial questions as possible.
To do this, we will gather four people for a quick 15-minute stand-up conversation around each persona. The aim is to gather five questions from which the main research phase can be constructed.
Some possibilities for our Happy Couple example may include:
- How much can I borrow for a mortgage?
- How do I buy a house?
- How large a deposit do I need to buy a house?
- What is the best regular savings account?
From here we can use this framework as a starting point for the keyword research and there is no better place to start than with our first tool.
SEMRush
For those unfamiliar with this tool it is designed to make it easier to accurately assess competitor and market opportunity by plugging into search data. In this example we will use it to highlight longer-tail keyword opportunity based upon the example questions we have just unearthed.
To uncover related keyword opportunity around the first question we type in something similar to the below:
This will highlight a number of phrases related to our question:
As you can see, this gives us a lot of ammunition from a content perspective to enable us to write about this critical subject consistently without repeating the same titles.
Each of those long-tail terms can be analyzed ever deeper by clicking on them individually. That will generate a further list of even more specifically related terms.
Soovle
The next stage is to use this vastly underrated tool to further mine user search data. It allows you to gather regular search phrases from sites such as YouTube, Yahoo, Bing, Answers.com and Wikipedia in one place.
The result is something a little like the below. It may not be the prettiest but it can save a lot of time and effort as you can download the results in a single CSV.
Google Autocomplete / KeywordTool.io
There are several ways you can tap into Google's Autocomplete data and with an API in existence there are a number of tools making good use of it. My current favourite is KeywordTool.io, which actually has its own API, mashing data from Google, YouTube, Bing, and the Apple App Store.
The real value is in how it spits out that data, as you are able to see suggestions by letter or number, creating hundreds of potential areas for content development. The App Store data is particularly useful, as you will often see greater refinement in search behavior here and as a result very specific 'questions' to answer.
A great example for this would be "how to prequalify yourself for a mortgage," a phrase which would be very hard to surface using Google Autocomplete tools alone.
Forum searches
Another fantastic area worthy of research focus is forums. We use these to ask our peers and topic experts questions, so spending some time understanding what is being asked within the key ones for your market can be very helpful.
One of the best ways of doing this is to perform a simple advanced Google search as outlined below:
"keyword" + "forum"
For our example we might type:
This then presents us with more than 85,000 results, many of which will be questions that have been asked on this subject.
Examples include:
- First-time buyer's mortgage guide
- Getting a Mortgage: Boost your Mortgage Chances
- Mortgage Arrears: What help is available?
- Are Fixed Rate Mortgages best?
As you can see, this also opens up a myriad of content opportunities.
Competitive research
Another way of laterally expanding your reach is to look at the content your best competitors are producing.
In this example we will look at two ways of doing that, firstly by analyzing top content and then by looking at what those competitors rank for that you don't.
Most shared content
There are several tools that can give you a view on the most-shared content, but my personal favourites are Buzzsumo or the awesome new ahrefs Content Explorer.
Below, we see a search for "mortgages" using the tool, and we are presented with a list of content on that subject sorted by "most shared." The result can be filtered by time frame, language, or even by specific domain inclusions or exclusions.
This data can be exported and titles extracted to be used as the basis of further keyword research around that specific topic area, or within a brainstorm.
For example, I might want to look at where the volume is from an organic search perspective for something like "mortgage paperwork."
I can type this term into SEMRush and search through related phrases for long-tail opportunity on that specific area.
Competitor terms opportunity
A smart way of working out where you can gain further market share is to dive a little deeper into your key competitors and understand what they rank for and, critically, what you don't.
To do this, we return to SEMRush and make use of a little-publicized but hugely useful tool within the suite called Domain Comparison Tool.
It allows you to compare two domains and visualize the overlap they have from a keyword ranking perspective. For this example, we will choose to compare two UK banks – Lloyds and HSBC.
To do that simply type both domains into the tool as below:
Next, click on the chart button and you will be presented with two overlapping circles, representing the keywords that each domain ranks for. As we can see, both rank for a similar number of keywords (the overall number affects the size of the circles) with some overlap but there are keywords from both sides that could be exploited.
If we were working for HSBC, for instance, it would be the blue portion of the chart we would be most interested in in this scenario. We can download a full list of keywords that both banks rank for, and then sort by those that HSBC don't rank for.
You can see in the snapshot below that the data includes columns on where each site ranks for each keyword, so sorting is easy.
Once you have the raw data in spreadsheet format, we would sort by the "HSBC" column so the terms at the top are those we don't rank for, and then strip away the rest. This leaves you with the opportunity terms that you can create content to cover, and this can be prioritized by search volume or topic area if there are specific sub-topics that are more important than others within your wider plan.
Create the calendar
By this point in the process you should have hundreds, if not thousands of title ideas, and the next job is to ensure that you organise them in a way that makes sense for your audience and also for your brand.
Content flow
To do this properly requires not just a knowledge of your audience via extensive research, but also content strategy.
One of the biggest rules is something we call content flow. In a nutshell, it is the discipline of creating a content calendar that delivers variation over time in a way that keeps the audience engaged.
If you create the same content all of the time it can quickly become a turn-off, and so varying the type (video, image-led piece, infographics, etc.) and read time, or the amount of time you put into creating the piece, will produce that "flow."
This handy tool can help you sense check it as you go.
Clearly your "other" content requirements as part of your wider strategy will need to fit into this strategy, too. The vast majority of the output here will be article-focused, and it is critical to ensure that other elements of your strategy are also covered to round out your content output.
This free content strategy toolkit download gives you everything you need to ensure you get the rest of it right.
The result
This is a strategy we have followed for many of our search-focused clients over the last 18 months, and we have some great real-world case studies to prove that it works.
Below you can see how just one of those has played out in search visibility improvement terms over that period as proof of its effectiveness.
All of that growth directly correlates with a huge growth in the number of URLs receiving traffic from search and that is a key metric in measuring the effectiveness of this strategy.
In this example we saw a 15% monthly increase in the number of URLs receiving traffic from search, with organic traffic up 98% year-on-year despite head terms staying relatively static.
Give it a go for yourself as part of your wider strategy and see what it can do for your brand.
This is an excellent post. I use the persona component more obliquely - however your methodology is more focused and will produce a better outcome for the client. Will adopt asap. I love that Semrush chart you identify, I find it invaluable.
Such a great post! You shared so many awesome tools and the logic behind each is brilliant! And I'm always amazed by the Domain Comparison Tool - it's great for showing the need/opportunity.
My favorite part: “An approach reminiscent of the way traditional marketing has worked for decades—before the web even existed… that means understanding the audience you are attempting to capture and, in doing so, outlining the key questions they are asking every day.” Know your customers… it’s sad how many brands have forgotten this, the most basic prerequisite of good marketing.
I also like that you brought up talking with current customers & coworkers. I find that the customer service, field reps, and sales teams are the best to talk with since they take and answer questions all day everyday… questions that may not be anywhere on the brand’s website yet. Strategically represented on the brand’s website, those offline conversations can be huge for organic search growth.
As I was reading the part about Content Flow, I thought “oh, this reminds me of that one Moz post about the music of content flow” (one of my favorite & most frequently referenced content-focused posts on here) - then I clicked through & realized that post was yours as well. Ha! Keep these posts coming!
Fantastic post Simon. Shows the value of capturing the long-tail and how important it has become, especially in the last twelve months.
In addition to the content/long-tail research ideas, I like FAQFox (when it works). It's a free tool that looks for questions related to your keyword for any site you want to scrape, as well as a list of predefined sites. I like to use it to go through reddit and individual subreddits.
To share some of my experiences here - working with a financial brand last year, we actually experimented with bidding on some long-tail keywords with little to no competition. Swapping £60/70/80+ CPC for 20p clicks was a welcome relief, but there was more to it than that. It was for the reasons that Simon has mentioned above - to capture a wider, but still related audience.
The terms we bid on were related to general industry questions, but also to challenge preconceptions/negative opinions on the industry. We'd attract users in (sometimes using Buzzfeed style click-bait ad copy, which I'm not proud of...but it worked) and use that to build out individual retargeting lists for our display campaigns - and hopefully to try and capture some information there and then.
This is the point I wanted to make about this - you should use this long-tail to experiment with different lead capture methods. For the financial brand, getting a person to sign up and deposit was a very long process - very unlikely to be completed by anyone visiting our site via one of these long-term keywords. However, an email drop to get a free PDF or Whitepaper? Or to get the latest news? That's much easier.
Capturing the long-tail is an excellent idea - but it will only be a successful one if you or your client's CRM workflow is up to scratch. You want to engage this audience frequently - just look at what Hubspot does (although admittedly I think they're a bit over the top).
And that's where Simon's point of personas becomes so prominent. If you can build out those personas and start to piece together their long-tail searches, you can create separate lists, lead captures and CRM workflows specific to them. The more personalised you can make it, the better your chances of getting that conversion. And what's great is that, from the data I saw with the financial client, these people tend to be fiercely brand loyal - they stick with you and also are a valuable source of word-of-mouth referrals - the best kind of inbound marketing there is.
One further point on personas that I would make is to pay attention to the technology these searches are using - is it mobile, tablet, or desktop traffic? How does your page look to those users? How does your lead capture form/popup/top bar etc work for them? Make sure it is fully optimised for the audience.
Great post Simon!
Hi Tom.
Thank you for taking the time to pen this - a thorough addition, so thanks for adding extra value. I hadn't come across the tool you mentioned so I'll try it. We also use https://answerthepublic.com/ as a tool to help with surfacing those key questions, the understanding of which is SO important to this process.
The technology thing is also really important. I penned a post previously here on multi-device content strategy which covers that in a little more detail:
https://moz.com/blog/content-strategy-for-a-multi-d...
And also spoke on it a little in the context of personas at Searchlove last year. You can catch the transcript of that and how we build what we call BYOPS into the process to understand digital capability:
https://www.zazzlemedia.co.uk/blog/laser-targeted-c...
Hadn't come across https://answerthepublic.com/ but I instantly love it.
A nice way to present the data - especially given that question answering is key!
Just tried https://answerthepublic.com - fantastic tool. Thanks for introducing it.
Like this one. Since I've added Buzzsumo and SEMRush to my arsenal...I've become a content marketing ninja! :D
It is a subject that interests me enough!
I honestly only knew Semrush keyword. It is a great tool because it leaves make a full monitoring of keywords for positioning.
He had also seen some Soovle, but the truth is that only know by hearsay, not how it works. And the others did not know.I am grateful that we have explained in your post these tools that can help us a lot in our business.
I'll take a look at these to see how it works.
Thanks for your article.
i like this post specially those keywords research tools.. here i would like to share one more keywords research tool that is https://ubersuggest.org. you can have more ideas of keywords in that tool.
Great in depth article Simon! Congrats.
Hi Simon, I suppose it comes all the way back to adding value to the user primarily, whilst also keeping an eye on SEO opportunities. I'm a big believer in making sure that you have done the research phase as thoroughly as you possibly can, so that you get off 'on the right foot' so to speak. Some great tool suggestions (one of which I now need to go and look into!).
Cheers Simon
Hello Simon, Thanks for share article on heart of seo (content) and now a day most important part of SEO is the content and in content use log tail terms is most advantages of less completion and almost all user use log tail for information like How, What, Where and Top 10, 20.. types of searches,
Also use location based long tail content after Hummingbird update, google give priority to local result and also as per my analysis google show almost 80% 1st page results form ip or location based so its very helpful to target local visitor with low completion, so this article is best example serve how to create log tail content and how its beneficial.
Thanks for the comments Nilesh and I agree; geography is certainly a key consideration as part of that keyword research process. Focusing on that, for many brands, should be a cornerstone of the strategy.
Hey Simon,
It's a great guide. You're right, when we're able to make the investment in a significant piece of content, we obviously want to make sure it has the biggest possible impact.
Really looking forward to implement the complete strategy.
Thanks,
Hey Umar. Thanks for taking the time to read it. Let us know how you get on!
Thanks for sharing what you and your team noticed, Simon, this is very interesting information. What's the most efficient, cost-effective (and accurate) method that you've come across for analyzing the data of clients' sites? I completely get what you said, it can be frustrating to sift through it all, and there's so much to consider.
That's an awesome guide to long-tail keywords Simon, I really liked all your ideas but it would be more awesome if we can use the same tools like SEMRush or Buzzsumo to identify the money keywords of our competitors and beat their content by our refreshing and more convincing piece of content.
Excellent article, I take a couple of tools that did not know to my desktop.
Another tool you can use is the keyword planner of google, add the main keyword (or other keywords) and selecting the option to search for new keywords.
Obtained as a result a list of keywords related to main keyword they can use, besides the search average obtained for each keyword.
You will be surprised with the long tail keywords that can be found.
Thank you for teasing apart this complex issue for me. This is really going to help with my practice.
Thank you very much for this article. Long tail keywords are great when the level of competition is high. My favorite longtail keywords that I like to put effort to rank are questions asked to Google. Keep up your great work!
Given that Hummingbird is designed to answer questions, it might be worth having questions and answers in a post rather than bullet points, to take advantage of this feature.
Thank you for this great post! I really appreciate that you provided links to these different tools. I'm also happy that you touched on creation of a content calendar. I think a lot of people ignore tomorrow and the next day when they decide to select titles and add new content instead of creating a more long-term plan of action. One question: Are there any automated daily content distribution tools that you recommend for those who plan ahead? I believe it's extremely important to create and distribute engaging content, but I also believe it's absolutely necessary to use any tools available that can help reduce the amount of work that goes into this process each day. I have a friend who sells a certain type of jewelry. She uses an automated tool to distribute product descriptions on Facebook. She plugs her content into the tool at the start of the week and it then works throughout the week so she has more time to invest in other areas of her business.
Hadn't heard of Soovle before, but I definitely use SEMRush. They often highlight terms I'm in the top ten for that I didn't know I was ranking for, and it only takes a small amount of work to push them into the top three. I've actually given up on analytics now that everything is "not provided" and use SEMRush exclusively.
Read this article twice and I still can't figure out how you are actually proving that you are getting more traffic from long tail. Are you looking at search queries in WMT? Or something else?
Great post Simon! I executed this same exact strategy, using search visibility as my KPI, last year, and I have to say I did not see anything near the results you report here.
That doesn't mean the strategy doesn't work - I just blew the execution, and I've been trying to figure out exactly where for awhile now. I think the thing that can't be emphasized enough is connecting with your audience.
I was working on a very well known website, but this website had been primarily e-commerce focused before we started adding content, and the engagement with the audience was poor. My theory is this is because visitors had been trained to use the site only for transactions and not for further engagement. We also did not have access to social media for content promotion -- I know, I know, don't ask.
So, question: when you have seen this strategy fail to drive significant increases in search visibility, what have been the most common reasons?
Any insight you have on that would be greatly appreciated!
Hi Greg. Thanks for sharing your experience. The only time this is tested is where the domain 'equity' versus the competitiveness of terms being chased is imbalanced. So, if you are a start up price comparison site looking to own 'long tail terms such as 'best car insurance policies' and you have little overall authority you will struggle to surface. The strategy should to aim for a level of keyword that is obtainable and slowly build core authority over time.
Thanks for the response Simon! I agree completely regarding domain equity.
For the record, the site I worked on in this example is 6 years old, has a DA of 70, and gets about 2 million visits a year.
Could I possibly still be selecting long-tail keywords that are too competitive? Or are there other factors that I should be thinking about?
Excellent post. It makes total sense, regarding focusing on long-tailed keywords/questions. I once did something similar to this strategy by using a string of code and setting up advanced segments in my Google Analytics, where basically after installing the code, any time someone used a question mark "?" on Google, and then landed on our site, I would get an email with the question they asked, accumulating hundreds of frequently asked questions. I actually found this code and strategy on a post at Moz.
https://moz.com/blog/using-google-analytics-to-powe...
However, I am confused with what the persona template is for? I downloaded this template, and I am just confused with what it's for. I mean on the template it asks for "which celebrity are they?". Please explain the persona template and how we are supposed to use this template. My company offers debt relief services and we find our clients through educational outreach and online marketing. I will definitely implement the "long-tailed keywords" approach on our next content strategy and I would like to use this persona template if I can understand it.
You guys are amazing here at Moz! My business lives by your practices and strategy! Thank you!
Wasn't Lloyd Banks in G-Unit? Jk. Good thoughts and information on a process that fluctuates depending on industry, product, and service, not to mention a user/buyer's trajectory therein. AJ Kohn wrote a good piece (about a month ago) that hits upon intent, active/passive, etc. I'll set that down right here, https://www.blindfiveyearold.com/aggregating-intent... .
In thinking of a buyer's journey like a flowchart, or the game Plinko a la 'The Price is Right,' I'm reminded of Netflix and Amazon regarding how the sites suggest additional items based on your previous actions or those who "also bought…"
I had a conversation with a gent who produced a diamond book, teaching a person how to buy a diamond. He found that many sellers do not engineer their jargon and nomenclature to fit the layperson. I mentioned how he should produce something instructing how to buy (budget, get a loan, work out a layaway plan) next, and then we started discussing whether an "Ultimate Guide" would be suitable versus separate guides more befitting to a buyer's place in time. Perhaps, I will direct his attention this way for more food for thought. Thanks.
Hey there, I hope you are well... Thanks for getting involved. Deconstructing that user journey is the key point here. Always invest in that 'evergreen content' but also don't forget the low hanging fruit opportunities around it. We definitely see larger volume terms benefiting when more content is added to the site around the same subject. This doesn't mean 100s of spammy posts about 'xyz' but as long as they all ad value Google likes to see that depth of relevance.
Thanks for taking the time to reply, Simon. I am doing well and wish you and yours the same. Good point about 'evergreen content,' and as I heard via (I think) Kane Jamison, going back and 'updating' evergreen content is a good action.
I have to say I find it quite amazing how Google in a swift blow can flip SEO on its belly. This is a great article as it shows how SEO really isn't dead as some would like to claim. Instead it's more about understanding the projections and interests of Google in pushing forward into the future. For most has been obvious for years and it was only a matter of time until the walls came crashing down on the more aggressive 'black hat' techniques involved in promoting content. Interviewing some of the leading digital marketing influencers today I've come to see a common trait where all have stuck to the rules and focused on regularly delivering quality, unique and targeted content directly to the people that need it most.
Nothing of value dies, it simply changes shape! Exciting times ahead
i Agree with You Simon
I do hotel sites for a living... You have to search "best hotels in london" to get a "best hotels" result. Google doesn't default a generic "london hotels" search to "best", "closest", "nicest" or anything else.
https://screencast.com/t/igrzyGFAPQ
That is not an example of personalized results...
This is an example of personalized results:
https://screencast.com/t/TfW4Yj79ot
Hi Scott,
No but the point is it will! That's the exciting part - how this develops as we are only 18 months into the Hummingbird story and the mobile update on 21 April will add more complexity to the picture, or at least open the door for more of it in the future.
Wow, thanks for a nice post Simon!
I'm relatively new to SEO and for some reason I've been a big fan of long tails from the start. So seeing how they are getting more and more important makes me excited as it opens up so many possibilities for new content ideas and stuff like that.
Nice post Simon. You covered lot of thing here about long tail keyword benefits and i am totally agree with this approach. Because as far as i know, long tail versions can help you only in terms of conversion and if we include them in content, they will surely help you to gain higher ranking position.
I wonder how many business are sold on the long tail search? First we have to write it $$ then we have to promote it $$ then manage it $$ lol. Kinda funny . hey if we make 1000 pages and you get a new visitor to each page every day thats 30k new visits a month. We are awesome SEO experts.
Long Tail it happens "Left handed black blue and yellow dyslexic garden gnomes in phoenix arizona". and they say SEO isn't dying
Appreciate the comment but I think the point is missed here. The lack of effort/cost v reward would, undoubtedly, have been skewed for smaller businesses pre-Hummingbird but the point here is that volume distribution (and the traditional long tail curve/rule) is changing, pushing the old head term traffic into what once was seen as the long tail. If the reward is greater then the perceived effort is also! Nothing worth having is easy!