1. The Long Tail is
Dead. Meet the Wide
Tail
Search: New Frontiers in Paid and
Organic Search
David Rodnitzky, CEO, PPC Associates

2. What is the Long Tail?
• Low volume, high intent keywords
– “San Francisco bad credit mortgage rates”
– “V4600 42 inch LED Flatscreen TV”
• Historically, an arbitrage opportunity
• Common long tail examples
– Geo-modifiers
– SKUs
– Misspellings
– Adjectives

3. Why the Long Tail is Dead
• Google instant search
• Location intent
• Misspellings irrelevant
• Expansion of broad match
• Tons of keyword tools

4. What This Means for SEMs
• Stop wasting your time on finding “secret”
keywords
• Start focusing on your “head terms”
• We call this “keyword sculpting”
– Put your team keywords in their own ad
groups
– Create and test highly customized ad text
– Create and test highly customized landing
pages
– “Alpha Beta” approach

5. So Life is Easy for SEMs, Right?
• The long tail is dead . .
. Introducing the wide
tail!
• The wide tail is
management of multiple
PPC opportunities
across multiple
networks at multiple
stages of intent

6. Wide Tail Examples

7. How to Handle the Wide Tail
• An expert at everything is an expert at
nothing
• Prioritize opportunity
• Understand demand fulfillment and intent

8. Summary
• Sculpting head terms
is the key to success
on traditional SEM
• SEMs must expand
beyond search to
cover all PPC
opportunities
• The future is
complicated, but
bright for SEMs!

9. Thank You
• david@ppcassociates.com
• @rodnitzky
• www.ppcassociates.com/blog