© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts SEO Tactics & Metrics for the Long Tail By Stephan Spencer, Founder & President, Netconcepts

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts SEO Tactics for Your “Head” Terms  Focus a page on no more than 3 keyword themes – place targeted term in the title tag, H1 tag, & high up in the body copy  Build link gain (PageRank) to that page through internal links & inlinks  Consistent keyword-rich anchor text from internal links  For deep inlinks, vary the anchor text a bit

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts SEO Tactics for “The Long Tail”  Focus on unbranded search markets  Leverage your website scale & authority, brand strength  Employ testable strategies that scale –Site-wide optimizations to HTML templates, internal linking structure, URLs, etc.  Treat consumers as co-creators  Measure against Long Tail KPIs

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Long Tail Anatomy

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts The Long Tail of Search The Brand “head” The Unbranded “tail”

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Why Care About the Tail?  The Retail Brand Dilemma: –Brand keywords drive most traffic Merchant name, derivatives, URLs, or products –Few unique pages yield results Predominantly yielding brand search traffic Most retail sites have tens of thousands of unique pages  Our GravityStream proxy data reveals: –Non-brand keywords drive most traffic Non-merchant terms –Many unique pages yield results Predominantly unbranded keywords

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Why Care About the Tail?  How many search terms should drive traffic?  How much traffic should any keyword drive?  How many searches are performed for such terms?  How does this compare to brand searches?  How could we estimate such market potential?  What kinds of SEO strategies can help capture the long tail opportunity?

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts How Long Should It Be?

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Ways to Size the Tail  Keyword Research –Tools like Keyword Discovery, Google Insights for Search –Random combinations = unpredictable research  PPC Extrapolation –Multiply PPC results by 5-6 to estimate potential –Buying cycle and mapping ratios = incomparable estimates  Page Yield Theory –Estimates long tail potential as a function of website size –A more relevant and objective metric

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Applying Page Yield Theory  Requires special data, across significant sampling of websites: –Total unique pages –Percentage of pages that did / not yield keyword traffic –Average number of keywords yielded per page –Average number of visits received for each yielded keyword –Effective click through rate per keyword to estimate total searches

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Key Research* Findings  Average merchant profile: –73,000 unique pages (210,000 indexed in Google) –14% yield search traffic –Each page produced 2.4 keywords which yielded 1.9 visits/month –189,000 brand searches per month –Total potential for unbranded keyword traffic exceeds 7,000,000  Nearly 40 unbranded searches for every brand search  For large dynamic sites, nearly 100 searches for every unique page * From Netconcepts study “The Long Tail of Natural Search”

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Key Findings - Words Per Search  Evaluating 1.2 Million Unbranded Searches –3 word search terms accounted for 36% of searches –2 to 4 word searches accounted for 81% of searches. –95% of these terms were referrals generated from Google, MSN Search, or Yahoo Search.

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Key Findings – Size of the Tail

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Estimating Your Tail  Multiply brand searches by a factor of 40 –eg 100,000 brand x 40 = 4,000,000 unbranded searches  Multiply pages of site by 100 searches per page / mo –eg 100,000 pages x 100 = 10,000,000 unbranded searches

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Attack Your Freeloaders  Most merchants have 80%+ of their pages driving no search traffic  Most don't even know this, or why it is a problem (no javascript based analytics package will tell them this either)  It’s a red light that they lack a long tail of unbranded keyword traffic  The # of searches for unbranded keywords is nearly 40x as great as searches for the brand name (put another way, 97x the # of pages onsite)  Tapping that opportunity means leveraging the size of the website and the brand strength to convert unbranded searches into clicks  How to achieve this tail?

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Capturing Long Tail Potential  Measure Long Tail KPIs  Scalable SEO Tactics  Commit to Iterative Testing

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Long Tail KPIs  Brand Searches: 189,000  Yielding Pages: 14%  Keywords per Page: 2.4  Visits per Keyword: 1.9  Click Through Rate: 4.7%  Index to Crawl: 3.1

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Page Yield Matrix  Estimate your page yield based on the mix of brand and non-brand keywords presently experience

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Page Yield  Pages yielding search traffic –How many searchers clicked ad –Measures ad effectiveness –Think: click through  Yield Example with Google: –6,600 pages (25%) –Non performing: 19,400 (75%)  Non-performing pages –Need to identify and optimize

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Identifying non-performing pages

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Phrases per Page  Search phrase per page –Reflects on-page keywords and internal anchor text –Surgical optimization Title, meta, content  Total Phrase Yield: 43, phrases per ad

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Leveraging user-generated content

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Visitors per Phrase  Search visitors per phrase – Reflects brand strength and ranking –Influenced by internal PageRank flow, link buying / building  Search Visits: 114,200  Total Phrase Yield: 43,300 –2.6 per phrase  Search visitors per page –4.5 x 2.6 = 11.7 –Indicates ad reach and rank

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Visitors per Phrase Static URL Structure: –Old Style: – 134/fa/1585/hp!sf.htm –New Style: – htm –URLs Treated: >600 –PageRank: PR0 --> PR4 –Traffic Increase: 550% –Top-Page Distribution: 49%

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Management Framework  Page Yield (sub X-axis)  Keywords per Page (X axis)  Visits per Keyword (Y axis)  These combine to create the long tail

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Sample KPIs Sample KPI Report

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Iterative Testing and Measurement  Only utilize the strategies/tactics that follow if you can test and measure the effects  You can't just quantify effects on sales alone  Incorporate new KPIs in order to view the whole channel more holistically (vs. just looking at your rankings on 100 trophy keywords)

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Scalable Long Tail SEO Tactics  Page Yield Theory: –Goal: Maximizing unbranded natural search traffic is a matter of predictably increasing the yields of thousands of pages  Mass optimization: –Single techniques capable of creating cascading effects throughout large websites – template pages for instance  Rewriting URLs: –Simple and static keyword URLs have a profound impact  “Thin Slicing”: –Touching key elements across thousands of pages quickly, monitoring, and expanding based on results

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts “Thin Slicing”  Make quick decisions. Don’t overthink.  Only really works if you’re an expert  E.g. hand-optimize title tags across hundreds of pages quickly (prioritized)  Focus on your title tags, H1s and URLs  Don't obsess, doesn’t have to be perfect. Instead, iterate.  If you don’t have an admin interface, use a spreadsheet and do a database import

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Thin slicing title tags

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts URLs  URL affects searcher clickthrough rates  Short URLs get clicked on 2X long URLs (Source: MarketingSherpa, used with permission)

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts URLs  Further, long URLs appear to act as a deterrent to clicking, drawing attention away from its listing and instead directing it to the listing below it, which then gets clicked 2.5x more frequently. –  Don’t be complacent with search-friendly URLs. Test and optimize.  Make iterative improvements to URLs, but don’t lose link juice to previous URLs. 301 previous URLs to latest. No chains of 301s.  WordPress handles 301s automatically when renaming post slugs  Mass editing URLs (post slugs) in WordPress – via the “SEO Title Tag” plugin! (

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Thin slicing URLs

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Optimize Internal Linking Structure  Anchor text is critical  Hierarchical –Through good site-wide navigational design in a header, sidebar or footer  Breadcrumb navigation –Good for users and good for search engines –Reinforces which pages are the most important  No flash-only navigation. Alt text on graphical links.  Mouseover nav - CSS, not Javascript  Most important deep pages should be minimal # of clicks from home page

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Optimize Pagination  Excessive pagination can cause numerous pages of product listings to not get crawled. Reduce # of pages in pagination system to improve crawlability & indexation  Next/Previous vs. page number list vs. Show All  Consider disallowing “View All” links and forcing spiders through subcat pages. Display as many products per page as possible (max 120) within 150K file size.  Fewer products per subcat = fewer pagination pages to crawl at subcat level for max product indexation

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Attribute Navigation  Attribute navigation, a.k.a. faceted navigation, provides clickable product inventory breakdowns, by brand, color, price range, etc. By doing so it creates into a huge number of permutations for the spiders to follow.  The problem is exacerbated by having column headings clickable for resorting  Nofollow all links that do price range breakdown, re-sorting and re-pagination

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts

Scalable Long Tail Tactics - Web 2.0  User generated content (e.g., product reviews, forums, wikis) –Freely append searcher vocabulary into your website  Tagging and social bookmarking (e.g., Flickr, del.icio.us) –Listen and create feedback loops – using search terms –Use cloud taxonomy to flatten your structure using good link text  RSS and Blogging –Long tail is driven by efficient distribution of pages  Create link bait rather than soliciting link targets  Provide lists of most searched keywords  Long tail optimization means outsourcing … to your users

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Tagging  Great for deep internal linking, interlinking  Generates keyword-rich links  Display tag clouds of most popular tags  Link to "related tags”  Allow visitors to tag your stuff? (ie. “folksonomies”) –Customers use their own terminology / vocabulary  Mine your own weblogs to look for most frequently searched keywords and use those as tags  Also tag externally: reddit, delicious, digg, Technorati

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts In Summary  Huge untapped potential lies in… –your unbranded search markets –your website size –the Long Tail –your consumers as content creators –links  Employ testable tactics that scale  Measure against a new set of KPIs

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Q&A!  For a research report on the Long Tail of Natural Search, your request to  To contact me: