Observing the Long Tail: spotting questions in search queries

Knowing what a target audience is interested in should be of prime importance to every internet marketer. 103bees introduces a new way of doing visitor intelligence by identifying questions in the Long Tail of search.

Surfers usually enter one or more keywords related to what they are looking for when using search engines. While this represents the most common search query format, some searches are done by entering complete questions like ‘where can I download mp3 music?’ or ‘how to import video from handycam tape to pc’. Obviously, questions carry a lot more valuable information on what the target audience is looking for than just a few keywords do.

Let’s say one of your webpages gets visitors for the search query ‘myspace backgrounds’. We can safely assume that those visitors expect background pictures available for download and that they find what they were looking for on your webpage. With our new tool (see ‘Analyze project’–>’Questions’ after login) you are now able to spot question search queries in the Long Tail of search easily and take search engine traffic analysis one step further.

For your ‘myspace background’-webpage you will discover many questions like ‘how do i put my picture in a myspace background’ for instance. Clearly, this very visitor wasn’t so much interested in downloading images, but more in some kind of how-to article. Writing a short blog post with detailed instructions on how to put one’s picture in a myspace background is a good idea and would add content and authority to your website. You could also put a link to the new article on the page containing the background images.

Bottom line is: Studying your visitors’ questions will enhance your market insight, generate ideas for content, lead to the discovery of new niches and allow you to serve your audience better.