The Long Tail of Blogging

Posted by Roberta Murphy on Jun 30, 2008

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My first real effort at blogging occurred almost two years ago on ActiveRain—and I was immediately hooked.

I loved the real estate blogging community with its running stream of commentary, sense of humor and predictable disagreements. We were all gifted with the opportunity to openly develop our voices and emerging blogging skills—and shared immense chunks and tidbits of knowledge.

We also discovered pretty quickly that Google and other search engines were following us closely—and sometimes loosely.

We learned about the power of the long tail, or how obscure information in the content of blogs and websites gets stored on the search engines—with some potentially interesting results. Let’s say someone searches the term “rimless shower doors” on Google.

In late 2006, there were Page One results for a listing (with rimless shower doors) we had described on our website in 2004. Today, a blog article I wrote in May 2007, Drag a Long Tail and See What You Catch (describing the rimless shower door finding), now sits on Google Page One results for that term.

I never intended to become a rimless shower door expert, but Google doesn’t know that. Nor, I doubt, did HomeGain blogger and Phoenix Realtor Jay Thompson ever intend for his blog article lamenting the demise of Vanilla Pepsi to become a Google Page One hit for Vanilla Pepsi. But it did, and Jay also acquired a real estate buyer because of that blog (likely another fan of Vanilla Pepsi).

So much effort is spent by bloggers trying to land GPO (Google Page One) results—and I am no exception. We learn to cleverly plant terms such as San Diego real estate into other high ranking blogs to help fatten results at the wider start of the search tail—because that’s the juiciest part.

We would quickly lose audiences if all we talked about was yada-yada real estate and real estate in yada-yada and yada-yada Realtor.

How many ways can you describe boring?

For our blog readers, the best juice can lie in the long tail where we provide neighborhood market reports and absorption rates, staging tips, descriptions of unusual listings, cola preferences—or the advantages of rimless shower doors.

Blog and write about those things that interest you (hopefully real estate is one of them), and readers who share those interests will find you.

That also helps insure that you and your clients will have more in common—and that you are more than just another yada-yada Realtor in their view.

Comments

Roberta
Go to google and type in “the long tail of blogging” and already this blog post is on the front page, position five for those terms!

Posted on Jun 30, 2008 by Louis Cammarosano

Thanks for sharing. Have found blogging about neighborhoods to be highly effective on various levels. Funny thing is I get some calls assuming I must be the management company or association for some of the condo complexes I blog about. Those are always interesting calls.

Posted on Jul 01, 2008 by Ken in Elgin, IL

Roberta
Your blog post above not only is on the front page of google for the short tail terms “long tail blogging” But occupies position THREE in its second day of publication!

Posted on Jul 01, 2008 by Louis Cammarosano

Hi

It is a great post and I think it is also great views also.

Posted on Jul 01, 2008 by Sofia apartment

Ken:

They call you because you are the perceived authority on the neighborhoods about which you write.

Posted on Jul 01, 2008 by Roberta Murphy

Louis:

This is the fun side effect of blogging.
“Long Tail of Blogging” is very cool, but did you know HomeGain is now in Google’s coveted #4 position for “rimless shower doors?”

LOL!

Posted on Jul 02, 2008 by Roberta Murphy

it’s always funny what long tail terms people search for. however, you can get a peek at what terms they’re using and capture them along the way…

head over to http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com and do a search for your general term and look low on the list for long tail search terms you can scoop up and own.

Posted on Jul 03, 2008 by Mark Eckenrode

Roberta,
Excellent description of the long tail with a vivid example to help explain what may seem obscure to some.

Sometimes I LOL from some of the long tails.

Posted on Jul 06, 2008 by Gena Riede

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