TKG SEO Blog

The theory of The Long Tail, created by Chris Anderson, has recently been challenged by Harvard professor Anita Elberse. Anderson describes the Long Tail theory:

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 “hits” (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.

The Long Tail is something that has benefited our SEO clients, many of which are small business owners. Anita Campbell explores the Long Tail and Elberse’s criticism of it from a small business perspective in a recent article that can be found on Small Business Trends. Campbell’s article has great insight, so check out Is It Time to Chuck the Long Tail Theory?

Guest Blogger: Megan Jeffery
As I make my way through the natural SEO world, occasionally writing news pieces for the newsletter, creating copy for our site and those of our clients, I have learned that there is a fine line between a naturally optimized page, and one that is just spammy. Sometimes that line is a judgment call.

There are certain elements on a page that need to be addressed when it comes to optimization. Most tend to agree that Meta tags are still a good idea (they certainly can’t hurt), so they should be optimized to reflect the theme of the page. The page titles should also clue your reader (and secondarily, the search engines) in to what they will find on the page. I personally feel that these items should represent exactly what is on the page, and that the phrases used to optimize should serve the user, not the search engines. If you serve your users, you will ultimately serve the SEs anyway.

Many people feel that the copy itself should have the key phrases sprinkled throughout the copy for the purpose of ranking for certain terms. This is where things can get a little tricky. I am sure that many of you have seen copy on a page that goes something like this:

“We sell hockey pucks, blue hockey pucks, green hockey pucks and yellow hockey pucks. If you really need hockey pucks, you should buy our hockey pucks because they are the best hockey pucks in the whole world.”

I am sure that most would agree that this is a little bit spammy. When you are using your key phrases so much that it even borders on annoying or difficult to read, or changes the meaning of your copy, then you have gone too far. A more appropriate approach is to write what you want your readers to know about your product. A few pointers:

• Be descriptive, especially when writing for the web, because your customers want to know what they will be getting if the decide to buy from you.

• Make sure they know why they should purchase your product, as opposed to someone else’s.

• Read it through. Make sure it sounds good, the meaning is clear and the product or subject is well described.

• Then, go back through and find the places where your key phrases will fit into the copy naturally. Many times the key phrase is better than the word you used, especially if you have copy such as “Try our new product line!”. A sentence that includes the phrase you would like to optimize for such as “Our Green Hockey Pucks are now available!” would be a better choice. However, watch how many places you decide to plug in your key phrases. Too many and not only will your piece make no sense, but it could be considered spam.

So, that annoying paragraph about hockey pucks should look a little more like this:

“The Pucks are Us Company has a long standing tradition of producing only the highest quality, best performing hockey pucks. Our new line of hockey pucks come in new colors such as blue, yellow and green.”

A good rule of thumb is if you have included the phrases, and you enjoy reading the piece, it flows nicely, then you have probably done a pretty good job. On the other hand, if you are repeating your key phrase four times in three sentences, you have probably gone over the edge into spamdom.

Until next time, keep it natural!