The Long Tail matters. It matters much. In fact, if you don’t understand and apply this concept your marketing and website strategies may not succeed. But you may be asking, “What do you mean by “The Long Tail?”
For clarity sake, I don’t mean a dog, cat, or any animal tail. I mean a market tail. I mean niche markets. I mean the long, yellow section in the image above. I mean specific target marketing that sells to the largest, but not the most popular market. It’s allot of products that sell in smaller quantities. The converse is a smaller number of best selling products which would fall into the lime green section above. Fads don’t translate into long tail or long-term revenue. It’s below the radar products that sell, and lots of them. In fact, most of what sells online are the long tail products. Without the internet, the long tail would not exist, at least to the degree is does today.
For example, in the past brick and mortar retail music and video stores sold mainly hits. They could only afford to stock popular items they knew would sell and thus pay for the small space of inventory they took up. These retail stores also served local customers in roughly a ten mile radius. To survive they needed high-demand hits for local customers. If we look at the image above again, you will notice the larger, shorter lime green section. That’s the short or thick tail. 
If you add up all the smaller, long tail purchases, they are actually much larger than the short tail purchases. Lots of people can make tons of purchases of little, below the radar products because of the internet. The online channel is more efficient and convenient than the short tail channel.
Another example is my book. Barnes and Noble does not sell my book in their physical stores but they do in their online store. Amazon sells lots of my books to lots of long tail customers who can buy it online anywhere in the world. I don’t have to have a best-seller to make money. My book has low overhead and is easily accessible from Amazon. The internet turns a ten miles into ten thousand miles. That’s why so many self-published authors can write niche books for niche markets.
The long tail serves specific customers rather than “the masses.” The customer gets what they want not what everyone thinks they need. Hits don’t matter as much; the customer’s preferences do.
The unlimited selection of the internet overcomes the limitation of the “the hit mentality.” Lots of little is better than less of big.
And, that’s why your website needs to be SEO friendly so all these long tail customers can find you. Customers search for long tail keywords more than they do limited, short tail words. So goes the keywords, so goes the products. A niche market needs a niche website. The content of your site needs to match the intent of your customer.
Bottom line: Wag Your Long Tail…
By Stuart Atkins
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