That's what the Suggestion tab is for. It turns out to only be 5% of the overall list. So, of the 20,000 terms, probably only 1000 would be issued of suggestions. And since they're issued in real-time as the hits occur, once you've paired your way through the original 1000 words, you typically only a few suggestions per day come in for consideration.

> It's a pretty bit deal statistically that you only use top ten. I see you point about only worrying about long tail data, but if I want to play the stats game and call for keywords in a close proximity to the 'hot spot' zone, what's to say these words aren't better suited as 'hot zone words'?

Yeah, we thought long and hard about it. What is the "head" and what is the "tail"? We wanted everyone to be verbalizing the same comparison so they would be apples-to-apples. In other words, we wanted everyone to be saying "My top-10 keywords accounted for 20% of my traffic, while all the rest accounted for 80%".

We chose hot zone words greatly based on how likely they are to achieve first page positions once optimized on. Close proximity matches are good too, which is another reason we show the inclusive Keywords tab and score for everything instead of just the Suggestions tab. Many people choose words from the Keywords tab, which are deemed "already optimized" or "not worth it" for further optimization. Our Suggestion alg is tweaked for people with busy schedules, so it's only a small lists with super-charged potential. We encourage going beyond it, time allowing.

> I coined holy grail at SEOChat saying it’s NOT the holy grail It’s merely presenting log data in a new format. Useful, absolutely, holy grail? I don’t think so, a good stats program should show the same results.

I've seen us referred to as "not the holy grail" in several places. It may be that people spontaneously think to say that after watching our demo, which sort of suggests that it's a spectacular new marketing approach. No stats program is going to show the same results as HitTail in part due to our algorithms and in part due to the data collected by HitTail from the user. Analytics packages are one-way reports, while HitTailing is an iterative process.

>>That’s where competitive intelligence comes into play. It shouldn’t be too much extra time, but rather make the time you already spend on content expansion more efficient. So, out of the extremely long list time-wasting list of words that you MIGHT optimize for, only a very small list is primed for instant results in search. The objective is to zero right in on that sweet spot.< <

Picking an choosing is important yes, but my Long tail has 20 000 words.... where would I start? And how would I know it's worth my time (assuming sole-proprietorship where time and resources are limited.)

>>We only do that as a matter of convenience. In fact, the entire long tail chart when you log in is just to communicate the fact that you really are dealing with long tail data. It has nothing to do with which words you should choose to optimize on. We have to communicate this more effectively and have even toyed with removing everything but the Suggestions tab. < <

It's a pretty bit deal statistically that you only use top ten. I see you point about only worrying about long tail data, but if I want to play the stats game and call for keywords in a close proximity to the 'hot spot' zone, what's to say these words aren't better suited as 'hot zone words'?

>>And of course the final thought is that [even] we only think of long tail targeting as a convenient entry-point to the world of SEO. By letting SEOs and even your average marketer pick the low hanging fruit and see results quickly, we can generally pump up the excitement level around the entire field. And more so than offering any sort of holy grail of marketing (a term that’s being used more and more to describe our service), that’s what we’re trying to do. < <

I coined holy grail at SEOChat saying it's NOT the holy grail It's merely presenting log data in a new format. Useful, absolutely, holy grail? I don't think so, a good stats program should show the same results.

That's where competitive intelligence comes into play. It shouldn't be too much extra time, but rather make the time you already spend on content expansion more efficient. So, out of the extremely long list time-wasting list of words that you MIGHT optimize for, only a very small list is primed for instant results in search. The objective is to zero right in on that sweet spot.

And in regard to the point about traffic vs. qualified visitors, this sweet spot of well-primed words are almost always created BY potentially qualified visitors. Chasing the right portion of the long tail can result in a site that increasingly targets uniquely qualified prospects.

> One Long-Tail program (online) I use ONLY calculates the top TEN keywords as part of the ‘hot-zone’ and let’s everything else fall into the ‘long-tail’.

We only do that as a matter of convenience. In fact, the entire long tail chart when you log in is just to communicate the fact that you really are dealing with long tail data. It has nothing to do with which words you should choose to optimize on. We have to communicate this more effectively and have even toyed with removing everything but the Suggestions tab. But that would make for one boring site.

And of course the final thought is that [even] we only think of long tail targeting as a convenient entry-point to the world of SEO. By letting SEOs and even your average marketer pick the low hanging fruit and see results quickly, we can generally pump up the excitement level around the entire field. And more so than offering any sort of holy grail of marketing (a term that's being used more and more to describe our service), that's what we're trying to do.