The Long Tail of Search

(Edit: Were you searching for sight words?: You’re probably looking for a Dolch sight word list or maybe Dolch sight word bingo cards . You can find them at those two links, and yep, they’re free.  Sorry you got directed to this page by accident — the explanation as to why is long and boring, but you can click here if you really care:


Google unfortunately loves to send people looking for these straight to here, because I was talking about people searching for them. Why was I talking about that? Because I run a business which makes software which makes printable bingo cards, and this blog describes how that business works to other small-business owners. One of the key things to understand as a small business owner is how people come to find your website, and a major way they come nowadays is through search engine results, so I shared some of the words people used to find my site. And since you were searching for very similar words, you ended up here instead of at my bingo software website. You probably won’t find it nearly as interesting as those two links I just gave you, but feel free to stick around if you’d like.)


I’ve been sort of religiously checking my organic position on Google for keywords that regularly cost me money (i.e. my best performing CPC ones), and my total lack of position had me convinced that Google was just not loving me. Then I started to notice organic hits on my pages for “bingo card creator”, most of them being of the friends, family, and founder variety. But today I noticed comparitively large hit streams (*cough* 20% of my traffic) coming from organic results on Google/MSN, and they’re all from the looooooooooooooooooooong tail of search requests, things for which there are literally perhaps 3 relevant pages in the entire world.

For your reference, I would expect people to find my page looking for “make bingo card”, “printable bingo card”, “make your own bingo card”, “dolch sight word games”, and things like that. Thats what I pay good money for ($12.50 so far… come on, uISV gods, let me have a sale soon…). Here’s what I got for free:

Google

“bingo creator”x2

“dolch word bingo”x2 (I, inexplicably, had not bid for this combination yet. FIXED.)

“bingo card creator” (friends/family/founder hit, almost certainly)

“first grade sight words” (ahh, I love SEO — I made a page just to catch this query, and catch it did)

“word bingo creator” (hmm? Wow, I didn’t think anyone would look for that)

“how to run bingo”

“3rd grade printable bingo word game” (did I mention my free trial has this?)

“printing dolch words for jk”

“a free sight list you can print out for the third grade” (got it — and I’ve got a free demo, too)

“bingo maker for elementary” (thats me!)

Now, Google loves me at the tail. MSN just loves me, period. Here we go:

“free bingo card creator” (I’m amazed that people actually search for “creator” so often)

“free sight words card print”

“bingo card creator” (friends/family/founder)

“sight words for elementary students” (yep, want them on bingo cards too?)

“printable bingo cards” (I’m #4 for a key search term after 2 weeks. Not bad. A pity MSN gets so little traffic.)

“free printable word games ESL students” (got these, too)

“free sight words bingo” (ditto)

“bingo creator” (yep!)

“free mispelled words” (I botch this word myself, all the time)

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