Legal Writing

In the Long Tail

By Maeve

You experts in SEO out there will laugh, but I had never heard the expression “in the long tail” until I came across this sentence on a site devoted to that subject:

Fresh and relevant content is becoming more and more important to SEO and establishing rankings, both for money terms and in the long tail.

My immediate reaction was to ask myself if the writer had been reaching for the expression “in the long run.”

But that sentence is followed by this:

It may be easy to tell people [to generate fresh content on a daily basis], but in the long run, writing an article or blog post everyday [sic] can be tiring…

Clearly the writer is familiar with the expression in the long run, so what am I missing?

According to PCMag.com, long tail is

[t]he potential for online retailers to make more money than their bricks and mortar counterparts…

There’s even a book by Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine, called The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More (2006).

Those of you who understand such things can go to the Wikipedia article for a more detailed explanation.

Wikipedia “Long Tail”

In the Long Tail

Full post as published by Daily Writing Tips on March 15, 2009 (boomark / email).