SEO Performance Across the Long Tail

Now remember how long that list was. There were over 74,000 sessions and 31,000 different phrases that contributed to our search traffic in that six month period. This is a vivid example of the long tail of search in action. In fact, we can get a visualization of this long tail by clicking on the chart view. See how the top performing phrases make up a good chunk of the visits. But look how quickly the high frequency phrases taper off and how long the unique phrases go on. And this list is only the top 250 of our 31,000 phrases. That's a lot of phrases. And here's the interesting thing. Among this very long tail of infrequent phrases are sessions that have very low bounce rates. For example, the phrase

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"building an ecommerce site" delivered traffic only twenty-six times in this date range, but check out its bounce rate--only 23% bounces. Or look at "website budget example," the bounce rate is 0%. This is the result of matching search intent. If we were to tally the total number of very infrequent phrases that had very low bounce rates, we'd end up with a number of highly productive and effective results that, when combined, out-number our overall second best performing phrase, "power of words." Again, you see, rare phrases often out perform popular phrases.

This is one reason why you don't have to stress out too much about your exact keywords and phrases when doing SEO. Your best traffic is going to come from unique phrases that you would never have thought to optimize for in the first place. And that's why even if you fall into the temptation to inaccurately title your content, the very words on the page will betray you. If you're too ambitious in characterizing your titles, you'll either not show up, or your visits will bounce. So go with the flow, be exact in characterizing your content, and enjoy the benefits of matching intent across the long tail of search.