fantomNews™ — the ultimate know

(Testing the latest Beta 2 version of the Windows Live Writer, I might as well offer a little rant about the long tail in a somewhat literal sense.)

In case you’ve forgotten or hadn’t realized in the first place, the much flaunted “long tail” isn’t just about the also rans in your super duper keyword list. It’s also – if not primarily – about long term efficacy. Because on the Web, even conversations can extend over years.

So: Make your linkbait stick – not everything’s doomed to peter out after a couple of seconds of fame. (After all, when Andy Warhol gave us a full 15 minutes, the Web hadn’t even been born – no one in his or her right mind was haunted by CP/M let alone DOS or Windoze then…)

Don’t believe me? Today’s main meme being speed, online life is really confined to hectic hot vapor breathing nothingness?

Maybe so, but do  have a look at this (utterly hilarious btw) blog post which is still garnering comments (and, by inference, traffic) almost a full year after it was initially published: “How to use Google to get a girl and get laid” And chance are, it will continue to do so even after Google finally manages to get out of beta with about 90% of the stuff he’s writing about.

Little surprise it’s even made its way into the august linklove heart of John Battelle at the time. (And in case you’re still wondering: Yes, Mulley’s blog’s main page currently holds PR 6.)

We’re still getting some decent traffic on web sites we haven’t bothered to update for 8 years or more, featuring products that used to be big hitters at the time but aren’t of any relevance any longer. Not that they are still ranking for anything spectacular – but one of the most underrated beauties of good search engine rankings, volatile as they may be, is their potential to convert into sticky links from people who actually found your site once and liked what they saw. Let’s not forget that search engines by their very definition are mere traffic conduits, brokers between people and businesses. And that is what the long tail is all about as well.

So if working the long tail has made you think small and take a myopic view of competitiveness, keyword power and – very probably – even search engine rankings, there’s nothing wrong in at least trying to make it as long term as you can manage as well…

Subscribe!