As part of our major HitTail promotion, TechCrunch edited by Michael Arrington, is now displaying the HitTail Live widget. TechCrunch is a prestigious blog source for all things going on in the tech word from internet product reviews to company profiles, and visitors can now see exactly what keywords are bringing people to the site.
Check out this screen shot illustrating how traffic was driven to the TechCrunch site when people searched on the popular terms "Microsoft," "iPod," and "iPhone." These are competitive search terms, so it's no small feet that TechCrunch was able to pull in that traffic.
HitTail issues suggestions for what to write about to drive more traffic to your site, which no other web analytics tool does!
This post is a bold experiment. HitTailing works best with 3 to 5 word combo's. In the case of more obscure 2-word combo's, HitTail works pretty well too, as it did with SEO FAQ. But what about a 1-word search, with a recently made-up word, which happens to also have become competitive in a very short time-frame? Can this post start bringing in natural search traffic on a single word? How does our AdWords campaign, where we're paying for for traffic on this term play in? Will our considerable click-through on our AdWords campaign boost the natural search page, deeming us a relevant site on that topic, as measured by a separate mechanism? Time will tell.
Alarm:Clock is helping HitTail and HitTails' Widget take over!
So HitTail is continually growing and expanding, and to explore this growth even more we are launching a campaign to spread the word about HitTail.
Alarm:Clock, which is a website that explores new tech ventures, displays our Widget in live time to show the keywords that people are using to search for the site.
Take a look! Some of the words being used are, "my.yahoo.com," "clock," and several others. Isn't it exciting to see the keywords people are using to find your site? And because it is all in real time, the Widget is constantly changing, and updating you on the new search terms.
HitTail is doing very well as a site on search terms related to the long tail and search hits. For the term “long tail” we’re on the second page of results, and for the term “search hits” we’re on the first page. For any combination, such as “long tail hits” or “long tail search” we are on the first page of results.
So, one of the primary effects of HitTail is taking place: the combined variations of different targeted keywords are already coming up high, without even trying. But this blog post is really about zeroing in on your most difficult, and most competitive keywords. In the case of HitTail, one of them is shaping up to be “keyword research”.
I’ve made 2 blog posts in the past that have targeted this term. But they haven’t produced for us yet. It’s a perfect example of how HitTail doesn’t work every time—it just works on average. This keyword combination actually has enough traffic to show on Google Trends, which is an amazing thing, considering what a marketing niche specialty keyword research is. But it also tells me that I’m on the right track with attacking a term that already has a lot of pre-existing traffic.
Unless you have a massive marketing budget, or your own TV network, it’s difficult to change the pattern of searching on the Internet. There were two watershed events that really showed us how search trends can change suddenly: The World Trade Center / 911, and the Janet Jackson Super Bowl event. But 99% of the time, search trends are all over the map, and search marketers are in the business of putting yourself into the path of searchers and search traffic that is already occurring, no matter what you do.
So, how to put HitTail into the path of people researching “keyword research”?
Well, the page can’t just be another text-only, low-effort, long-tail HitTail page. It has to be built up into something a little more special. This is increasingly turning out to be a picture, or maybe some YouTube video.
So, what I'm doing is making an early morning post, just to get this post out there and percolating. But during the day, I'll be beefing it up with:
Some YouTube video.
A bell-curve illustration that we use to diagram the benchmark vs. longtail keyword issue.
And this post will start generating traffic in the meanwhile, and it's existence urgently commits me to following through with the snazzing up the the page that needs to occur to make it effective on my targeted term.
And of course, for anyone who did find this page on the concept of keyword research, you've come to the right place. HitTail is one of the best keyword research tools available, because it helps you leverage the traffic that's already occurring on your site, to get more traffic. Success breeds success. Third party keyword research tools that cull aggregate data from search engines and other people's sites are somewhat overrated, considering there are much more effective approaches available that hardly anyone even knows about yet.
Hi. We're launching a new site, staring YOU. So HitTail will be helping to directly promote its users. We will focus on all those small businesses and the feel-good stories that we keep encountering. Amongst our ranks are many interesting, innovative, and inspiring stories.
I'm making this quick video to start collecting the work-in-progress success stories of HitTailers, worldwide, and to set the tone as a highly visual and personal site. We want to cover the more inspiring stories, and while we're at it, help you with your site, and the HitTail formula in general.
Simply click this link, and submit a few words about why you would be a good candidate. Don't be shy. If you've overcome incredible obstacles to become a work at home mom (WAHM), let us know. If you're pursuing your dreams, let us know. Whether you're a candy store, Web 2.0 startup, affiliate, eBay'er Yahoo Store'er, consultant, real estate agent, wholesaler, or just someone making some decent money with AdSense, let us know.
So HitTail is launching it's very first Ad Campaign, and was lucky enough to land a spot on Ars Technica! Which is an amazing site that covers everything from Business IT to Gear and Gadgets.
HitTail is showing the world, in real time, how people are finding Ars Technica, because that's what HitTail does; it finds the long tail keywords that will help benefit your site and in essence, drive more traffic to your page. This will not only get you more Hits, but it will also raise your rankings through out the search engine world.
Look at all the Keywords that people are using in their search and coming up with Ars Technica. "iPod Touch Hack," "Apple OS 10.4," "Gamestop Console." Those are keywords that are working to help generate more traffic for Ars Technica.
So wouldn't you like to know your own keywords? And get them to work for you? Then sign up for HitTail today, and start working the long tail.
The Future of Marketing, Ushered in by Connors Communications
For years, Connors Communications has been recognized as leaders in the field of public relations. Whenever a client required the public to make a major shift in conventional thinking, Connors was there.
Before the Worldwide Web, when online was first coming onto the scene, and companies like Prodigy had to get the word out (and ironically, had to actually BE a prodigy), Connors was there, helping them become a player beside CompuServe and AOL.
When established brands like Disney and National Geographic had to make their transition to the dot-com world, Connors was there, helping with brand identity issues, like NG's yellow square, and carrying some of the first search engine optimization work ever performed for large businesses.
When the first attempts to seriously monetize search were being made by pioneers, GoTo.com (long before becoming part of Yahoo!), Connors was there, helping to break the church-and-state issues of pay-per-click.
When everyone either never heard of VOIP, or thought it was going to be exclusively a business service, Connors was there, helping Vonage turn it into a consumer brand and a household concept.
When Amazon.com was competing to become one of the first successful online businesses, before anyone thought selling over the Internet was even viable on a large scale, Connors was there-helping to pioneer long tail business before anyone even heard of the concept.
When Priceline.com decided to go with the name-your-own-price model, re-introducing haggling into the American psyche, Connors was there.
In all these things, Connors helped break traditional thinking, introducing unorthodox concepts, which were later to become the norm, and part of the mainstream American thinking. This is our unique capability. This is our specialty.
Today we are using these skills in ways people are still having difficulty understanding. Our decision to create HitTail is part of packaging our new brand of marketing for the world, and to provide an introduction of Connors Communications to the world-a sort of "overture", if you will.
So while today, we no longer consider ourselves a "public relations company" as such, I'm always arguing that it's just a matter of semantics. Whereas breaking our story into mainstream media got tons of leverage in the past, today, it's a matter of breaking our story into Google and Yahoo! search results in such an effective fashion, that your website keeps corralling your target audience back into your Web presence over and over, to the point that over time, there is no escape but to become familiar with you.
This is a type of branding that's going on today, which most people don't even recognize as branding. It's how new websites and companies "emerge" onto the mainstream without a speck of advertising. It's using all the principles of public relations that have proven so effective over the ages, and to bring them to bear in a much more efficient and automated fashion. It's giving large companies back the advantage that is so easily being taken away from them by smaller, nimbler companies who have embraced the new landscape.
Yet still, it is about achieving balance, so small large companies cannot respond with such force as to shut the small companies out again. This is why Connors is offering services on the extreme high-end, circa $25K/mo., and on the extreme low-end, circa $100/year. And perhaps more than anyone else, this extreme "bracketing" of products between the two extremes, defines what Connors is becoming-the ability to innovate Web 2.0 products on-demand for our own use, and the savvy to navigate the politics of large media companies to have search engine optimization projects successfully carried out, against all odds.
One of the first sites to catch onto how important our SEO flowchart is, is Indonesian. I'm certainly glad I'm reaching Indonesia, but I am somewhat disappointed that no English-speaking websites have picked up on this yet. I think this chart will trigger off the HitTail marketing revolution because of how it brings down lofty longtail concepts to a route procedure,
I've been linking to the most-critical diagram from just about every page of the HitTail site, trying to get folks to understand the essence of what HitTailing is. I apparently haven't been doing such a great job, and would be appreciative of any ideas on how me might get the message out more. We're getting an affiliate program together that will be based around high-volume sites, so anyone willing to partake, please contact me. Anyone with low-volume sites who would like to eventually participate, just follow out the procedure on the diagram, and contact us when you've built up your traffic!
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