If you were given the option of acquiring one million dollars today or a penny that doubles into two pennies the next day and continues doubling for a month, which would you choose?  At first glance, most people would probably choose to grab a cool mil right now and blow off the doubling penny bit.  However, long-term investors would tell you to choose option two.  While it's initially not much money, that doubling amount that started as a penny would eventually grow to over two million dollars!

Something similar occurs within the search marketing industry.  Referred to as 'the long tail of search', pennies are replaced with search terms, but the results are the same.  PJ Fusco has written a good explanation of the phenomenon for ClickZ called "The Tail That Wags the Web".

In short, the long tail of search describes the lesser-searched-for keywords and phrases that make up the majority of searches on the internet.  Sure… some keywords generate a lot of results in all of the search engines.  These are the words most website owners target because they know people will search for them.  However, the less seldom searched keywords and phrases greatly outnumber the "power keywords" when combined.

It's better to have your site rank for different kinds of fast food than simply "fast food".  It's true that a lot of people will search for "fast food".  But more people will search for all the specific kinds of fast food.  If you add up the searches for all the smaller specific keywords you'd most likely outnumber the searches for just 'fast food".  You want your site to show up in the results for all of those smaller searches, too.

One added benefit of building for the long tail is exposure.  Your site has more of a chance of being clicked on when it's one of only 20 results than when it's one of 20,000.  In addition, you can use the specific search terms folks are looking for to help determine what products and services people are searching.  With that knowledge, you're in a better position to market existing products or develop new ones to meet consumer demand.

One in a million or one of a kind… which do you think works better?