The rule of long tail traffic is that the majority of the search traffic to your posts will be from keywords you didn’t optimize for. Something like a quarter of Google search queries have never been queried before. Looking at your referring keywords, you’ll see the keyword you targeted with the post. But then you’ll see a very long list of referring keywords that sent one visit each. That, my friends, is the long tail. Lots and lots of phrases with one visit each, the traffic of which, when added up, will surpass the traffic your main keyword gets you.
You don’t optimize for the long tail, because each of those phrases gets very little traffic on its own. You optimize for the short tail, those keyphrases that get lots of traffic. But the long tail traffic is an added bonus.
That’s always been true of my blog posts. But I recently discovered that it’s also true of my YouTube video. You may remember my post about how the video is ranking even though my site isn’t.
But looking at YouTube Insights, I can see that the video has a long list of long-tail phrases driving traffic. Here are some of them:
- Birmingham Internet Marketing
- Cathy Reisenwitz
- Marketing Birmingham
- /www.mycontactform.com
- Reisenwitz
- Google keyword tool
- Marketing internet
- Fill out a google local listing
- Birmingham internet marketer
- Google maps local business marketing tips
So weird, right? The traffic from “Reisenwitz” was probably looking for Ty Reisenwitz, who is apparently a preteen boy who likes to make skateboarding videos.
But in this list, there are some good ideas for new videos – for example, “Marketing Birmingham.” The phrase must be pretty uncompetitive if I rank for it. If I made a video and optimized it for the phrase, I could probably get some good traffic. How about, “Fill out a google local listing?” That would be a great video.
As an update on my video, I actually got a lead from it! One more reason to start making videos today. As for myself, I need to get started on a “Fill out a Google local listing” video.
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