Longtail

Big update!

When programmatic SEO starts to work it just goes! That is one of my favorite things about marketplaces and platforms is that they can rank for a large footprint of keywords. Best part of Longtail is helping folks grow!

Let’s go! Here is to the next 1M shortly.

Super proud of what we’ve built in a short time at Longtail. SEO is alive and kicking, even if it shifts and changes faster than ever. Reach out to Colin Gardiner or myself if you’re interested in learning more about what Longtail is doing for marketplace and platform SEO!

What I've done with my life since leaving my full time job almost 1 year ago ?? ? Consulted, advised, and executed SEO strategies with 20+ companies ? Started a business ?? called Longtail to offer an off-the-shelf, SaaS + service programmatic SEO and Growth offering (marketplaces, e-commerce, platforms..hit me up!) ? Grown Longtail to a stable income outside of consulting, with extraordinary results for our clients ?? ? Expanded our team and offerings, from 1 revenue stream to 4 and growing But what am I actually most proud of personally in the last year? ? ?? I started re-learning piano, which I haven't played in 20+ years, but thought about constantly for the last 8 years and "couldn't make time for it" ? ?? I create something almost every day. Sometimes I draw very meticulously, sometimes I make a silly sculpture, sometimes I write down a new business plan. Sometimes my dogs and I make up a new game, because who wants to play fetch every day when you could play "fast hands" instead? ? ?? I've read at least 1 book every month, occasionally spending an entire day reading something that really motivated or inspired me. Sometimes I stop a book halfway through. I have control over the information I allow in. ? ?? I spend less than 4 hours a week on video calls, even with heavy prospecting, after regularly spending more than 4 hours a day on Zoom/Gmeet ? ?? I've reconnected with old friends, and I make a point to call someone whenever I randomly think about them. I've had more meaningful, heartfelt conversations with people I care about than I can remember when I was focused on impressing employers. More times than I can count, the other person said "I was just thinking about calling you too, and I don't know why I haven't." Check in on your people. They might need you. ? ?? My wife and I have spent more quality time together than ever before. Even working from home/remote, I was a slave to workaholism. Now we eat almost every meal together, and go to movies at 2pm if we feel like it. TL;DR - The "stability" of my full time (and I put that in quotes, because layoffs etc...nothing is truly stable in someone else's hands) had totally crippled the way I thought about my time and energy. I know that I'm not in the broad majority here - but the uncertainty of entrepreneurship was a forcing function to take back my time. My full time gave me the skills and experience I needed to take it to the next level. Now it's my time.

Amazing growth from one of our first clients. ?? The future is bright for solving a key issue in America’s logistics supply chain.

What he said! ??

My father is a fisherman. He’s an engineer by trade, but if you ask him what he’d rather be doing at any given moment (even if you’re already having a good time together ??) - he’ll tell you he would prefer to be on the water, any water, with a rod and reel in hand. And then he’ll start sharing pictures and telling stories. If you’re lucky (or really just anywhere in proximity of his house), he’ll invite you over and cook for you. Fried bass, seared tuna, perfectly blackened snapper. And you can expect more stories. I don’t know the last time someone turned down an invitation to fish or eat with him - because he’s spent decades figuring out how to make those experiences enjoyable for the people in his life. We had an opportunity years ago to fish for salmon, halibut, and more in SE Alaska, near Craig. We brought boxes of the freshest fish imaginable home to Texas, and of course it didn’t last as long as we hoped - we invited everyone we knew to share stories and meals. Basically an analogy for a personal, highly effective blog. Now, into a world of fantasy. What if we wanted to bring as much of that delicious fresh fish to the largest audience we could? These are supply, demand, and distribution problems completely different than my dad’s passion, and how he hypothetically stumbled on this idea. But he knows from his own experience that it’s worth sharing and could be big business. What’s the most logical way to bring this idea to market? He could build a commercial fishing operation, or buy from distributors. He could start a fish market, or sell directly to grocery stores. Or he could partner with people who have built these systems, to grow operations together. A commercial fisherman who has the equipment, licensing, and staff. A distributor who has a nationwide network of stores. From my experience, too many marketplaces overindex one way or the other. They try to build everything from scratch, or rely heavily on expensive channels like CPC. This is hard mode. Leveraging expertise to get to positive unit economics is a cheat code. This is the general thesis behind Longtail. Programmatic SEO is a cheat code for marketplace growth if properly executed. But it does require knowledge and investment. It’s tempting to just keep pumping money into CPC or outbound instead. I’m working with a team who has executed this strategy time and time again. Our goal is to provide a best in class implementation that feels out-of-the-box, from strategy to execution and maintenance at any scale, with access to our knowledge and additional services. We don’t expect you to know or learn the ins and outs of product led SEO. We don’t expect you to trust AI recommendations and things to magically grow. We do expect to partner with you as experts in this area, and to grow together by giving you the time back to focus on your product, your passion, and why you started your marketplace in the first place. Lets get you back on the water.