Theoretical question about the long-tail

December 24, 2007

There are many webmasters when they open their websites/blogs their first step is to think how about getting higher rankings on general keywords like: Make money online, diet, computers, laptops, etc… But I am a believer as many other webmasters in the long-tail keywords. My recommendation for new website owner will be; gor for long-tail keywords. In this forum there is a user which ask a theoretical question about long-tails:

Say you pick some topic you know a lot about. You make a site about it and get many links. You get a certain amount of direct traffic. Will the search engine traffic usually be (a lot?) bigger than the direct traffic you receive?

Usually it seems most webmasters get a lot more traffic from search than from direct traffic, but Im wondering what would happen if one didnt optimize for any keywords or if the keywords were so competitive that one wouldnt get in the top10 for any of the main phrases. Or..or.. would the search traffic usually still exceed the direct link traffic through weird long-tail phrases?

Will the search engine traffic usually be (a lot?) bigger than the direct traffic you receive?

In Googlelady case there is more than 30% traffic from Search engines. Which I consider more than a LOT. The direct traffic will increase depends on your content, if you have quality content you will have loyal readers which will came directly.

would the search traffic usually still exceed the direct link traffic through weird long-tail phrases?

Yes, Google usually do this and you will be shocked when you see some really wierd long-tail phrases that people really search and you did not thought about it. Don’t worry about how you would rank. Just write quality articles for humans and bots for sure will understand.

Here is an opinion/suggestion:

This depends entirely on your site. Sites with loyal members such as forums and blogs tend to get a lot of repeat visitors. Blogs get visitors from blog search engines. There’s also social bookmarking sites that can send huge amounts of traffic, and a well-placed link on a high traffic site can send a steady stream of visitors.
As for long tail search, popular opinion is that this is a smart goal to aim for.