Short Tail vs Long tail.
I say they are 2 different beasts and they need to be looked at differently.
Extreme Examples 1st:
- Short Tail Search: Chevrolet
- Long Tail Search: largest used chevy suburban dealer leather moonroof rear dvd near city, state
Ok, in my world EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED.
The quest for a new car begins with very basic words or phrases. Then, over time, as the shopper begins to zero in on their choice, the TAIL GETS LONGER.
Watch as the "Tail Grows Longer".
- Short Tail Search, grows to Long Tail...
- Chevrolet
- Chevrolet SUV
- Chevrolet SUV reviews
- Chevrolet Suburban
- Chevrolet Suburban dealer
- Chevrolet Suburban dealer near city, state
- largest used chevy suburban dealer leather moonroof rear dvd near city, state
What happens as the "Tail Grows longer" is the shopper's time and attention is pulled away from google as they encounter richer and deeper content. In our biz, the top short tail SEO sites all have local shopping features to keep the shopper from going back to google to grow the search tail.
SO, as the tail grows, what happens?
- Shoppers Time in the market is closer to the buy point (generally speaking)
- Search traffic falls.
- Shopper hasn't found what they want yet
- PPC costs drop
- Shoppers demo's change: web skills are higher (i.e more likely to own a Blackberry, a BMW, etc..)
In the end, It's all about you, your inventory and ROI.
Big Dealer vs Botique Dealer.
Botique Dealer:
IMO, the closer you are to a botique dealer, the more you have to avoid short tail and double down on long(er) tails with landing pages that'll make someone drive 2 hours to buy your car.
Mr Big Dealer:
Your competition is AutoTrader.com, Cars.com, KBB.com, Edmunds, etc... You have the size and scale to ENTERTAIN & EXCITE an
undecided shopper and plant seeds for their frequent return.
I judge our shorttail PPC campaigns not by the number of leads submitted, but by time spent on the site and # of pages viewed and loyalty stats.
Hope this helps...