Rand Fishkin from SEOmoz explains how the long tail works and why it is so important to target the long tail in this video below:

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – Ignore the Tail at Your Peril! from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

The long tail can be applied to both Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) management alike.

I have seen many clients and SEO/PPC agencies alike who target the “fat head” and/or “chunky middle” (see the video for an explanation), even sometimes just the “fat head” – but they do not consider or even recognize the long tail.

As Rand explains, up to 75% of all traffic can come from the long tail. Therefore if you are only targeting the “fat head” and/or “chunky middle”, you are missing out on most of the traffic that could be coming to your website, and the most relevant traffic at that!