Superior search optimization suggestion tool

I cannot help but be disappointed each time I try a new analytics package. They are all concerned with Top-5 this, Top-10 that. They, by definition, distill down all the data into reports that show you only the most important data, which ignores all the granular information, where the long-tail goodies exist. This, by definition, makes traditional analytics packages poor choice as search engine optimization tools. But the alternative seems worse—being overwhelmed with log file data. Either way, paralysis is the result.

MyLongTail specifically addresses data analysis for natural search optimization by keeping the entire data granularity, but skimming off only the bits that are important for SEO. As a result, you can easily look at the details of every single search hit that led to your site. You can even go as far as clicking to reproduce each and every search engine hit, reproducing the first page of your visitors’ site experiences.

Log files need to be deleted, or else they will fill your hard drives. Analytics packages have similar limitations. Neither keeps all the cumulative data that represents the life of your website from a natural search optimization standpoint. When did your first search hit occur? When did the first search hit on each new term occur? What was the latest new term to lead to your site? No data is left there to be mined. You essentially lose all of your memory after each reporting cycle. It is therefore impossible with today’s tools to create superior search optimization suggestion tools that uses all the available competitive intelligence off of your own site! Enter MyLongTail.

Blogging and SEO

Getting your content out in a blogging system is much more effective for SEO than by any other content management system, because there is a vast network of new web-crawlers out there competing on many levels to pick up and carry your content. Yahoo, Google and Technorati are competing to pick up all blog posts first.

News aggregation sites specializing in verticals are competing to pick up content on particular subjects. You can see this in technical topics like Java and Ajax right now, but the trend will trickle into every industry, as it is the lazy way to create those “authority sites” that are so important for SEO. In the past, spammers were doing “search scraping” to accomplish much the same thing, but mostly to have pages on which to hide AdSense.

Today, RSS feeds are being combined to make much more professional and sensible sites. But the same dynamic applies. They are attempting to intermediate communication. Not long ago, the concept of disintermediation was a buzzword, due to manufacturers’ sudden ability, thanks of course to the Internet, to sell directly without going through distributors or retail outlets. Today, content is a product, often being given out for free by bloggers who put entire articles into news feeds, and it is an invitation to intermediate. Just as with spamming, there is little to no cost or risk, and there is a great deal of up-side.

The answer is simply to set your blogging software to only include a portion of your post in the RSS feed. Whenever you post, all the blog crawlers will pick up the new content. The only full copy of the search-optimized content will exist on your site. And the news aggregation sites will get your small paragraph, which is fine because it will become a highly desirable non-reciprocal link.

Blogger SEO advantage confirmed

Well, the MyLongTail site ended up being in the Google SERPs today for the first time. This is concrete evidence that a previously non-existent domain can go from registration to being served in results in just about 2 weeks—and that using Blogger as an on-site blogging tool provides some advantage. I’ll be watching to see if it sticks. The page that got picked up was the blog index page.

To find the page, I searched on the site’s tagline in quotes. It’s hard to find in the results if you don’t use the quotes. And the results are cycling between at least 2 sets of results, one of which doesn’t yet have the blog index page. That shows I’m spotting this just as the new results are coming live.

The Google “site:” command shows that only that page has been picked up and indexed, the homepage. And the homepage has only been recognized, but not indexed.

And if you’re logged into your gmail account when you do these searches, you get additional data! It shows the exact time it was posted of 5:39PM. Unfortunately, that was 5:39 on February 2nd, which was 5 days ago. I speculate that this comes from the additional data Google has available about the page from the Blogger data, since Google owns Blogger.

Collecting Contact Information

Well, it’s been a few days without a MyLongTail post. Tuesday ended up being an office/client day. I’ve got an interesting post in the works on search-friendly URLs and the concept of the weakest link in the chain in search optimization. Yesterday, I got myself set up on a VOIP phone at home that ties back to the office Avaya IP Office phone system. So from home, I can make outgoing calls as if I were on an office phone. Between these two items, and catching up on sleep lost over the past week, the last two days haven’t been my most productive. I plan on making up for that starting now.

I got a blog post out this morning that really starts to describe what the MyLongTail site and system is all about. A lot of my time has really gone into blogging, and not building the app. The reason for that is that the thought-work needs to be done to ensure that I’m doing the right work. But I’ve really got to move forward fast now. More and more people will be coming in as a result of my blogging, and I want to start building the list of beta testers. That makes the contact info app the most important, initially. And since I’m collecting contact info, I might as well integrate it with the Connors sales lead management and online conversation system. That’s my goal for today.

I’ve got to get both the BabyStep tutorial that I just produced, and the application itself onto the sight. I want it wrapped in the site’s look and feel, as minimal as it may be right now. So, what I do is finish the template in the content management system. OK, done. The Spider Spotter app now automatically takes on the look of the rest of the sight, as will any new applications that I develop.

First, put a blank page from the CMS under each main category link. OK, done. Now that you have semi-permanent navigation, move it over to the Blogger template. OK, done. The rest of your work for today is activating the Sign Up Now and Start Conversation systems.

Now, it’s time to focus on contact info collection. There are two forms of contact info collection (3 if you include the blog subscribe list), which I’m leaving to Bloglet for now. Time allowing, I’d use the Google API to program a list mailer myself, so it is more tightly integrated. But the 80/20 rule. The two main forms of contact info collection is “Sign Up Now” and “Start Conversation”. The process of each starts with just the email. That way, minimal contact info is acquired, and some idea of their intent, based on which submit button they used. The principle here is: capture fast. Even if no follow-up action is taken on the part of the prospect, you are now in a position to proactively follow up with them.

The submit will come in through the same program either way. The “Sign Up Now” will just give a parting message, thanking them and explaining the next step. It will also give one more opportunity to talk with Connors about PR. The “Start Discussion” submit will bypass all this and drop you directly into the sales lead management/discussion system. It’s sort of like a private one-to-one blog. Technically, it’s one-to-many, with you the prospect being the “one”, and Connors the organization being the “many”.

Every one of these discussions that comes in needs to be treated as priority #1. It could be the next Amazon, Priceline or Vonage. But it could also be influential early adopters of technology, and the people who will be pivotal in making MyLongTail erupt in buzz. And it also may just be the curious tire kickers, whom we will need to quickly identify. I’m sure that launching a public discussion forum is in the near future, so we can efficiently communicate to the entire audience for MyLongTail, and general next generation public relations issues.

The Evolution of Search Marketing

Search marketing is about to evolve, brought to you by the New York public relations firm that launched Amazon.com, Priceline.com and Vonage. Connors Communications is about to do for natural search what AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing have done for paid search—create a logical system that any marketer can use to bring in more qualified traffic. Except this time, instead of jumping into the bidding frenzy over prohibitively expensive keyword inventory, you tap into the infinite supply of free keyword inventory in what’s coming to be known as the “long tail” of search.

Go to Google or Yahoo! and perform a few of the searches that you believe are important to your business, organization or cause. Does your site appear? If not, you’re experiencing the anxiety that’s driving companies to paid keyword campaigns, because after brief investigation, you discover that the alternative of cracking natural search is just too difficult. You run into the shadowy world known as search engine optimization (SEO) full of dodgy websites and conflicting advice.

It’s easy to become intimidated, and just put your resources in the same place as your peers, and the early majority of marketers are—paid search. Paid search has become mainstream, and demand for the most lucrative keywords has driven costs to sometimes prohibitive levels, reducing the advantage held by early adopters. The real deals in keyword inventory now exist where demand is lowest, and the work of figuring out exactly what those keywords are is hardest. Wired magazine writer Chris Anderson has done a great deal to popularize the concept, and I recommend you read his paradigm-shifting article.

At some point, every marketer worth his/her salt wonders whether focusing on the infinite supply of cheap keywords that exist in the long tail of search may in fact be worth it. They cost so little and can pay off so big. As searches become more specific, the customer often becomes more qualified and valuable. Yes, it’s actually a flaw in the paid keyword business plan. But not in a paid campaign where managing tens of thousands of keywords becomes self-defeating—but rather, in a way of doing natural search that any marketing department can handle in-house. Demand now exists for a mainstream alternative to paid search.

MyLongTail is a rote process of identifying the most likely keywords for targeting based on your existing traffic, automatically suggesting topics for writing. You then incorporate this writing into your website or blog, getting into the habit of friction-free publishing. Once the wheels are greased, and you’re comfortable rolling out new subject matter, it becomes an addictive process that’s easily on par with what some marketers jokingly call CrackWords. Feedback on the effectiveness of your writing is quick, more writing topics suggested, and the process accelerated.

This is not a spamming system, as all the writing comes from you. The premise is that any market or industry has plenty to talk about, and it is your obligation to become the voice of authority in your market space. In fact, with MyLongTail, you kill two birds with one stone, by solving your corporate blogging strategy simultaneously to natural search. MyLongTail makes a blogging strategy many times more effective than it could be alone, by virtue of being the ideal “writing coach,” understanding your existing performance, and where your biggest gains can be made.

MyLongTail is not an analytics package, nor is it a conversion tracker, for that is available to everyone for free already in the form of Google Analytics. Instead, MyLongTail is a very light-weight tracking system built specifically for natural search optimization. There are no reports to customize or mountains of data to wade through. We will not cause paralysis through analysis. Instead, we go directly to actionable data. Just plug in the MyLongTail tracking code, and recommendations start rolling in. The more you act on them, the better the new recommendations become.

As you follow the recommendations, your natural search hits go up, and more data is available to MyLongTail. You don’t pay for these hits. They just work for you on a 24/7 basis with no campaign maintenance. If you stop MyLongTail, the hits continue. They’ve become part of the fabric of your company—a permanent asset. But if you continue with MyLongTail, success builds on success, and your site begins to build towards a sort of critical mass. The goal is nothing less than to dominate the category. With a little time and creativity, perhaps you can use MyLongTail to achieve the sort of category dominance that Connors Communications has helped bring to its clients time and again, before opening the system to the public.