The Long Tail! Is it for everybody?

The long tail slipped from the world of statistics to the online marketing world when Chris Anderson wrote an article in Wired magazine in 2004. The Long Tail is now a bestseller book flying off the shelves in bookstores.

The promise of the book is that the ability to offer vast choice is causing businesses to rethink where their markets lie and how to tackle them.

The Long Tail article, together with the fact that more specific keyword phrases generally convert at higher rates, search engine marketers started utilizing the concept in order to improve their ROI.

Search engine marketing experts started expanding their keywords and using more specific and multi-keyword phrases in their campaigns. This strategy has proved successful for many companies as they have seen double digit conversion rates at the keyword level.

The question I would like to raise is whether or not the long tail suits all businesses and search engine marketing companies. I agree that most expanded keyword phrases perform better and have a higher conversion rate. However, as these phrases usually generate a smaller traffic, it would take a while for marketers to see the conversions.

Now you can imagine if a campaign has thousands of these expanded keywords with minimal traffic, it would take them a while to see and judge the performance of these keywords. This might not be a problem for a company with a huge budget and non time sensitive campaigns. However, a company with a small (test) budget or seasonal products might run out of patience and give up the campaign before its maturity.

So, it is very important to keep in to consideration the pros and cons of the long tail before jumping to embrace it.

Nima

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