Does the long tail/geo description/spamming the SE/DD method work

[earlpearl]

Darn long title

Today's a good test for my business to see how the long tail/"spamming the SE's" with expansive relevant keyword phrases and geo terms works/DD method with lots of town names in the content works/ for a local business/service.

We had a killer day off of Email contacts into our business off our web site for our business. We had about 22 contacts today. Last year's average was about 8/day.

We had a killer day for the most effective search terms--the long tail search terms that include a relevant geo term and relevant business terms. We had 75 of those terms versus an estimated average of about 30/day last year. We had about 160 search visits to the site so that percentage is high--almost 50% of searches versus typically about 30-33%. We had pretty high overall traffic for us--strong # of visits/above average.

Typically, over time--whenever we get an overall spike in traffic we have very strong sales. Like many small local businesses/a large part of the sales come delayed after the web visits.

So it will be interesting to see if the sales follow this spike in most highly relevant traffic.

Dave

[dazzlindonna]

Good luck, Dave!

[pittbug]

Yes it does work because:

1) there's not a lot of competition for these types of phrases
2) it's highly targeted traffic which usually converts much better

[mblumenthal]

I have long been a believer in these types of search phrases as almost all of my clients work in local/regional markets and or very tertiary niches. Google Maps or Yahoo Local really limit a business to one city or town (and not necessarily the market dominant town) unless they have multiple storefront locations (which in the long run will drive Local PPC).

What resource (ie Overture) did you use to pick these phrases? and what was your minimum criteria in terms of previous searches to build a page? And did you find a direct correlation between the highest searches in Overture (or whereever your research was done) and searches that were actually responded to? Would you provide an example of the geotargeted phrases you used?

Why do you refer to it as spam? If the locations and the service are truly served than it really isn't spam.

Mike

Hate to be a dummy but what does DD stand for?

[kichus]

DD Method"

AFAIK Refer these:
http://www.seo-scoop.com/2006/02/20/local-seo-the-dd-method/
http://forums.seochat.com/keywords-30/target-the-secondary-keywords-immediately-36535.html
Read these...

Hate to be a dummy but what does DD stand for?

FYI
DD =

[earlpearl]

Pittbug:

It works on the web....but now we'll see if the process works with a sales spike. Researchers say that is the case w/local businesses....and I'll let you know if the spike occurs. I hope so. I need the money. I lost $10 to TG in the fantasy football competition!!!!! LOL

You are right on both accounts. Local businesses have less competition. Its not like 150 different low cost loan sites on the web. Of interest I went through the AOL data looking at my phrases and other types of similar localized searches. Visitors would zip through and hit a slew of logical alternatives. Maybe they contact all of them. Maybe they quickly review and drop the spammy or non relevant sites. But there is dramatically less competition.

On point 2, Pittbug my experience is right on target again. Over several years of review these targeted long tail phrases combining a geo term and business service are the ones that convert at the highest rate.

Mike: I think you have a great blog. As you note, and in my experience G maps and Y local provide very little geographical coverage. Additionally visitors don't use that type of advanced search very much (research suggests about 1% or less of SE traffic).

We called a little SE trick the DD method (stands for DazzlingDonna) because she blogged about it at seo-scoop. I've got a regional business/site and the major regional state names are Virginia/DC/Maryland (and VA, MD). But in the content I add a lot of town, county, regional names on top of that. The regional phrases include a fair number of searches for these smaller geographies. They add a significant amount of logical traffic. I haven't spammed the names but in the aspect of writing we can give examples of these services in the variety of towns.

Jake Baillie coined the phrase "spamming the SE's for local" at pubcon Las Vegas and DD reported upon it at seroundtable. It is very powerful for a local business/site. Get a lot of related phrases for the business service and get a lot of appropriate local geo names within the content.

My phrases come from a combination of keyword tools like overture, wordtracker, google adword tools, etc. Customer suggestions and tests came up a w/ a lot of them. I reviewed competitor sites for some of them, experimentation, and understanding the key motivation for buying the service all contributed to the variety of terms.

My experience has shown to use as many keyword tools as possible and look for the phrases that show on all of them. It doesn't necessarily matter whether overture says term A is second best and wordtracker says term A is 7th best. Duplication of the phrase in multiple keyword tools suggests its used across the board.

the jake baillie reference, which i think is the best description of optimizing a site can be found here: http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/006710.html

I'd also add that you focus on link development with anchor text for some of those most critical geo/business terms. That is very critical. In my case I get #1 rankings in all the engines except for one darned phrase where one of the competitor has a url that is a combo of the state they are located in and the #1 industry phrase; ie the url is something like www . newyorkduilawyer . com.

[mblumenthal]

Pittbug:

My phrases come from a combination of keyword tools like overture, wordtracker, google adword tools, etc. Customer suggestions and tests came up a w/ a lot of them. I reviewed competitor sites for some of them, experimentation, and understanding the key motivation for buying the service all contributed to the variety of terms.

My experience has shown to use as many keyword tools as possible and look for the phrases that show on all of them. It doesn't necessarily matter whether overture says term A is second best and wordtracker says term A is 7th best. Duplication of the phrase in multiple keyword tools suggests its used across the board.

My question here revolves around the idea of creating SEO operatioal efficiencies. Knowing can be more or less complete. The idea would be to develop a quick technique that is mostly accurate enough so that the service can be delivered cost effectively and still be highly successful.

Kinda of like the 5 question physch survey that determines whether a teen is likely to do themselves harm...it isn't the complete answer but it gives some powerful clues...

So I was asking if you could model the research along those lines successfully.

Mike

[earlpearl]

Mike:

I'd defer to others on your question. My best experience is that the longtail keyword phrases that show in all the tools are the best ones, and to the extent they are rated higher in the engines than lower that also implies they are better.

The keyword tools are just that, tools, and based on samples of searches so I wouldn't say they are 100% accurate across the board.

What do others think?

[earlpearl]

As a monthly update. We didn't have the killer financial/sales month I was hoping for. Not bad...but not a killer.

More traffic than ever before. That has occurred each January over the last 3 yrs. Typically traffic is highest around May-July.

Had about 3800 SE queries. The long tail business/term geo phrases were about 30%.

I'm scrutinizing this effect. I'm checking totals off the DD method. Referencing town names and regional/local phrase names with the business terms. This has turned up additional traffic off of our main geo phrases which are regional for 2 states and one city.

One dramatic impact off the traffic.

I saw this based on a drop in traffic for a single geo phrase. While our site focues on 1 city and 2 states with anchor text bls for those geo terms w/business terms we also reference 1 city to the north and 1 to the south.

Without strongly optimizing for those 2 cities we would get pretty good traffic for long tail geo phrases for those 2 cities and the various business terms. That is because local phrases don't have lots of competition and frankly there aren't lots of direct competitors.

But...in one of the cities the google map effect works for a search for the business term and the city name. Our serps are consistent for various phrases but I can only assume that the map effect sucked up lots and lots of visitor traffic to that one competitor. Extremely striking.

Dave

[mvandemar]

Heh, just took a look. I had 2304 different keyphrases bring people to my site this month. Of those, only 4 were searched on more than 15 times, with 1864 terms searched on exactly 1 time. Now That's what I call long tail.

-Michael