It's 2007, so it's out with the OLD and in with the NEW.

What's old, in terms of SEO? Obsessively watching indexation numbers and rankings on "trophy" keywords (like the one you know the CEO always checks first thing in the morning). Worrying yourself sick over "duplicate content penalties". Relying on Sitemaps XML files to fix your indexation problems (news flash: your rankings will still suck!). Exchanging links.

What's "in" in SEO for 2007? Truly understanding and leveraging the power of Long Tail dynamics. Becoming a trusted contributor within Wikipedia, Digg, StumbleUpon, Netscape, Reddit. Building your network in MySpace, Flickr, LinkedIn, YouTube, Bebo, MyBlogRoll, and the blogosphere in general and then reaping the rewards of "network effects." Building custom search engines and rallying your community to help improve it. Link baiting.

So how the heck do you measure the impact of this sort of stuff?

These new paradigms call for some new KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). Addressing Long Tail SEO specifically, we at Netconcepts came up with the following KPIs (props to my colleague Brian Klais for coming up with a lot of this!):

1. Brand-to-Nonbrand Mix
2. Unique Pages
3. Pages Yielding Traffic
4. Keywords per Page Yield
5. Visitor per Keyword Yield
6. Index-to-Crawl Ratios
7. Engine Yield

For definitions and explanations of these seven new metrics, have a read of Brian's article Beneath the Surface of Search, hot off the presses at Multichannel Merchant.

My company, Netconcepts, is hosting a webinar on the topic of our recently-released white paper "Chasing the Long Tail of Natural Search". This presentation will take place on September 7 at 11.00am Central, and is open to all.

If you want to...

1. Discover how large your long tail sales opportunity really is — and how much you may be missing
2. Learn how multichannel merchants are leveraging their brands into unbranded "long tail" keyword markets
3. Uncover the secrets of "Page Yield Theory" and its power to exponentially grow your ecommerce sales

then...

Sign up now!

Yesterday my company Netconcepts released a research report / white paper titled "Chasing The Long Tail of Natural Search." The analysis was based on data garnered from 1.2 million unbranded natural search visits to 5,000,000 pages in January 2006 measured across 25 branded online merchants.

According to our research, here's what the "average" well-branded merchant's Long Tail profile looked like:

• Roughly 73,000 unique, indexed pages. Yet only 14% of those pages yield search traffic. These "yielding pages" each generate search traffic at a rate of 4.6 unbranded keyword visitors per month.
• 189,000 brand searches conducted per month. 80% of search traffic comes from brand keywords and only 20% from non-brand terms.
• Total market potential for unbranded keyword traffic exceeds 7,000,000 searches per month, roughly 100 searches for every unique page, and 38 times greater than total brand searches.

"Brand searches are a small minority of searches conducted every day. Yet most E-tailers rely on them for their natural search traffic. Imagine taking to your next management meeting, a concrete prediction of the value of search traffic available from non-brand searches. Until now, it has been difficult to find the numbers to justify investment in natural search optimization or quantify a site's potential search traffic."

We've come up with a concept we call "Page Yield Theory", a method for estimating the potential value of the unbranded natural search tail. We believe it's possible to make a robust and scalable prediction of long tail potential. We've even devised the scientific equation to calculate it:

[2.4 KPP x 1.9 HPK] / 4.7% CTR = 100

It's solid research; months of hard work and deep thought went into the analysis. I think it's a must-read for any online retailer. Download the report now »