Prompted by this article (caution adult content)

Shift In Google Algo - Free Porn

http://blog.v7n.com/2006/11/23/shift...lgo-free-porn/

I spent an hour or so this morning, reviewing / reading about an optimization technique that I have been applying to my customers' sites with much success.

Looking at your 1) raw server logs, 2) google analytics, 3) AwStats and/or hittail.com statistics will show that many of your visitors come to your site through fairly complex keyphrase searches.

A relevant digitalpoint thread I have been following

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=179147

and Revenue Girl's really interesting post

http://www.revenuegirl.com/long-tail...how-to-get-it/

both speak to the topic.

Finally, the article that originally got me experimenting with the concept six month's back

http://www.seomoz.org/blogdetail.php?ID=1077

Happy Thanksgiving reading.

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good read!

Thanks, doc.

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Benjamin Dona, Broker/Owner
Gulf Coast Associates, Realtors
Metro Mortgage Company
Bonita Springs Real Estate | Florida Home Loans | Naples Real Estate

I can't help but wonder if this is an adult content oriented event or whether it actually applies to all searches.

In terms of using your stats to find long tail keyword phrases, this is something we have been doing for years and is very effective for attracting ULTRA targeted visitors to your pages. A lot of people couldn't be bothered to try to rank #1 for a term that only brings them 100 visitors a year as they have to think up unique content, and an excuse to create a page for a particular term (Agreed it is a lot of work) - but think about it, every single visitor could be a $10,000 commission check, so it's definitly worth it.

Incidentally, since the invention of blogs, this has become much easier - I have taught many members here how to use your stats and blogs to rank highly for semi competitive long tail search terms by blogging them. Perhaps I should write an article for REW blogs on it.

Here is an example - I wanted to rank for Memphis MLS, MAAR MLS and Memphis Area Association of Realtors so I wrote this blog post: http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/...carey/85/show/ and now for both phrases I am on the first page of Google WOOT!

The post has 94 views, some from my blog readers, and some from search engines (Probably half) - so certainly worth doing. Of course my motives are different, I am showing off our work - but for the crafty realtor, they could have created that post to funnel traffic into their site and captured leads from it.

Think about it

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Want to save up to 50% off Real estate webmasters product websites & common upgrades? Check out my latest blog post regarding our end of the year sale.

Individual Realtors located in a specific area need to think about the types of long tail searches they want to target. Always try to keep it relevant to the region you operate in.

There is no value in having good rankings and traffic for very broad, non-regional specific, terms. You end up getting traffic from everywhere and very very few of them are potential clients.

Your article pages, or blogs, are great at pulling long tail searches. Keep the content of these pages regional.

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Localized SEO
Real Estate Directory New directory just added to PR4 site.

I don't think there is a user here that optimizes for nebulous or generic terms - everyone knows to optimize and farm local terms and markets. It's helpful info, but probably a little more elementary of a post than REW requires - not baggin on ya, just helping educate you on the level of understanding of REW members.

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Want to save up to 50% off Real estate webmasters product websites & common upgrades? Check out my latest blog post regarding our end of the year sale.

I did figure as much for their main targeted terms like "mycity real estate for sale".

But just wanted to reinforce it for long tail stuff too.

That targeted term, "mycity real estate blah blah blah", may be deemed as long tail by some because its 4 or 5 words long. But the real long tail stuff is the very obscure word combinations some people use. Each one of these only bring a few hits each, but when done right you can get lots of these weird phrases and variations. This adds up to a lot of traffic.

Your city and community description pages are the most likely candidates for pages that can pull long tail traffic. So for the most part you should already have the localization aspect working for you.

hmmm, maybe i just proved to myself I did not need to bother to mention location.

Do what i do, I mention it in that digital point thread the original poster linked to. Create a spread sheet of all your search sting data and sort them alphabetically. This helps to group them but is not that great on its own. Then assign similar ones a code. Now sort by that code field. You'll begin to see some interesting patterns and certain phrases to try to target better.

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Localized SEO
Real Estate Directory New directory just added to PR4 site.