So I am thoroughly convinced that longtail search terms, that is, incidental search terms that are related to your subject, though not necessarily the primary focus of your SEO efforts, are delicious! Not too long ago I started a site focused on a broad subject. While I am far from ranking on that subject as a search term (not even in the top 200 yet), I find it endlessly fascinating that I AM ranking for lots of incidental longtail terms.
Moral of the story? When first setting out to make your millions from the interwebs, pick a web property that has a big opportunity for longtail traffic, and optimize each page of your site with this factor in mind. If your main target has tremendous volume, chances are high that the random longtails within that subject also have decent traffic that is far easier to obtain.
If nothing else, the early trickle of longtail traffic will keep your fire burning as you continue to optimize your site for more competitive keywords.
June 10th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
[...] grown rather accustomed to the small trickle of traffic I was pulling in from the search engines on longtail terms. Initially I chalked up the sudden fall in traffic to the Google Sandbox, although this [...]