A few years ago we posted an
article inspired by the book "Blue Ocean Strategy"
by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne. Essentially, the book encourages entrepreneurs to think differently about their business plans. Instead of entering an existing industry and fighting for market share, create a brand new industry. Instead of working hard to beat the competition, eliminate it.
In Kim and Mauborgne's metaphor, a red ocean represents existing and competitive industries where lots and lots of people are fighting for limited market share; picture sharks in a feeding frenzy. A blue ocean represents new industries where opportunity is abundant and competition is non-existent; picture the clear, blue ocean water.
It occurred to me that applying the essence of their theory to your keyword research strategy could open up a sea, if you will, of opportunity.
I created a spreadsheet (represented above) of about 1500 keywords that we track (presuming they are all reasonably relevant). Then, based on the intensity of competition for each keyword, I applied a gradient with blue being applied to those keywords with little or no competition and red being applied to those with steep competition. The result is a pretty cool visual representation of which keywords would likely deliver the quickest and most qualified results.
Red Ocean Keywords
Keywords farthest to the right represent those that are common or most obvious. For a consulting company, examples might be
"consulting"
,
"consultants"
or
"business consulting"
. They are easy to identify and they are attractive because lots and lots of people tend to search for them. To actually generate organic traffic from them, however, is incredibly difficult, if not impossible, for most companies; there is just way too much competition. Typically, these "red ocean" keywords are also very expensive if you were to consider buying them as part of a paid search campaign. As it turns out, these popular search terms are also rather vague and are less likely to send high quality traffic your way. In general, Kim and Mauborgne would recommend against spending any time competing for those terms on the right.
Blue Ocean Keywords
Keywords on the left, on the other hand, represent creative, outside-the-box keywords that differentiate a product or service from the masses. Using the same fictional consulting company as above, examples of "blue ocean" keywords might be "small business IT consulting", "small business network implementation" or "IT consulting company Cambridge, MA". These types of "long tail" terms are searched for less frequently, but they are more specific and therefore will bring more qualified traffic to your site. There are also far fewer sharks in the water. That "blue ocean" on the left - and even in the middle- is where the greatest opportunity lives and the list is endless. What you see in the image above is just an illustration to make a point. Blue ocean keywords are innumerable, all you need to do to take advantage of this opportunity it create the content. Publishing often and writing relevant content will result in increased (and qualified) traffic form search engines. And, if you are just getting started and you are considering jumpstarting your efforts with a paid search campaign, blue ocean keywords are usually far less expensive.
Whether the notion of the "long tail" resonates with you or this idea of "blue ocean" keywords works, the key to attracting more free traffic to your site from search engines is to create more great content on your site than your competitors do. Focusing less on the most common or obvious keywords and more on carving out your own unique set terms will likely result in faster and better results.
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Jennifer Beever 8:24 AM on October 27, 2010
Great way to illustrate an important online marketing strategy - go after less competitive keywords and own them with strategic content! Thanks for a great post!
AlekJones 8:30 AM on October 27, 2010
Love the post! It's so true, too many of us are ignoring the long tail and shooting straight for the "big money keywords". Stop and take a look at your site's conversion rate and make the right choice, go Long Tail.
Anne West 8:31 AM on October 27, 2010
Loved that book and love the analogy. Makes me think of keywords and the long tail in a new way. I'm off to search for my blue ocean keywords right now!
Dan Tyre 8:56 AM on October 27, 2010
Long tail = more qualified buyers. Organic long tail is where the money is
Jon-Mikel Bailey 9:26 AM on October 27, 2010
What a great concept. I am going to share this with all my clients who look at me sideways when I start talking about the long tail.
Rick Falls 9:52 AM on October 27, 2010
Once again you've given us excellent depth and detailed research that will help us get more customers for less online.
If businesses can begin to get their head around this, they'll realize that the information in their head about what they do, that seems insignificant to them, is exactly what people who are looking for a provider of a product or service want to know more about before they commit to a buying decision.
You people really ROCK !
Lola 9:57 AM on October 27, 2010
Fantastic concept and post! I would like to make my own red/blue ocean chart to share at work with content managers I am trying to teach SEO concepts to. How did you segment your KWs into the different colors? Can you please share your methodology for making a chart like this?
Laurie Macomber 10:07 AM on October 27, 2010
And the beauty is.... when you use long tail, one day you might rank for 'short tail' too! Just by having all that rich adjacency of relevant content!
Colleen Coyne 11:00 AM on October 27, 2010
Lola - Thank you. I'm glad you found this helpful.
I was afraid someone would ask this question. ;-) I tried and tried to find an easy way to create the formatted chart you see here, but to be honest, it was a pretty manual process. I exported our keyword list and applied conditional formatting to the "Difficulty" column (a measurement used by HubSpot's Keyword Grader tool). There was no easy way (that I could find) to apply that formatting to the corresponding keywords so I did that manually. Then I just cut/pasted the keywords into shorter columns.
If anyone knows how to apply formatting to adjacent cells in excel, please chime in. :-)
David Stahl 10:50 PM on October 27, 2010
To quote Marty Neumeier; "When everybody zigs, zag."
Great post!
Sue Barrett, Home Business Center, Inc. 12:07 AM on October 28, 2010
I agree that by overlooking long tail keywords, many internet marketers are missing out on significant income.
But in addition to that point, I believe that focusing on the right targeted long tail keywords in search engine optimization makes finding and converting clients a whole lot easier.
affiliatesea 5:18 AM on October 28, 2010
Long tail keywords give more quality visitors.Though it send less number of visitors.I have created some specific niche blogs using long tail keywords.Doing pretty well.Thanks for sharing.
Joe @ USF 3:44 PM on October 28, 2010
Some people get scared of the long tail because of the lower traffic volume but as it's stated here it's more of a targeted query which will most likely convert higher.
Also thanks for sharing your process!
--Joe--
Josh Patrick 11:04 AM on October 29, 2010
This is a really cool idea. You might want to look at using intellectual capital from your company as a basis for looking at blue ocean key words. I believe this will give you a list of things that others don't consider.
Josh Patrick
www.stage2planning.com
Greg Kathol 1:57 PM on November 02, 2010
Colleen – What criteria did you use to map the keywords by color? Did you segment them by difficulty range, i.e. <10 – 25, 26-50, 51-75, 76-100? I think this is a great idea and is helpful to visually represent keyword targets. It will also help non-tech/non-marketing folk understand what keywords are important and why. I’ve done some segmenting this way before, but not with the “blue ocean” as a framework. Thanks!
Ben Griffiths 2:50 PM on November 02, 2010
It's important to note that this blue ocean keyword strategy will only work if your site is a true inbound marketing hub. Lots and lots of content will be needed to drive any significant amount of traffic to these keywords. It's a given for anyone who is familiar with the Hubspot philosophy, but the casual visitor to this blog might not realize this.