Longtail Side Effects
April 5th, 2007 by Chief Nut
I’ve been enjoying my morning analysis of my HitTail.com results for a few weeks now. Although the referrer and keyword phrase information has always been available to me via my web site activity logs, I’ve been looking at this information differently these days. It’s now all about what will I be blogging about next … or, what topics will benefit my traffic building activities.
DON’T GET ME WRONG … I’m not suggesting that blogging should be based on anything but value-based, authentic commentary. What I’m suggesting is these reports can give you direction on the topics you choose. Within these lists you’ll find a bottomless well of topics based on your years’ of experience. For example, my Hittail suggestion report shows that I have some opportunity in developing a blog about “best taglines.” Can I come up with a dozen or more ideas that revolve around that phrase? …. YOU BET!
There is, however, a side effect of analyzing your reports this way. It forces you to look deeper into your long tail than you normally would. I noticed that I’ve been getting an inordinately large number of visitors to my post about Bank of America’s new brand strategy. Why is this? Come to find out, B of A has a mortgage program called the “Acorn Program”. Combine “B of A” with “Acorn Creative” and VOILA, you find yourself coming up with a #3 ranking on Google for all of those people looking for that program!
BUT, BUT, BUT, you’re saying to yourself, who cares about that traffic if it’s sooooo untargeted to our services. True. But I retort; What about phrases like “Bank Taglines” and “Bank Branding” and other similar phrases that have also popped up in the reports? The point is, there’s gold in them thar phrases. The more you dig, the more you find.
If you’re reading this and you’re the VP of Marketing for Bank of America (or any other bank), feel free to contact me at 888-825-3300! We’ll be happy to assist you with your new branding efforts. 
