The significance of longtail keywords can be exemplified by thinking
about the following two people:
Bill is a cafeteria worker who
spends his spare time fishing and has heard that his favorite TV shows
will look even better on this new-fangled technology called “HDTV”. He
might as well upgrade from his 20” to something a little larger while
he's at it his friends tell him (though they don't know much more about
it than he does). He sits at his computer and enters “hdtv” into the
Google search box.
Steve also works in a cafeteria but is a bit
more tech-savvy. He has and uses a Facebook account, watches videos on
YouTube and looks up information on Google when he's looking for an
answer to one of his questions. He too is interested in HDTV but decides
to check out a few review sites first before making the leap. He reads a
great review on CNET and likes the specs of the “Panasonic Viera
TC-P50G10” and decides to look around for pricing. He heads back to
Google and searches for “panasonic viera tc-p50g10” or perhaps even “buy
panasonic viera tc-p50g10 online”.
The difference between these
two? Other than the fact that one has a dismal likelihood of conversion
and the other a high likelihood - the difficulty in attaining top
rankings for the two phrases is very different as well. Now, I'm not
saying there isn't a place for going after the generic, high-traffic
phrases but ignoring the higher converting, less-work-per-conversion
phrases that are easier to attain rankings for – well – that just
doesn't make good business sense does it?
So – how do you rank
for the longtail?
We all understand that the factors of SEO are
the factors of SEO. Just like any other phrases – your ability to rank
is quite simply based on a combination of page strength and relevancy
(yes there are tons of signals Google uses but they essentially break
down to these two points). To affect these areas we use a combination of
onsite optimization and link building. Sounds easy so far? Perfect. So
let's take a look first at onsite optimization.
Optimizing your
site for the longtail
I can't possibly cover the different
technologies and how to make sure your site is crawlable. Let's just say
– the first step is to make sure that the crawlers can get to your
internal pages and that strength passes down. If the crawlers can't get
through to the internal pages then you've got bigger problems than
tweaking your content and building some links. Contact a developer
immediately and get that sorted out first – then continue reading.
Once
you know that the crawlers are getting through and strength is passing
we move on to the actual optimization. The first thing one wants to look
at it how to push the items with the highest ROI potential up in the
hierarchy of your site. Let's use Amazon as an example of how that
should be done (they know a thing or two about ranking for products).
Amazon
uses one of my personal favorite tactics in that they automate the
process but it's not necessary. You probably don't have the same number
of products so you can likely do manually what they have to automate but
let's look at what they're doing and you can apply the strategy as you
see fit.
If I was Amazon and I wanted to rank my site for
longtail phrases I'd want to rank for the phrases that had the highest
search volume and highest chances of conversions. I'd have to apply
global rules to a massive site (you don't have to – you can likely do
things on a case-by-case basis but I'm sure we can all agree – Amazon
cannot). So to keep the most profitable phrases high in the hierarchy
but still not ignore the other longtail phrases they have created a
hierarchy that puts the top product categories one hop from the homepage
(Laptops & Netbooks For Example) and on that page they have links
to all the major brands and uses but my favorite tactic is that they
have the bestsellers. This information is easily created from their
database and insures that the more popular products are two hops from
the homepage and linked to with the brand and model number. At the time
of this writing they have a link to the “ASUS Eee PC Seashell
1005PE-MU17-BK 10.1-Inch...”. If I search “asus eee pc 1005pe-m” who do
you think shows up first? Amazon.
So step one – make sure you're
linking to the product pages with the brand and model number of the
item and also put the more important items higher in the hierarchy of
your site. Now this doesn't mean cram all your products on the page. You
have to apply the same principles to links with onsite as you do with
offsite optimization. A page has a vote. It you have a page with 10
products listed on it – each product gets 1/10 of the weight passed to
it. If the page has 500 products listed on it – well, you get my point.
Figure out what matters and focus there.
Of course – you don't
want to ignore the other potential phrases. You'll notice that as well
as linking to the top products in each category they link to sub pages
with brands, specs, etc. This is why they rank so well for so many
phrases. Well – that's part one.
Once you've got the internal
linking sorted out you need to follow that up with some onsite
relevancy. Here we're referring to optimized titles, descriptions, H1
tags, content, etc. I'm going to have to leave a full breakdown of
onsite optimization for another article but I can discuss some of the
differences you'll encounter with longtail optimization with ecommerce
sites.
With “traditional” optimization we visit a page and
adjust the relevant aspects (titles, content, etc.) manually. With large
ecommerce sites we need to come up with rules that apply site wide.
Developing titles, descriptions and content for each and every page
one-by-one is likely not an option. If you look at Amazon again you'll
see that they automate the process by using the brand, model and
categories in the title, description, keywords and H1 tag. Easily
automated. Through their use of automated elements (“Customers bought
with ...”, specs, descriptions, reviews, etc.) they are also able to
insure that that the brand and model number appear on the page.
Now
that works well for Amazon. They have millions of links and huge site
strength. But what if you don't have that behind you. They can build a
page, put it on their site and rank. You may need to invest some of your
time in link building.
Link building for longtail optimization
There
are two primary aspects of link building that one needs to address when
we're looking at longtail optimization. The first is to the homepage
for site strength and the other is to specific internal pages. The
reason that we'll want to link to specific internal pages is that like
it or not, you're not as strong as Amazon and so you need to build links
to compete where they do not.
I'll leave the discussion of how
to build links to other articles (you know – one of the 800,000 written
on the subject) however we will discuss the purpose of the links and
thus you'll understand the pattern of the link building.
The
homepage links are in place to simply build overall site strength and
should be geared to your generic, homepage phrases – it's the internal
links that are specifically geared to brands and models. So we'll focus
on those links in this article.
How to build links to internal
pages
Building links to internal pages is virtually identical to
homepage. True you can't use directories but that's about the only link
building tactic that doesn't apply. There are two points that you're
going to want to direct links to:
1. The category/brand main
page.
The first point you're going to want to direct links at is
the main category page and the main sub-category points of the ecommerce
site. You'll want to direct these links in with anchor text that suits
the brand and/or category subject. Let's use Amazon as an example again.
For
the purpose of longtail optimization – the links we'd direct to
http://www.amazon.com/Netbooks-Computers/b?ie=UTF8&node=679517011
would primarily be geared to strengthening the page. Oh I'd use anchor
text geared at “netbooks” and the link but the main point is to make
that page stronger and in turn – the pages it links to. These links will
also get the page spidered more.
What this will do is make the
links to the brands stronger but most important – the links to the top
sellers stronger and more quickly picked up. This is why they rank for
new products in a matter of hours.
The individual brand and usage
pages are the same from this perspective. You will want to optimize the
pages and you'll want to focus the links for long term gain but the
short term purpose is to pass strength to the product pages.
2. The product pages.
On top of building links to pages one level
up (as we've just discussed) you'll also want to build links to the
individual product pages. Amazon can build a page, link to it and have
it rank – you probably cannot. For products and models you know will
stand the test of time – building links can be a long term strategy but
not my favorite (due mainly to the fact that it's not exciting).
Personally I like building links to “Coming soon” product pages and
getting them spidered before there's any competition and then adding in
the product the day it launches giving you a one-up over your
competitors in both timing and strength. Heck, you might even win out
over Amazon for a while. :)
Don't overdo it in the link building.
You've got a lot of products. Unless you know a specific product is
going to be HUGE you'll want to just build a few links and move on.
You've got a lot of products to cover.
Moving forward
Obviously
I can't cover all the various aspects of ranking for the longtail in a
single1800 word article and in fact, if I turned this into a 180 page
book I'd still not be able to cover all the variables but my hope is
that I've given you food for thought in the tactics and timing you'll
find helpful in moving forward and ranking your website for the longtail
phrases that convert so well and for which you can rank so quickly if
you do it right.