Marketing Science

Source: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/long-tail-page-one-rankings/

Excerpt

The Powerful Long Tail of SEO: By Glenn Gabe

I think many people in Search understand the importance of ranking highly in Google, but I think too many people outside of Search are hung up on ranking for just a few target keywords. As mentioned earlier, I’ve written about the long tail of SEO on my blog, and it’s hard to overlook the power of the long tail when heavily analyzing search traffic across websites and verticals. I’m constantly talking about the long tail during client meetings, internal brainstorms, and to random people on the subway. Don’t worry, I’m in New York, so most people are used to this type of strange behavior.

To quickly review, the long tail of SEO includes longer queries, typically including three or more keywords. These longer queries derive from your target keywords (or your head terms). For example, a head term might be Nintendo Wii, but a long tail keyword might be what are the best Nintendo Wii games. Although many people focus on head terms, the long tail might generate more quality visitors in aggregate (taking into account all long tail keywords versus just head terms). Anyone tracking SEO for a living has probably seen the impact of the long tail.

continue reading about long tail SEO by Glenn Gabe  ….

The following article by Glenn Gabe – Track Flash In Google Analytics – deserves special mention because of the large number of all-flash websites out there, especially all the sites made for big brands. Most of them have not been properly or completely indexed by search engines because of their use of Flash. With GAforFlash, user interactions with the Flash site can be properly tracked and analyzed. The 2-part series explains how to deploy GAforFlash properly and gives examples of what can be tracked. 

Part 1 – introduction to Google Analytics For Adobe Flash Component (GAforFlash)

http://www.hmtweb.com/blog/2009/02/how-to-track-flash-in-google-analytics.html

Part 2 – deploying GAforFlash

http://www.hmtweb.com/blog/2009/02/how-to-track-flash-in-google-analytics_08.html

this is a great post by Glenn Gabe about search engine results and how brand’s “usual suspect” competitors may not be their competitors in organic search. 

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Don’t drop names with Google…
Outside of search, you might be able to throw a big brand name around and get somewhere. Unfortunately, the search engines don’t necessarily care. That’s one of the reasons you’ll see all types of websites ranking for highly competitive keywords. Actually, I’d argue that some smaller online businesses can easily outmaneuver larger websites and companies in SEO. When it comes down to it, the engines care about quality content, a good user experience, relevancy, and popularity. In other words, create outstanding content that can be easily crawled and indexed, optimize that content based on keyword research, make it easy for your visitors to find and use your content, and if those visitors find that content valuable, you might gain important inbound links (AKA votes). If that happens, subsequent rankings can follow… BTW, you’ll notice I didn’t mention that you need to be a big brand or a multi-billion dollar company to do this. That’s part of the reason blogs have become so powerful. They give the small guy a voice…and that small guy can often outrank large companies in the SERPs. Empowering, yes? Scary to large businesses and big brands, you bet.

Continue reading about competitors in organic search…