In 2004, the term "Long Tail" was used by Wired.com writer Chris Anderson to describe the advantage various business models, like bookselling at Amazon.com, music from iTunes, etc., have over traditional brick and mortar competitors. Their success is driven by deep catalogs that include both popular items and niche items.

For brick and mortar retailers there is a cost associated with local inventory. That cost prohibits them from carrying anything except the most popular items. Online retailers like iTunes can make more money than a traditional music store (are there any left?) because (1) the cost of carrying an item in electronic form is near zero and (2) they can sell and make money on 100’s of unknown (less popular) artists as well. As a business model, this is called The Long Tail Approach.

The Long Tail approach is also used in Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing and search engine optimization (SEO). In this instance, it means using keywords and terms that are less competitive than others to aggregate an equal, or almost equal, number of visitors and customers. The less competitive phrases have lower appeal to the more casual searcher, produce lower click-through rates and, as such, cost less to purchase for a PPC campaign. Lower competition and lower cost is the trade-off for slightly fewer visitors and clicks.

For example, the word “puppies” may have a higher click-through rate and cost than “beagle puppies,” which in turn may have a higher click-through rate and cost than “beagle puppies for sale Charlotte.” All three will be listed and ranked by the search engines for the word “puppies” but the competition will be reduced if someone also uses the additional search terms “beagle, for sale” and “Charlotte.” If you are in the business of selling beagle puppies in the Charlotte area, the benefits of using the less popular term are (1) it will cost you less money, (2) it will provide higher quality leads and (3) it better describes your business.

Adding additional keywords is a great way to lower the competition, improve search engine results and reduce PPC costs. The long tail is a great way to explain the trade offs you’ll need to make in your search engine optimization campaign unless you have an unlimited budget. 

Steve

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