nick usborne's blog

Reasons to write a lot more long-tail content...

As you undoubtedly know, the term “long-tail content” describes those pages on your website which are optimized for keywords that don’t get searched for a lot - but for which there is even less competition.

In other words, even though a long-tail content page may not bring in a ton of visitors, it’s relatively easy to get it showing on page one of the Google search results.

The key here is to publish a LOT of pages optimized for long-tail keywords.

Here are some interesting figures from a post I found at the Junta42 blog.

- 18% of search traffic arrives through the fat head

- 11.5% of search traffic arrives through the chunky middle

- 70% of search traffic arrives through the long tail

Put simply, if your website doesn’t have a long tail, you are missing out on that 70%.

On top of that, long tail traffic almost always converts better.

Here are a couple more interesting tidbits from that post:

- The fastest growing type of keyword search is a length of eight words.

- The type of search that converts at the highest rate is the four-word search.

What’s the takeaway here?

The takeaway is that you need to be creating a lot more long-tail content, to maximize that 70%.

And if you’re not sure where you’re going to find enough ideas for all those new pages...

You guessed right...it’s time to sign up as a member at Web Content Cafe.

At Web Content Cafe I publish a new content idea or insight every day, five days a week.

Learn more about Web Content Cafe...

 

The Google double-whammy – and what it means to your web content strategies.

Whammy #1: The recent Farmer update from Google has devastated thousands of sites across the web, particularly those with thin content, scraped content and low-value content.

Whammy #2: At the same time, Google’s growing interest in social signals means that a lot of perfectly good content is falling in the rankings, simply because it isn’t being shared enough through social media.

For over a decade, the practice of delivering quality content has been pretty stable. Thousands of companies have grown and prospered through the application of consistent and reliable content marketing strategies.

But right now, we are in the throes of huge upheaval.

Those old, reliable strategies are no longer working as well.

Today, you not only need to deliver high-value content, but you also need to enrich it by making it shareable through social media.

In other words, content that gets shared the most has a big advantage.

This is why the focus on the daily content ideas I deliver at Web Content Cafe is focussed on these two essential factors:

- Content with high value

- Content that generates strong social signals

If you are not yet a subscriber at Web Content Cafe, today would be a very good time to make the leap.

The world of web content is changing fast, and if you’re not riding this wave of change, you’ll be left behind, treading water, and going nowhere.

Learn more, and sign up for Web Content Cafe membership here...

 

What you have been missing on Web Content Cafe...

Everyone get’s free access to the articles I publish each week at Web Content Cafe.

But unless you are a member, you don’t get to read the daily posts.

Here’s just some of what you have been missing lately:

- 7 different headline approaches for your content pages

- Using Wikipedia to find interesting sub-topics

- A free and feature-filled widget to help you collect feedback from your readers

- Searching different country domains for new topic ideas

And coming up this week:

- An excellent video on how to become a content curator, and use that position to find new content and extend your influence

- An interesting statistic on how expressing your personal or company values helps engage readers and increase sales.

And more...

If you have been reading about Google’s Farmer update, you know how critical it is to generate quality content that is both useful and engaging.

This is the focus of the Web Content Cafe daily posts – to give you the ideas, tools and inspiration you need to come up with quality content for your own website.

Learn more about Web Content Cafe membership...