Article by Jenny Pilley
What affect has the ‘Mayday’ change to Google’s Algorithm had to your Longtail SEO campaign?
For the uninitiated, and I am sure there are many, I will just explain what I mean by ‘Mayday’. At the end of April / beginning of May Google made a ‘slight’ change to it’s algorithm. This change mainly affects Longtail searches.
Why is this important?
Longtail SEO is all about conversion. Your potential customers won’t all type in exactly the same query into Google because they are individuals and have their own wants and needs to be addressed. They will more than likely type in a collection of words that answer this particular concern of theirs than your carefully considered and chosen keyword. (Sorry, guys this is just the way it is) Anyway, to get to the point here, Longtail is where it’s at – it can be difficult to achieve as well as tough to measure, but the rewards are oh-so-sweet.
Longtail will be where the bulk of your sales and qualified traffic is coming from. You can determine this by looking at your analytics, I imagine your analytics show that you get a lot of visits from your main keyword, and then even more visits from a whole host of random searches that people have typed into Google. You will probably find through setting up goals, funnels and ecommerce analytics that you actually get more sales from these leads than your main keyword. (though don’t cancel your main keyword – that’s highly useful too!)
How do I achieve Longtail SEO?
Hmmm… If you’re lazy, give up now.
Longtail SEO is a long term solution. It takes time. It takes a lot of maintenance. It takes patience. Above all it takes hard work.
Personally, I fully endorse the ideas behind longtail SEO, by targeting the longtail you are basically following all the basic rules to achieve a useful and worthwhile website. In my opinion, if you can’t provide something of use to others, then you should get out of the game and go play something else! The internet is a great resource for information. You are supposed to be an expert in your field (whatever this may be), therefore, share your knowledge.
Paul Arden says something like ‘share all you have and more will come to you’ I paraphrase here because I left the book at home, but this quote is either from ‘It’s not how Good you are, its how good you want to be’ or ‘Whatever you think, think the opposite’. Basically – if you want to receive, you have to give.
Get back on track! – what’s this got to do with Mayday
Well, Mayday is an algorithmic change that affects the longtail searches. It is not a manual change and certainly isn’t intended to be temporary.If your site has been affected by this change what should you do?
Well, simply put, yo need to invest your time and efforts into building your site up with great content that is useful and informative for your target users. Become an authority in your field.
This seems such a simple thing to do, but its not. As stated above, the lazy need not apply, longtail is hard work! It requires dedication, and the kind of forward thinking and strategy that many people don’t have much time for. I think this is one of the reasons that makes it so valuable, those that can be bothered with it will reap rewards that others can only dream of.
About the Author
Written by Jenny Pilley, Content Writer for Creare; specialists in SEO and Web Design.
