You’ve probably heard of Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail but here’s how it applies to online marketing, specifically search keywords and how you can use it in your SEO campaign.

What is The Long Tail? Chris Anderson explained in a 2004 Wired article that…

“The theory of the Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of “hitsâ€� (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail. As the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less need to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers. In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly-targeted goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare.”

Now let me try to explain in a way that an idiot like me understood it. The Pareto principle (a.k.a. 80:20 rule) states that 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes, e.g. 80% of a store’s revenues come from 20% of its products.

Hence, in a traditional/physical environment where costs (money, labour, space, etc.) is an issue, you would focus your effort on that 20% bestsellers. The problem is that it would naturally create a competitive environment because everyone else would be doing the same.

Things are slightly different on the Internet because cost is no longer a significant factor. Hence, Chris Anderson’s “The Long Tail” suggests that the collective sales of products in low demand can exceed that of bestsellers. Referring to the demand curve above, his advice would be to focus on the less-competitive 80%, i.e. the yellow portion of the curve.

Now, how does it apply to search and how can you use it in an SEO campaign?

You can apply The Long Tail theory to your SEO campaign by optimizing for the lower-end of your targetted keywords, by making use of keyword research tools like Google’s Keyword Tool, Overture, Nichebot or Wordtracker. There’s even a convenient tool called SEODigger that looks up the keywords on your competitor’s website, and checks it against the search volumes on Wordtracker and Overture.

Assuming that I have an online laptop store, this is what I would do:
1) Search for “laptop” on Overture.
2) Look at the lower-end search terms, e.g. “Compaq laptop battery”.
3) Search for “Compaq laptop battery” on Google to check the competition.
4) Create an optimized content with the chosen keyphrase,
e.g. write an article about “Where To Buy A Compaq Laptop Battery”.

If you have a brand new website that has not gained the trust of search engines yet, submit the article to an established 3rd party instead and put a linkback. It’s no secret that Google loves websites like Squidoo, EzineArticles and GoArticles so submit your articles there.

There are several benefits to using The Long Tail method:
1) It’s easier to rank in search results because there’s less competition.
2) You get better conversion, i.e. visitor to customer, since it’s more targetted.
3) Works even for brand new stores by taking advantage of trusted sites.

A couple of clever Internet marketers have attempted to use The Long Tail and call it their own, e.g. Travis Sago and his Bum Marketing method - which is nothing more than article marketing using this concept.

So there you go, another useful online marketing tip from your friendly SEO consultant. ;)