Long tail

In statistics and business, the long tail, a concept invented by Chris Anderson in 2004, is the way to describe some type of business and economic models as, among others, Amazon or Netflix. Anderson argued that products in low demand or with low sales volume can and must be the ones to sell. So, the long tail is a business model that debunk traditional models: the ones that defend that the products that must be sold need to be the ones with the highest turnover.

This theory explains how we have gone from a mass market to a niche market. To explain that we need to see the long tail graphic shown below:

The Internet has changed the rules of distribution and market, which seemed permanent and definitive.Today's online businesses, such as Amazon, are no longer based exclusively on broad market segments, that is, on the general public.

The sum of small niche markets, such us the specific and defined customer groups, often supposes a volume of business greater than the large mass of clients.

It must be said, that the long tail theory is based on three things: the democratization of access to production, the democratization of access to distribution and connecting demand with supply.

LONG TAIL and SEO

If we focus the Long Tail on Internet positioning (SEO), we find that the sum of searches of Internet users with less frequent keywords will probably translate into a higher volume than usual.

Let's see a practical example: if we want to position an online store of sports shoes, we will probably get better results using more specific keywords, for example: «squash shoes» than the general form of «sports shoes».

The advantages of the specific forms would be:

• We will have less competition.

• The potential client who does the specific search is of higher quality, which means that we will have more chances of being bought because he has a very specific interest.

But we can not forget that the Long Tail concept considers the success of the business in the sum of those specific niches. Therefore, it is not convenient to focus on a single segment, but on several, with a cumulative vocation.