Summer is flying by.  I hope you’ve been out swimming, hiking, biking, and hitting up the barbeque as much as humanly possible.  I’ve definitely been taking my fair share of the bike lane this summer, but there’s always time for one more ride…

Today I want to share a quick story with you that happened about a month ago while working with one of Wally’s Web Stars.  We were on the phone, working together to create a bunch of content that we’ll use to populate her website, and, also, parts of the Internet, with her expertise.

In our discussion, something came up about the true magic of the Internet today.

Here’s a window into our discussion…

In the old days, we had to rely on broadcast marketing.  You’d put your name out there in hopes that hundreds and thousands of people would see who you were.  Maybe on TV, maybe on a billboard, maybe in a newspaper.  You’d hope and pray that out of the hundreds or thousands of people that saw your advertisement, a select few would eventually remember you when the time came to buy.

It’s a lot like what you see with the Goodyear blimp.  It’s sitting above a football game, even though nobody at the football game is buying tires.  They’re hoping that every couple of years when you’re buying new tires that they’ve made such an impression on you, that you connect it to that positive emotion you had at the football game.

They’re tossing up the hail mary and praying that you’re going to remember Goodyear the next time that you go and buy some tires, even though you just wanted to see a football game.

Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t work.  There’s no way to find out.

There are a lot of unfortunate things about the old school broadcast model, and the biggest one is that you spend a hell of a lot of money and you’re completely unable to measure your return.

Another problem is that you’re not able to really tailor your message to the people you want to speak to, and connect to the
people that really need to hear it.   So you’re spending a bunch
of money but there’s no way to find out if you’re spending it wisely.

Compare this with the Internet, which takes all of these problems and eliminates them – if you know what to do.

One of the biggest keys of what to do to be successful on the Internet is to harness the power of long tail keywords.

Imagine for a second the bell curve in a standard statistical distribution. In the middle is a big hump, but on either side are the tails.  Within every search term that you can choose, are more specific terms that are closer to the EXACT match that you’re looking for.

The big hump in the middle is a general term that everyone’s looking for – but on the sides – that is where the specific money making terms reside.

Think about the last time you really wanted something online.
Your search terms were probably pretty long – not just a word, but probably a descriptive phrase.

So, if you’re selling a book, the term “book” is being used by just about everybody.  And that’s crowded, so it’s not a very valuable search term.  “Book” is way too general.

But what if you’re looking for a very specific book, something like “Gulliver’s Travels Book”?

Now all of a sudden, that’s a very specific type of book, in fact a specific name. And, on the standard distribution curve, that’s not going to be part of the bell, that’s going to be way
out on the tail.   Gulliver is not a word that is used every day.

So that’s why it’s called the long tail.

Think about the power of this for a moment.

We can imagine the Internet as a giant sorting machine.

When somebody comes in and types in a very specific keyword that’s two, three, four words long, they’re looking for something that is very specific.  In fact, statistics show that they’re looking to buy something most of the time when they’re using specific key phrases instead of general terms.

But…

It doesn’t really do you any good unless your website is positioned at the right spot in the search engines. The giant sorting machine of the Internet wants to connect you to the terms that connect you with your audience.

Luckily there’s a quick and easy way to make sure that you get connected.  And it’s ridiculously simple.

First, you find out what your keywords are.  (A really easy way to do this is to have a look at my Turnkey Long Tail SEO Keyword Research)

Then, you make sure that the search engines are finding you with some Search Engine Optimization.

Wisdom is often deceptively simple.  A 116 year old lady was asked how to live a long time.  She said, “Just keep breathing.”

Same thing with using the Internet to make money.  Find your keywords.  Get ranked for them.  Cash your checks.  And just keep breathing.

Until next time,
-Wally

PS – The quickest and easiest way to increase your traffic is to begin with a powerful keyword analysis.  You can read about that
here.

PPS – “After following Wally’s recommendations, Google was indexing us within a week, the traffic started flowing in. We haven’t looked back since!”  -Vallene Mros, Graphic Designer