The Long Tail of Blogging

I’ve been reading Chris Anderson’s excellent book The Long Tail. (Yes, I know, I’m arriving late to this party!)

There are so many implications to what I’m doing online with The Long Tail.

But the immediate one that occurred to me was the Long Tail of Blogging.

Here’s my personal experience with this …

On my main blog, I have written more than 600 posts to date. Only half of those posts were written with search engine traffic in mind. (I learned from trial and error.)

After one year of blogging, those 600 posts, along with WordPress and some of these essential blog tweaks, I now get 60% of my traffic from Google alone.

The bulk of that 60% traffic is going to older posts, single posts — those on the Long Tail of my blogging trail.

Although some of those posts account for maybe one unique visitor a day at best … but group them together and it eventually will add up to some really great traffic and momentum.

And here’s the kicker … I wrote those posts once … and I’m still reaping the Long Tail benefits of them months later.

Moral of the story: Post good, broad content in your topic niche consistently, with search engine traffic in mind (i.e. writing titles with phrases that people are searching for) … and ride your own little wave.

I sure do love the Long Tail …