“Oh I know,” I told my client this afternoon. “Many of the big brands really have no idea, and the reality is SEO strategy depends on who’s doing it, their knowledge or lack thereof of what’s most effective, and newest strategies. Yes, longtail is where to put the majority of your eggs (if this were your basket =). Do you recall when we were discussing the long and short without calling it that, and you were saying ‘.. but very specific/niche audiences are going to be searching for that’, and my response was ‘yes, but you can compete there, #1 or 2 rather than tackling hugely saturated short strategies out of the gate. Audiences are granular, and with several targeted strategies you have a better chance.”

Think about it like this: The difference between selling physical goods and digital goods makes the long tail possible. I.e. if you own a brick-and-mortar business, there’s probably enough people living within your store radius who are interested in your goods to keep you in business. So everything you stock must justify its position. That half-inch of shelf space has a price, and if what you’re putting in that space isn’t selling a certain number of copies, you’ll have to put something else there if you want to pay your bills and stay in business. When you’re in a situation where there’s “not enough room to carry everything for everybody,” i.e. digital services, such as what you’re providing, you end up with “hit-driven economics”, people trying to attract big, broad audiences to justify cost.

Applying this to search, think about those three or four keywords that are going to attract the most traffic to your site. They are usually very broad terms with wide appeal (think of how many sites turn up for the word “dogs,” for example). And think about your chances of getting to the top of that heap. Make shorter heaps, where you float to the top, and you will eventually get found in the larger ones …