The Atomic / Dandelion Theory of Keywords, The Long Tail, & A New Way Of Seeing

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1 The Atomic / Dandelion Theory of Keywords, The Long Tail, & A New Way Of Seeing I ve been reviewing several of my clients adwords, google analytics, and google places accounts and what I m seeing has completely changed how I look and think of keywords. Here s my explanation of why and how First, the long tail One of my clients gets approx 400 organic visitors a day, and spends about $20,000 a month in adwords. They have well developed, aged, google places listings as well. I was recently looking over their analytics and what I discovered surprised me. In their google places account, they have about 17 listings, and when I looked at the keywords that the listings showed up for, about 52% of the keywords were other meaning that they were either long tail or un-seo-able keywords that were bringing in visitors and business to their google places listings. Then I looked at their adwords account. They have tens of thousands of clicks and conversions (their site is a lead gen website for their company). Most of their keywords are phrase match, and some are modified broad match. When I reviewed their account as I normally do, I got the idea to chart the % of keywords they were bidding on (including CTR and conversion) vs. the keywords that came along for the ride the onesies and twosies that 99% of the time were long tail keywords they weren t specifically bidding on. The result of their adwords account? 71% of the keywords they did NOT bid on directly were responsible for their clicks AND their conversions.

2 This means 2 things to me: 1 - When you re bidding on a keyword in adwords, you re NOT bidding on a specific keyword if you use phrase or broad match you re bidding on a cloud of keywords, including the keyword you bid on. (picture a keyword as a dandelion the core of which is the keyword you re thinking of, and the fluff are the phrase and broad match variations you re NOT thinking of) (((This has HUGE implications for writing adwords ads, designing landing pages, SEO, and keyword research in general I ll go into all of this in detail shortly))) 2 The long tail, in this company s case, was responsible not only for the vast MAJORITY of clicks, but the vast majority of CONVERSIONS i.e. business i.e. the bottom line. Things were starting to get very interesting, so I looked at this company s google analytics account, making sure to strip out adwords traffic, brand specific traffic, and only look at organic traffic Sure enough, 73.2% of their organic rankings, traffic, and CONVERSIONS were from long tail keywords yet again. This company is ranked #1 and #2 for some of the broadest terms in their industry which DID bring in significant traffic, but that paled in comparison to what the long tail brought in. Was this industry specific, this phenomena of the long tail? Incredibly, NO! I reviewed the account of 4 other companies I work with and found nearly the SAME RESULTS across different industries, and even between lead gen and e-commerce sites. So what does this tell you? Here s what I decided the long tail message means Organic SEO Message yes, you need to get high quality backlinks with the right anchor text to rank in Google, Yahoo and Bing for the keywords you want But is this really the

3 right approach? What would YOU rather focus on? The keywords that bring in 70% of your business or the ones that bring in 30%? Here s the 80/20 rule RIGHT HERE, staring you in the face. What if you SEO d your site by getting high quality backlinks and you didn t CARE about keyword rankings? Instead you focused on growing the number of daily long tail searches to your website? Wouldn t this improve your business faster and bring in more revenue than traditional SEO methods? From what I ve been taught, ranking for long tail keywords comes from doing 2 things: Increase your domain authority high by getting relevant, authoritative back links to your site with the right anchor text. This hasn t changed. But #2 has changed what about content? Isn t content king? YES, and now I know WHY content is king. Semantically relevant content is the net that pulls in long tail keywords. Focus on getting as much semantically relevant, QUALITY content on your site as you can. Why not use spun articles and scraped content? Well, what happens if 70% of your searchers find you using long tail phrases and end up on your content pages because they rank for those keywords? They ll run into a wall of spun/scraped garbage and leave your site in droves. The ONLY thing keeping long tail searchers on your site will be good content that steers them to fill in a form, make a purchase, or take your desired action. After all, if your article content is what brings in long tail searches, it s likely your article content will also be the landing pages for those visitors. I believe scraped/spun content will give you lots of visitors, but minimal conversion.

4 So get authority links for the keywords you want to rank for, but remember it s the aggregate of all the long tail keywords surrounding the core keyword (remember the dandelion) that will really bring in the business. Adwords PPC Message First of all, WHAT EXACTLY are you bidding on? Are you using exact, phrase or broad match? What are you REALLY bidding on when you use a match type? Imagine each keyword as a dandelion or an atom (for nerds who like atomic theory). Broad Match imagine a big, fluffy, dandelion containing various keywords loosely surrounding the core keyword (the one you re bidding on). How big is the puff? It depends on the keyword, how specific it is in the English language, and how MANY words make up your broad match keyword. Let s take the keyword Shoes a 1 word keyword will have the largest cloud around it, because it can be abstracted to mean so many different things. Now compare that to the broad match term baby shoes. The 2 word keyword will have a smaller puff around it because the 2 words have fewer semantically similar meanings. Same with a 3 word keyword (ex: red baby shoes ) you ll have an even smaller sphere of similar keywords. Phrase Match The entire keyword (and the 1,2 or 3 words that make up the keyword) must appear exactly as they re shown and in order and only words in front of or after your phrase match keyword can give you an impression. Picture a phrase match keyword with a cone of light shining out of the beginning and end of the phrase The more words you have in a phrase match keyword, the narrower the beams of light will be, because fewer and fewer keywords will likely be added to the front and/or end of the phrase.

5 Exact Match This is exactly what you would picture only the exact keyword will give an impression. How does visualizing each keyword as a dandelion help you be more effective in pay per click? First of all, when you re bidding on a keyword, you re NOT REALLY BIDDING ON A KEYWORD. You re bidding on a diffuse set of keywords with a soft or hard core keyword at the center the core being the keyword you intended to bid on. When you write an ad for a keyword, sometimes you nail it and get a high CTR and high conversion and lots of traffic But sometimes, you get very little of all three. Here s why I think that is Let s say your root keyword is headache relief and you ve written an ad that says: Headache Relief Our Powerful Pills Will Stop Your Headache in 1 Hr or Less a made up domain But what if the keyword headache relief actually appeals mostly to people who are seeking natural remedies? It s like blowing gently on the edge of the dandelion and shaving off only a small part of the keyword cloud you ll only knock off a very small % of the keywords traffic, conversion, and interest. You may think the keyword is no good, you may give up on bidding on it, who knows. If you re not getting enough impressions or poor conversion, your response might be to then write a very generic ad in an attempt to capture more of the cloud, but that may not work for you either Why?

6 Think of your adwords ad as a ball you throw at a keyword dandelion. The ball can be a small, tight, dense, hard ball, or a big, spongy, light ball. Which one has the power to knock out a bigger section of a keyword cloud target? What kind of a ball (adwords ad) works best on a big keyword dandelion? (i.e. what kind of adwords ad works best for a 1 word broad match keyword like headache?) Well, a light, spongy ball might not hit your target at all or be carried off in the wind. A small, hard pebble might miss the target as well or only knock out a tiny % of the cloud. With giant dandelion keywords, don t even use them as target practice your efforts won t be effective if you visualize what I ve said. Since you can CHOOSE your target in adwords, make the dandelion puff smaller, and/or make the core bigger by choosing a phrase match version of the keyword or a 2 or 3 word modified broad match of the keyword. Now you have far less dandelion fluff and a far bigger hard core to target, and you can use a denser, smaller, more specific adwords ad to knock out your target entirely. THIS is why one ad (i.e. one type of ball) can t successfully knock out keyword dandelions of varying puff and core sizes you re using the wrong tool you re pissing in the wind. Now I understand (and hopefully you do too) why grouping closely related keywords in your adwords account helps you convert so much better and gives you a higher CTR if you write the right ad. I could go on and on with this analogy, but keep it in your mind from now on when you think of keywords in your pay per click marketing efforts.

7 How does visualizing each keyword as a dandelion help you SEO your website better? Let me hit you in the face immediately with a serious implication of the dandelion keyword theory Ranking for a specific keyword doesn t matter anymore. Want to know why? Instead of dandelions, now think of each keyword as an christmas tree. SEO ing a website is a long term proposition it takes months or even a year or more to get a good amount of traffic, especially in competitive niches. You could easily compare SEO to growing a forest or being a farmer. For today, you re not an SEO guy you re a forest restoration specialist. If the leaves and branches of a tree are the long tail keywords surrounding the hard, bark covered trunk (the actual keyword you are SEO ing for ), how do you think a healthy, mature website with lots of traffic, that converts well is supposed to look? If you SEO for specific keywords, only get anchor text for those keyword targets, and ignore having good content and lots of it, you ll end up with a barren wasteland and little to show for your work. How exciting is it to be #1 for a keyword now?

8 What if you focused not on keyword rankings, but on getting varied anchor text for a big range of keyword targets and ALSO focused on creating lots of relevant, semantically varied content? I think you d end up with the lush, green forest you ve been looking for. Instead of focusing on keyword rankings, focus on GROWING your daily organic searches. Look at your analytics weekly or daily and find the sprouts and shoots of new trees (keywords) that you can grow into your forest. What do tree roots look like? Let s say you re in the loan business, and you run a lead generation website. What kind of root keyword terms might appear in your analytics that you aren t SEO ing for? Ex: Where do I, How much does, Find a loan in, How to get, Lowest rate on, No credit check loan, Do I need a, Fast loan for, Personal Loan in, Auto loan in, etc Are these keywords you d normally SEO for or write articles about? Not according to 99% of people who swear by keyword tools and search volume only. But these keyword roots come up in analytics more and more as time goes by and your website gets stronger and your myriad content pulls in more long tail terms. At least on healthy websites they do. And I can tell you I d rather have 400 organic searches a day to my website and not rank on page 1 for a single keyword versus being #1 for a few keywords and have only 100 searches a day. Thanks for reading, and if you re interested, I ll be coming out with a google maps (google places) analogy for my methods soon. me at 2ndchancecellular@gmail.com if you re interested.