Bloggers interested in building search traffic should check out New York based HitTail, a deceptively simple tool that makes suggestions for words to use in blog post titles or topics to write about based on the search terms that are already bringing people to your site. It’s based on the theory of the Long Tail, in this case the idea that the most high profile sources of traffic to your site actually make up less than the total sum of all the traffic from small sources combined. What could be more fun than an easy way to look at the long tail of your blog’s search traffic? I don’t know what the effects or user experience of long term use of this service will be, but it’s certainly worth a look at. In the end, writing quality content, providing unique value and participating in the conversations going on in the blogosphere are probably the most important ways to build traffic. Search is important too, though.
HitTail is essentially log file mining made easy with an algorithm to determine what’s most valuable in the long tail of your search driven traffic. Search queries are considered valuable based on four factors – the number of words in the search, how many pages deep into search results the site visitor dug to find your site and two factors the company won’t disclose.
HitTail is a free service spun off of high profile New York PR firm Connors Communication. (Disclosure: HitTail is a sponsor of our upcoming TechCrunch party in New York.) The HitTail team hopes to offer premium features and service for high volume sites after an initial beta period.
The interface for managing your suggestions is very nice and the company is making available as of today a helpful tool for tracking how your site’s long tail of search has grown over time. Called “Your HitTail,” it’s an Ajax graph that shows what percentage of your search traffic comes from the top 10 search terms, how much comes from the long tail of search terms and what total number of search terms have brought people to your site. Repeat traffic with the same term from the same visitor is only counted once. The idea then is that over several months, you should see total search traffic growing and traffic from terms outside your Top 10 terms growing because you’ve used the suggestions HitTail offers.
The service’s algorithm is still being refined in response to beta use, but I like the basic idea. Will users by “slaves to search” when deciding what to write or how to write about it? Some may, but others may take the suggestions as nothing more than suggestions. HitTail creator Mike Levin says that when someone discovers your site with a multiword query, several pages deep into search results – that’s a meaningful event that you should take seriously. That makes sense to me, especially for sites just beginning to establish themselves.
Levin says the tool will be of no use to splogs because it really needs to be in use for more than a month until tangible results appear – most splogs don’t live that long. The tool also works best for terms off the beaten path, Levin says. For highly competitive terms, more extensive search engine optimization is needed to improve search results – but for noncompetitive terms simply putting the term in your blog post title goes a long way.
Levin says HitTail helps writers focus on what’s almost working well for them already in order to let those terms and topics work even better. I think it’s smart and expect that many bloggers will enjoy giving the service’s suggestions at least a little consideration.
long tail? i don’t think i’ve even got a tail, lately …
Concept is good. Been using the service for a few months now. I believe it has great potential, however, the interface is somewhat clumbersome and takes a little time for a slow poke like me to “get it”, but again overall the “concept” has value and merit. I’ll stick it out for the long term and see where it takes me.
I wonder if it will produce any results related to search engine optimization. For instance, could one assume that the long tail words are not optimzed as well as the mainstream ones?
I suppose it is a sort of catch 22, in that the “words” are by definition not SEO “words”.. Make sense? they are the long tail…. But as the words gain more popularity through, let’s say HitTail, then they by virtue become SEO popular words.. Wew.. confusing? But really SEO today is all about the “Links” as we all know, Meta Key words and really keywords in general do not promise high ranking anymore.. It is ALL about the number of “quality” inbound links.. So says Google.
Oh and sensible content. So Content + Quality inbound links equals Web 2.0 success.
HitTail is an awesome tool.
Yes, it can be improved upon, but so can a lot of things.
DailyBlogTips,
Your assumption is correct.
In most cases, the long tail keywords are very easy to
dominate because they aren’t searched for very much
or don’t show up at all in normal keyword research.
Therefore, most other websites choose not to focus on
them at all.
Using basic SEO tactics and a few anhor text backlinks
are mostly all you’ll need to dominate those keywords.
VideoKarma,
I suggest you look into LSI – latent semantic indexing.
Google basically purchased Applied Semantics for its
work and research into LSI and its becoming a bigger
and bigger part of their algorithm.
Web 2.0 success is more about optimizing the user
experience.
Google’s goal is to provide their users with the
information they’re looking for and they’ll be glad
to put your site at the top of the search engines
if you do the same.
Jason Dolman
well, I’ll give it a go and report back……………..
Jason
I did a check of Wikipedia onLSI, and perhaps you can explain as I have some idea what they are saying. Are you saying that keywords do have more importance than recently thought? I still believe that the key to the Web 2.0 world is (1) Quality content (2) Quality Inbound Links, and (3) effective social networkig function. Any clarity you can offer would be appreciated.
Cheers,
Mike
Sounds like a pretty sweet tool, though I don’t think I really have the time to check it regularly. So little time already. It would have to integrate with my blogging software, so it was just a tab away. Right now I use Community Server from Telligent.
Mike,
No problem buddy.
I’ll use an example because that should help to best explain what LSI is and how it works.
In human language, we use lots of synonyms to explain something, but in the end they all mean the same thing.
For example, I could call a dog the following and you’d still know what I was talking about:
canine
puppy
man’s best friend
doggie
Those keywords above are semantically relevant to the first keyword (dog).
So, when it comes to SEO, you should focus on using relevant and semantic keywords to fill out your articles and blog posts instead of keyword stuffing or trying to hit some magically keyword density.
Doing this will make your site bullet proof when is comes to algorithm changes because you won’t be relying on a formula that could be obsolete in a few months.
Obviously, I could go on and on about this topic because it’s just so vast but that should provide a basic understanding.
I’m an Internet marketer and I’m in the process of putting the final touches on an ebook that covers the subject of LSI, long tail keywords, and the generation of back links by leveraging web 2.0 and social media.
Since it’s not completed yet, I won’t leave you hanging.
If you want to get more information about these topics, I’d suggest the following:
The Master Plan by Charles Heflin
http://www.seo2...tmp-launch.html
* Covers LSI and how to use it to create theme silos for maximum SEO
ThemeZoom by Russell Wright
http://www.themezoom.com
* Subscription keyword research service that assists in the creation of LSI and long tail keyword lists
VEO Report by Colin McDougall
http://www.veoreport.com
* Provides an outline of how to create websites with the visitor in mind that Google will love (taken from talks with Google SEO Guy Matt Cutts)
I haven’t used ThemeZoom yet, but the others are very solid and should help you greatly.
As far as Web 2.0 goes, I agree with you expect I look at the links as one-way links.
When a Web 2.0 or social media-based site does it’s job correctly and provides an engaging experience that allows people to participate in the conversation and interact with each other, it’ll get lots of quality, one-way inbound links from other sites talking about it.
It’s not the classic game of exchanging links, but instead focusing on being something that people want to talk about much in the same way that HitTail motivated Marshall to talk about it and provide a one-way link.
I hope that helps clear things up a little.
If you have any other questions or would like to talk to me on a one-on-one basis, feel free to send an email to jason [at] longtailtrafficsecrets.com
Jason Dolman
Jason
Wow, very concise, Thanks… Yes, that does help.. I will look into all you have served up here.. I, as you, enjoy learning more on the Optimization subject.. it really speaks to a bigger story, and that is, what really makes the net “tick” and since the net is perhaps the most important development since the Industrial revolution it is worth the time investment.
These are exciting times for anyone who chooses to become involved and “good” at all things “net” – you have certainly done your home work and I wish you great success.
I’ll aviod eating up anymore of TechCrunch’s bandwith, and drop you a line at your direct email sometime.. Thanks again, Best, Mike
Sounds a lot like the Newsforce Press Release Optimization service (also in beta). Except HitTail sounds like it is for blogs.
http://www.newsforce.com
For reference here is a review on another site:
http://www.topr...mization-tools/
Thanks for the coverage. HitTail is a writing suggestion tool, which appears to be very different in that the above-mentioned tool, an automated press release optimization system. HitTail simply suggests new writing topics for your existing blog or website knowing it will boost your natural search performance. The whole “optimization discussion” is therefore deferred simply by choosing a blog system that uses best practices for search–for example, Blogger, TypePad or WordPress (the non-hosted version), and feeding it topics that are uniquely supercharged for your site.
HitTail is a such an awesome tool. I still have yet to take advantage of it’s full potential.
Using Hittail now and besides finding what to right about in the my blog, ans also additional words that I can optimize for, I have also been using to find keywords that I can purchase on Google, MSN and Adwords for the minimum cost per click. I have no competition and getting visitors looking for my product for 5 to 10 cents per click.
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Hittail ia amazing! Great article, and very insightful comments!
Thanks!
Jonathan