The long tail. It’s a term that has been used for a long time in the online marketing industry to define the keywords that live in a low search volume/high relevancy & conversion rate realm.

Many online marketers realize that the long tail is where the ROI lies when it comes to search engine optimization.  Many of these terms require little to no effort for ranking, but return a nice revenue stream.  Generally these are the longer 4-6 word keyword phrases that describe your product or service very specifically – and convert much higher than less relevant/more competitive phrases.

Seeing how the long tail is doing has become easier with the invent of Google Analtyics dashboards.  Now you can simply see the phrases and the revenue they generate with a single click.

Here’s the link to the dashboard – just click here and choose which Analytics profile you’d like it installed to.  You’ll be able to see the phrases and their corresponding visits and revenue.  A valuable tool for evaluating which keywords are truly important to your SEO.  You could add to this dashboard and include 1 and 2 word phrases very easily!

Playing around with custom filters and dashboards in Google Analytics can offer great insights into how your website is performing.  Check out the new Google Analytics Solutions Gallery to find more custom reports, filters and dashboards designed to give you deeper vision into your data!

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I received an email in my in box recently that made me cringe.  Then it made me think.

As an agency that concentrates on SEO and PPC – seeing an email like this makes us scoff.  It’s a bit scary –  Then we had a discussion around the flip side of discounting that went something like, “You know, if that email had said ’80% off shoes’ you’d have had a very different reaction.”

When does a discount SUPPORT a brand, and when does it hinder it?  Certain things in life many of us strive to get at a discount.  There are many other things that seem inferior if we’ve purchased them at a discount.  Why does the saying, Continue reading →

Small business owners struggle with marketing.  It’s a fact.  Spending the time to create a strategy is just the first step.  Execution, consistently and deliberately, is a completely different matter.  Beyond execution, measurement and agility to implement change is even the next step.  When running your own business alone, this becomes even more difficult – factor in the time spent on customer service, inventory, staffing, banking, billing, etc – and marketing is the piece that gets pushed to the bottom of the list.

With more and more importance placed on “being” in the market, finding and making time for marketing is even more important.  Knowing how and Continue reading →

Last session of the conference for this sore-wristed typist.  I’m excited to hear from Gillian Muessig.  I spoke on a panel with her quite a few years ago and she is really one of the most gracious and supportive people I’ve met.

First up is the SEOMom, Gillian Muessig, Founding President Emeritus, SEOMoz.org

Gillian is sharing photos of clusters, talking about clusters progressing into communities.  Are the clusters, communities?  No – they’ve a similar thought group, etc. Continue reading →