Top ten versus long tailed keyword effect

[SenseiSteve]

I read an interesting article recently that contends that keywords beyond the top ten (in sum) refer more traffic than the top ten combined. This was attributed to a long tail effect. It went on to say that the terms that are most popular (most managed by site owners) are rarely those that provide the most business. Your thoughts? (and NO, I don't remember the source).

I don't agree with the article. Just looking at a few of my sites, the top ten keywords consistently return the best ROI.

 

[othellotech]

It went on to say that the terms that are most popular (most managed by site owners) are rarely those that provide the most business. Your thoughts?

I'm always surprised at the search-terms use to find some of our products - certainly not the phrases I'd have used

For example, a lot of clients coming in through bing look for "webspace" not "hosting" ...

 

[handsonhosting]

We've seen the same "webspace" and "webpage provider". Even when I talk to people from time to time and they ask me what I do, when I say "I run a web hosting company" the response is "what's that?"

Going back on Steve's post, I have a hard time believing that more traffic is generated from page 2-1000 on google than page 1. Most people I know, if they don't find the answers on page one, they do a different search pretty quickly. Being on page one is the entire pitch of the SEO I do for clients. I've never suggested to them to ignore page one and aim of position 15

 

[Silk]

It is interesting. I find some of the keywords used to find my site rather mind-boggling. I have a couple posts on my personal blog that get more incoming traffic from searches than the others, and I haven't been able to figure out what search is turning them up! Pretty wild.

That said, I don't know if I believe the "latter keywords" theory, unless the search engines are doing it on purpose to mess up the status quo.