Long-Tail Search Strategies

For this blog, I will analyze a search budget distribution table for a fictional company (see below).

Question 1: Does the search traffic appear to match the budget?

I would that the budget does match the search traffic. As you can see from the table above the majority of the budget (75%)is allocated to the “Tail Key Phrases,” with most of the visits coming from Search Engine Marketing (SEM). Granted, the percentages between the budget and traffic data are not exact, but the areas that received more money produced more traffic.

Question 2: What recommendations do you have?

One recommendation I have for this company is to find a way to increase the percentage of visitors from Search Engine Optimization (SEO). By increasing the amount of traffic from SEO, particularly under the “Tail Key Phrases,” the company would be able to sustain a high level of growth.

Another recommendation I have would be for the company to re-evaluates how it utilizes SEM and SEO for “Head Key Phrases.” Based on the table above, money spent on SEM produced considerably lower numbers than the organic results from SEO. If a company is spending money on SEM, than the results should be greater than those provided by SEO. The company is not maximizing their results obtained from Pay-per-click ads when it comes to branded keywords.