The way we find information has seen a dramatic shift in the last 10 years. Where once a trip to the library or the use of a thesaurus was required, we are now able to find and access hundreds of points of information in a split second. Some quick facts about how users search for products and services:
  • 86% of users report using the internet to find a local business;
  • 74% say they used a search engine to do so, and;
  • 80% say they researched a product/service online before making an offline purchase.
(Source: WebVisible and Nielsen 2007)
 
That means that, in 2007 and I have no doubt this has increased since then, 8 out of 10 searches for a local business or service started online – even for 'bricks and mortar' purchases.
 
In 2009, 1.3 trillion searches were performed on Google alone (Source: comScore). That works out to about 34’000 searches ever single second. Google owns over 85% of the market share for searches (Source: NetMarketShare.com) and this is why so many SEO companies and techniques concentrate on delivering results on Google. Here is a fascinating, and crucial, statistic: 20 to 25% of searches on Google have never been seen before… (Source: Udi Manber, 2007)
 

The Long Tail of Search

This brings us on to a very important concept: the Long Tail of Search. The graph below illustrates this well: there are branded and short-length terms that are searched many times a month and bring visitors successfully to your site, and; there are low volume searches on more specific (and often longer) but highly relevant terms, which individually bring few visitors. Typically, the former terms (known as the Cream and Head terms) are said to make up 30% of the search volume for a given site and the Long Tail makes up the other 70% – now you can see the power of writing around the subject – and thus have a similar impact on visitor numbers. (Please note that the graph is for illustration only, click to see it full size).
 
The Long Tail of Search
 
Cream search terms are typically highly branded search queries, for example: “Nike Air Max”. Head search terms are often branded, but can also be more generic (but highly relevant) and successful terms. These would include “Nike running shoes” or “basketball trainers online”. The Long Tail of Search is populated by a great deal of expressions, including highly specific, very long phrases and niche phrases (ie those specific to an industry/service)*. The interesting thing about the length of terms is that they can reflect buying intent on the users’ side.
 
With that in mind, one could conclude that the likely conversion rate increases as the specificity of the search term increases. The moral of the tale is that one’s website should be easily and naturally indexed for the Cream and Head terms, and you should put effort into content for the Long Tail of Search.

* I will write another blog entry regarding the length of search terms and click through rates in the near future to help illustrate this point.

Brand Popularity and Cream Search Terms

At Initiative, we have researched and worked on SEO for some years now and the concept of the Long Tail of Search is not a new one. However, for those of you that know the subject matter well, you'll have noticed that we've created a new label: Cream Search Terms (a bit like we did for 'Search Engine Hygiene'!). This is in effect a subcategory of the Head search terms that includes only the Branded Search.

One of the reasons we have separated out this group of search phrases is that we believe they not only deserve their own grouping, but their position on the graph changes in relation to brand popularity.

In the example above, the original concept of the Long Tail of Search works very well and the Cream Search Terms' position is correct. But what if you're not Nike, or Coke, or Sony? How will people know to even search for "Bob's Plumbing Supplies"? Or, indeed, "Initiative New Media"? I've adjusted the graph to reflect this shift in Search Volume for the Cream Search Terms below. (Again, it's illustrative and you can click on it to see a bigger version).

The Long Tail of search for low value brands

There are two points to note very carefully. Firstly, the value of the Cream Search Terms with respect to potential conversion rate is still very high. The reason for this is that with smaller brands we typically find that if someone searches for you by name, they know of you and your services and are likely to follow up with some form of commitment. Secondly, the Long Tail of Search becomes even more valuable to the smaller brand.

The reason for this is quite simple: one can assume that the Head search terms have a lot of competition – "Web Design" for instance has around 331,000,000 results on Google. So it would be a very, very big challenge indeed for us to get to the prime real estate on the search engine results page. However, "Search Engine Hygiene" sees us competing with a paltry 694,000 pages and we are in second place.

Using the Long Tail of Search

So now that your interest is piqued and you've seen the potential what do you do? We always start in the same place: research, research, research. Look at how people are finding you and your competition. Find out what people are looking for that is relevant to your product or services. Then, write about it on your web site. Don't be over zealous though and release all your thoughts in one go; come up with a scheduled content release plan so that you entice Google to keep returning to your site. But, that is for another blog entry… alternatively, just give us a call!