Question About Long Tail and Quick Page 1 Ranking with new Google Feature.

[Barbara Israel]

I am starting your course and a very important question just hit me.
Alexa's blog refers to a significant change in Google rankings for many
sites, costing them upwards of 80% of their traffic. I also remember
reading something on Google that was clearly hostile to the idea of long
tail keywords. (No kidding for them.) I'm wondering if the new Google
feature that hijacks the input of a keyword is turning many searches back
into short keyword searches, hence, A. creating the new ranking problem and
B. Conceivably undermining your strategy. Please advise ASAP.

[c14h20o4]

Hiya Barbara,

The deal with the google update was that it affected sites that were already ranking for long tail keywords and isn't going to have any bearing on how you will rank for new long tail search terms. Personally, I wasn't affected so perhaps, google's update hurt people that were gaming the system in some way.

As far as google hating long tail key phrases, I don't know why they would. From their point of view, 50% of all searches are new, never searched before phrases. It just part of how we as humans think. For Google to hate the long tail would mean they have to hate 50% of their business.

Now for some of the new features that Google has, mainly there are three. One feature is that keywords are suggested after you start typing. Another feature is that results are being returned as you type and the third is the website snapshot when you hover over the different results. The first is the one I think you're worrying will turn long tails into short tails but it won't. But I'll give you an example:

Let's say you want to look up, "how to train Labrador puppies." for this to be turned into a short tail keyword, google would have to suggest, dog training, Labrador Training, Labrador puppy training (admittedly getting into the long tail) when you typed the word "How." You could say well, "How," is too general but yeah that's right, but google doesn't suggest any of those shorter keywords when you type in our example keywords. If you enter, "How to train l" Googles suggestions at this point are, "How to train like a boxer," "How to train like a ninja," "How to train like a navy seal," and "How to train like a Marine." It's not until you get to "How to train la," that google suggest Labrador Puppies and even then, it's the whole search phrase.

Now here's a strategy for internet marketing that will ensure that you never have to read lots of blogs with conflicting information. Focus on great quality. That's it. On-page seo is super simple, having the keyword in the title helps and once or twice on the page. Next the more keyword rich anchor text you have linking to your page the better and that's it. It's all you need for ranking. Outside of that is dealing with google's penalty system (anti spam) and if you give your best, then you don't have to worry about their penalty system.

So to answer part A, stop reading blogs. I'm not sure if you've bought one of Tim and Anthony's products or are trying one of the free ones, stick to that and stop looking for other sources of information. For part B, that part about good quality answers that.

Hope that helps,
Chris

[vostrader]

Barbara

I think that Google Instant does drive some of of the searchers back to the main keywords at the expense of long tail keywords and sites that are ranking for the main keywords get first shot at the traffic.

As Chris points out there are many ways into a search. In one of the markets I'm working in the main search is (type of) fencing. If the searcher uses this key phrase (which BTW has in increasing trend in volume) then they get presented with a whole lot of out of city sites first. If they start with (type of) fencing (city) then they can narrow it down real quick. But I don't see the evidence that searchers start with the local first ie (city)(type of) fencing which would not make any difference if the total seach was completed but it isn't under Google Instant. So in this market the sites ranking for (type of) fencing are winning in terms of traffic at the expense of (type of) fencing (city).

So my conclusion is that you have to think about the impact of google instant on your keyword strategy (and adwords). Google is not hating long tail, they are just trying to improve the user (searcher) experience and we have to understand how that change impacts us in terms of strategy and SEO based on the new behaviour.