The Long-tail: Why You Need SEO and PPC to Work Hand-in-Hand PT.1

Chris Anderson defined in his 2004 book “The Long-Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More” that we are moving into an area where people yearn more for very specific, unique items.  In Malcolm Gladwell’s 2007 speech at TED Talks event “What we can learn from Spaghetti Sauce” he further speaks upon the idea by stating there is no perfect spaghetti sauce, only perfect spaghetti sauces.  What this idea led to was the creation of very taste specific sauces such as Cheesy, Chunky and Hearty, and Meaty.

What We Can Learn From Spaghetti Sauce

It is clear that we are moving into an era where we are defining specific needs/preference from their services and products.  How does this relate to search and search strategy?  In search, we are now in the era of the Long-tail, in which we are seeing more specific search queries that are very specific to these wants and needs. Currently each month, 20% of all searches are unique which means they have never been searched before.  As this trend becomes more and more the norm for search trends, how do you prepare your SEM approach to maximize as much of this traffic as possible? A stroung SEO and PPC presence …

Understanding that PPC is a strategy that can lead to immediate results and allow you to show your ads for thousands of search variations through broad and phrase match terms. This immediate response of traffic and the ability to track search query terms does three things for you:

  • Allows you to capture immediate unique traffic
  • Target high-converting long-tail terms in Natural Search
  • Maximizes your presence on the page

Over the next few weeks, we will focus on each of these points in more detail and how to implement the strategy to maximize both efforts on PPC and SEO.