Google Confirms Algorithm Changes To Long Tail Keywords

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I was reading a quick article this morning from Search Engine Land. Vanessa Fox one of the reporters confirmed with Matt Cutts who was presenting at the conference that Google made between 350 and 550 changes to its organic search algorithms in 2009.


The biggest change according to Google is in the long tail keywords.

They are now looking for higher quality pages for the "long tails" as these types of keywords in aggregate brings in a significant amount of traffic for google.


Later year i have been noticing this trend when promoting amazon products and using the product names as the long tail keywords


So the bottom line is this. Google is looking for more "quality signals" on the long tail pages.

And what that means is that the keywords and content need to be somewhat relevant.


More unique content is required for the long tail keywords. Just using the manufactures descriptions for products which everyone else is using is not good enough for driving traffic. Google may not send you the traffic as you may not have the right quality signals

I have been advocating this for a long time.

Just using automated software to build amazon reviews sites is not going to work anymore. Google sees this as bridge pages. You are wasting your time and money

Sorry just my opinion if you are using these tools and relying on SEO to build an amazon empire. However if you use these tools only you can get paid traffic from non google sources and make a ton of money.


Google did suggest that none of these changes affect the indexing or caching of the actual long tail pages itself.


So based on all these changes and some of the testing i have been doing it can all be summed up in two steps

1. More unique relevant content is required for long tail keywords
2. More high quality links are required.


I have been using this strategy for a while on using hub pages to promote amazon products and it seems to be working really well.


Anyway if you use long tail keywords i strongly recommend you read the article as it provides some good perspectives on how to focus your marketing


If you have any questions on long tails as it relates to promoting amazon products let me know and i would be happy to answer them for you
#main internet marketing discussion forum #algorithm #confirms #google #keywords #long #tail
  • Excellent observations here. And you are correct. This is the kind of subtle change that Google will do first and announce later. It pays to be a few steps ahead of the curve and this is the kind of advice that you need to listen to.
  • High Quality Content will always be key,
    especially based around the right
    long tailed keywords, of course,

    Kingsley
    • [1] reply
    • hello Neil V nice post you have their friend, guest was right on its track having those long tail keywords on their systems,making them one of the best competitor on this industry.
  • Again, its really not a change but a reiteration that good content is what will bring traffic. Prior to this Google change good content supporting a long tail keyword phrase still brought traffic. Maybe not as much as it might be bringing now but still.

    A link to the article would be nice.
  • Google has their faults, but they do tell you what they want right in their main purpose statement: to provide users with the most relevant, highest quality results. That's how they maintain their edge over the other search engines. It only stands to reason - longtail or not - that you need to provide your own visitors a quality experience on your web pages. If you don't, your page's ranking shelf life will be shorter now.

    I say GREAT!

    John
  • Thanks for the comments so far.

    I found this post on yahoo buzz this morning so if can easily find the article reference there.

    Something else i failed to mention early on is that even if you have an authority site with high rankings, if your long tail keywords pages are not quality then some other site may outrank you for that keyword. So just having duplicate content on a high pr site is not enough

    It means the playing field is open to everyone who is willing to do the right work


    Also, the article gives a tip about amazon. Amazon has their page structured the right way and gets high rankings

    So to take advantage of whats working now, all you have to do is model your long tail keyword pages and if you design pages around amazon site structure and build quality links, you could get good traffic and sales in the short term
  • Is anyone else here absolutely horrified that we have to say this out loud?
    • [1] reply
    • It also seems like they are focusing on LSI more. The few articles I have that are ranked in page 1 of google that I LSI'ed on purpose have gone from ranking 7-9 to 1-3.
      • [1] reply
  • I've definitely noticed a shift in my traffic. The really long tail stuff I was getting before isn't happening anymore. But the semi-long tail traffic that I had started to focus on is holding steady.
  • This is bad news for all amazon store owners. I have a few eg. running on associate-o-matic. You can certainly not magically create 100.000s of unique descriptions since those stores are all being fed what comes from amazon....
  • hmm.. between nexus arguments, new w9/1099 rules, ftc revamps, google changes (quality scores, ppc changes, long tail algo revamps)... seems that things keep getting rougher and rougher for the Affiliate Marketer...

    must be a conspiracy
  • This will always be a never ending journey with the big G.
  • i just wanted to throw my comments in here so far based on some testing.

    It seems that i comes down to three things to get traffic.


    Quality unique traffic - There is nothing new here
    Good links - non spammy ones seem to be better

    and i agree with CDarlock ... some level of LSI but nothing complicated at all so that the long tail page seems relevant


    I have been using and testing the google wonder wheel as an LSI tool. I must admit that within 10 minutes i can get all the LSI keywords and article keywords to use in the long tail page which are all relevant

    This tool when used correctly totally give all internet marketers an advantage when it comes to having LSI pages without any technical skills and knowledge.

    It has been really helping my long tail sites get rankings quickly
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • The long tail has always been where it's at. I was told by some-guru-who-shall-remain-nameless that the long tail was ineffective in SEO and PPC. Now I'm outranking him in each of his niche areas less then six months later. Long Live The Long Tail !!!!
  • natural progression... Google had lots of blank result pages to fill so it was ok to auto fill pages.

    Now there is more long tail content online and Google can afford to step in and up the quality content.

    Of course this will continue in the future also. If you have quality content then you should be good for the long term.
  • Love long-tails, they tend to rank great (provided you have decent content) and I have yet to change my link building strategy on them and still see top rankings for them.
  • Awesome news for those who provide lazer targeted quality and unique content! Wohoo.
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