A phrase like “Book about picking glasses” is a long-tail phrase. Two points:

TO SETH — I just assumed that a long-tail phrase coming from a popular blog like yours would get an immediate reaction from Google. I was pleasantly surprised to be correct. Regarding your insight about glasses and fonts, I think your comment from a couple posts back about using Wikipedia … “I want them to be great at synthesizing ideas, the faster and more insightfully, the better.” … is directly relevant here! SEE! you do that without even thinking about it! Thanks for the response.

TO BRIAN — I LOVE the “lather, rinse, repeat” comment. So true! HOWEVER, with long tail phrases, the need to repeat over and over and the need to be as popular as Seth becomes less important. The farther out on the tail you go the less you need to be worried about these issues. Getting many hundreds of thousands, or millions of long tail #1 listings is actually quite easy. Because of this dynamic I’ve secured the domain name “YouDontNeedSEO.com” I haven’t done anything with it yet however … so many ideas, so little time. Sigh.

I do need to point out that Seth Godin has a very popular blog. He’s consistently in the top 25 of all blogs on the internet. (Here’s his Technorati stats: http://technorati.com/blogs/sethgodin.typepad.com)

In order to have that #1 ranking on Google, it’s important that you write about your niche over and over again. Lather, rinse, repeat.

“Book about picking glasses” WAS inadvertently scooped by Seth Godin, but it was because he has become the expert on something else and taken advantage of his effective SEO strategy.

I actually didn’t intend to get to the font thing… it only occurred to me as I was thinking through all the glasses advice I got.

What a weird world this web is…