HitTail Update

Since a less-than-sharp editor moved the thread, I thought I’d shoot this to a few people because it’s a fantastic application of the HitTail tool I have discovered.

http://forums.seochat.com/seo-tools-75/one-of-the-best-tools-by-far-88809-3.html#post352443


HitTail Update:

As I watch the real time search stats come in I realize many of the critics saying "they show result for terms that are already driving the traffic" I must give this observation.

I see people finding my site using geographical search terms for which I do not target. I spent a day creating a spreadsheet (30k line) for exactly that. I bid at .02-.03 pence each.

Remember that Google awards for content, and that is determined by the CTR for each KW.

So if your getting a higher CTR than your competitor, your going to spend less than your competitors for a higher position.

After just a few days my cpc, average went down .03 ($70,000 US yearly and £140,000 Sterling), my average position is 1.1, conversion overall for all my campaigns went from 21.11% to 24.97%, there by rewarding mu overall campaign a better content score from google, and reducing my overall cpc for all my other campaigns, while boosting their positions.

My cost/conversion dropped .05 ($126,000 US yearly and £252,000 Sterling)

Now maybe you don't have 50k kw, or spend the same amount, but anyway you look at it this is one more feature that has payed off in a big way, and no matter what results you see us in LongTail results, information like this can pay of big.

PS. Note to Editor: Why in the world would you bury a thread that is obviously of interest, in tools? Yes its a tool but if you were going to move it anywhere I would have moved it to Google Adwords. But with the fb I wouldn't have even moved it at all until it died.

Just a statistical notation. I have been running HitTail for a few days on one site (approx. 3000 uniques/day) and have found, using the Pareto principle, that with HitTail showing only the first 350 keywords, that the first 70 keywords are responsible for approximately 90% of all search engine hits realized. This being the case, the average site with many fewer uniques would likely have to wait a very very long time before any of their data would be meaningful or usable from a optimization perspective.

The above being true, I would think that the primary use of the tool would be in the area that both Gary and I are currently using it for, i.e. the identification of keyword phrases for Adwords use. That in itself is good, but does not back the claims of replacing PPC... it will augment PPC nicely but, except for non-SEO types, will not lend itself towards identifying keywords for optimazation within the SERPs.

Yea I'm trying to nail down the developer to ask a few Q about his api and let him know we have some pretty smart and skilled people testing on this end and to see if we can give some input and beta test their beta, I just haven't had the time to reearch beyond some site that lists new programs and lets you suscribe to their release dats.

Let me know if your able to find anything. We'll send them a link to these threads.

I don't think I've used it enough, or maybe I don't have the traffic for accurate results. What I'm seeing the the same things I've been observing by looking at my full search terms list all along.

agreed on using it for other apps like adwords

For one site I have purposely created a forum where each post has unique title tags, extensions, etc. This means i have TONS of KW, which means that the LT is NOT unrecognized traffic for my part. If my objective is organic rankings alone then like I've said, I'm already competiting with these words that have limited traffic. Are they all words wihtout traffic? well what's your lt? 80%? 80% of those LT words don't have traffic, just an uneducated guess.....

Do we all push adwords strategies? no, should we look at some options now with this tool, probably.

I'm starting a Adword campaign but it's not comprehensive yet, the limited use hasn't produced yet. So far this tool complements what a good stats program already does, let's report back in 30 days shall we.....*BREAK*

Ah, that "long tail" diagram that stops at 350 words is for looks only. We have to show the long tail concept visually immediately on log in for people to get the connection to the concept. As much as we're launching it in the SEO-world, it's really intended for the mainstream marketing, and we need tha visual hook to carry them along.

To really see the actionable data, go to the Suggestions tab. That's where the magic occurs. In fact, watch the demo to get the overview http://www.hittail.com/demo

Gary is opening our eyes about how this tool plays into the world of PPC campaign optimization. It wasn't the original goal, but we're happy that it's being used that way.

There is a lot of talk about the "profile" of the sites where HitTail works well and doesn't. The data's old now, but I did this analysis.
http://www.hittail.com/blog/2006/06/does-hittail-save-time.html

I'll have to automate that chart, but at the time, that visually showed the "sweet spot" that we're keyword mining for. It's the selection of words that DO have traffic, but are deemed by our algorithms to be underperforming for you, and ready to shoot up in the results if you did a little targeting.

Anyway, we're just getting this thing rolling, and we're interested in feedback for better or for worse. We are very excited about Gary's discoveries. We think we have something totally new and valuable, and are setting ourselves up to serve it to the world.

Mike - if you don't mind - please removed the links in post and make just a url reference and not a live link.

It is against SEOChat to use live links [self promotion].

There are enough people aroun that know of MyLongTail so not really needed.

It will also brand a warning on your profile.

there is also a third use that is likely far more valuable than these.

But wish to have a few facts in a row first.

I understand about the live links now. Thanks. Still just getting a hang of each forum.

Fathom, let me know what you need to learn. Maybe just putting it on a site is the best way. Also, we're calling it HitTail now.

We've been around the block a few times and totally understand some of the "darker hat" uses for HitTail involving mash-ups. Not sure if that's what you're talking about (based on the Fathom SEO site, I don't think it is), but we're deliberately trying to steer clear of them for now. It's possible, for example, to take the To Do list and automatically generate an editorial calendar of things you WILL be writing about for your blog, so you can "feel the love" before any writing even occurs. And as PR people, editorial calendars make perfect sense to us. But bringing them to the blogging community in a way that "happens to" influence search gave us the heebie jeebies--at least for now.

But I'm definitely interested in what third use you have in mind.

my nick has been around longer... and they're amateurs!

How do you reset the data in Hit tail? With SEs changing all the time I may want to take smaller snap shots (over a month or so) than a continuous accumulating of data.

good question!

..at the moment - add a new account and edit your .js to reflect the new reference.

I've been hit tailing a site for the last week now and have been really interested in the results. Question: If keyword suggestions are for keywords that your site isn't currently scoring high on, how do you save money on PPC when most the long tail words are showing up with a score of 10 because of well optimized SEM (AdWords)? In other words, most of my hits are from SEM and not SEO. Most of the SEM keywords are showing up on the first page of Google in AdWords.

If your AdWords keywords show up with scores of 10 then how do they make it to the suggestions area?

Thanks,

John

OK, two things to answer here. The first is a feature request. I'll add "snapshots" to the feature request list. It's an interesting one, and could have several possible implementations, based on the "granualrity" of the snapshot. We could easily show you your growing tail for example, and let you toggle between engines in the view. Would that be sufficient? (rather cool, I think, even if somewhat un-granular)

The second is the relation to PPC. The person describing to us why this works so well makes the point that he goes beyond the suggestion tab in exporting the list for PPC. He will, for example, use all the keywords that score 10 from under the Keywords tab, and then use his standard practice of removing the non-performers over time directly through AdWords.

The point here is that the Suggestions tab seems to be a decent tool for natural optimization, while the Keyword tool is a good approach to giving a PPC campaign some extra clout. As to WHY this works, we're still figuring that out. We think some cross-validation condition may be occurring when what's performing for you in natural search serendipitously aligns with what's working for you in paid. Therefore, we speculate, that the AdWords magic steps in to reward you for doing so well in that narrow topic.

No promises, but certainly the case is being convincingly made to us that we're onto a tool of equal value to the PPC world.