A Long Tail Lesson: Why Does Every Webmaster Insist on Ranking #1 for "Widget"? Why Are They Dead Wrong?
by
, 05-27-2008 at 11:54 PM (5251 Views)
[FONT=Arial]Most likely, [B][COLOR=Blue]YOU[/COLOR][/B], like many of us at one time or another, [B]are guilty[/B] of this:
You build a forum about cars, and you want to rank #1 for the term "cars", right? Or a forum about computers, and you want to be #1 for "PC", sound familiar?
There was a time (over 10 years ago now) when you would have a better shot at competing for top terms on the Internet. Search engines were much easier to manipulate, and the content explosion was just beginning.
[B]That time is over.[/B] Search engine algorithms are getting tighter, and it would require a top blackhat SEO expert and a *WHOLE LOT* of resources to even get close to the top of the results for the Web's top search terms. Nowadays, hundreds of thousands of webmasters have realized that [B][COLOR=Blue]a new business model[/COLOR][/B] was emerging, and jumped into the [B]forum industry[/B].
They now start and manage communities that continue [B]self-perpetuating[/B], that is, building themselves up with new activity and content like armies of rapidly reproducing ants... albeit really smart ants with computers and Internet connections. We refer to this as[B] user generated content[/B].
However, given what we now know about [B]the long tail[/B], would you be surprised to know that most forum admins are still taking a 10 year old approach and targeting traffic for their top, highly competitive terms?
In fact, let's not even call them [B]highly competitive terms [/B]anymore. Let's call them [COLOR=Blue][B]dead terms [/B][/COLOR]!
That is, they might as well be dead to you, disowned from your interest. Why? Because if you are a mere mortal on the Internet, you are not going to get even near page #1 of the SERPs for the Web's most highly searched, highly sought after, and most lucrative terms! Forget them. They're [B]dead terms[/B].
Correct formula? [COLOR=Blue][B]Focus on the search long tail[/B][/COLOR], and choose terms to target in your link building campaigns in which you have more reasonable expectations of moderate success.
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