Search Ranking, or Viewer Draw?

It is not only possible, but all too common for a website to be perfectly optimized for a set keywords, and fail to draw in new visitors. Often this is because a website design company is passing off high search results as a successful job, but they have used a set of keywords that had little competition, or put them together in a way that is rarely used.

As an example, I have held the top Google search position (two, actually) for “history of psychic powers” for months. At first glance, this seems to be an impressive achievement, given the popularity of psychic powers in the world we live in, but the raw truth is that most people who are looking for information on the subject are not typing in such a long phrase. So this success is a deceptive one, as the top search ranking isn’t as helpful in drawing in new visitors as it seems to imply.

For your website, the keyword phrases you associate with it define its character, its substance, and its purpose for existence. But the longer a phrase is, the less effective it becomes for drawing visitors, and the more likely it is to have a high search result ranking. Optimally, keep your keyphrases to one or two words per phrase, and combine keywords to form longer phrases. For instance, in the example above, it would be better to rank at the top of “psychic, powers, history” split into seperate phrases, because the chances of matching a person’s search query have been multiplied several times over.

Don’t be fooled into thinking a top search result for an obscure phrase is the path to success. It is an optical illusion produced by comparing apples and oranges.

Keyword Positioning or Market Share, Which is More Important? | SEO Design Solutions

There was an old saying that comes to mind, “If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around, will it make a sound?”, similarly if your website is optimized for a specific keywords and no one uses it to find your website, is it worth it?

Value is Relative

To answer that question, yes… just as value is relative to application, does the tree have more purpose as a bridge across the stream than standing upright before it fell? It all depends on who is on the path and what their needs are at the time.

Similarly, some keywords act as bridges to tie vast segments of synonyms and more competitive keywords together. Their latent value (building authority) vs. their immediate value (as keywords that appear in search engines) are often misunderstood when it comes to increasing relevance within a site.

For many obsessively checking your websites keyword positioning and rankings around the clock is common. Although the behavior may border on the tendency of being myopic about SEO, the true focus should be capturing market share. With both market share and authority, you can launch as many keywords as you like and sculpt which ones rise and stay at the top.

Will all of your keywords convert? Probably not, but the value they create for organic SEO are all pivotal points that anchor and impact the overall reputation of your website (keyword included). There is no magic bullet with keyword positioning, the real secret is to focus on market share and funnel as many overlapping keywords to the most appropriate pages capable of converting into a sale.

The tendency to overlook the vast amount of authority latent within a website is common. Often a few fresh links from the right places is all it takes to take a page off the shelf and put it back into circulation in search engines.

Links Provide Authority, Navigation and Exploration

Links are like the lifeblood of a website, without them there would be no navigation from page to page or website to website, hence their importance is paramount for the user experience. Similarly, links are also the passages that search engines utilize to assess the quality and context of web pages.

So, to search engines, if your website does not have any new links, this equates to “it must not be that important”. Otherwise, if it were, more people would reference the page or visit it (or you would reinforce it with links of your own internally). In either case, since everything leaves a trail or digital footprint online, metrics used to gauge user engagement for content is collected from a variety of methods. The bottom line is, does that page have authority or not?

If it doesn’t, then you can step in to make adjustments by going back to latent pages within your website and editing the content to work in tandem with other key components of your websites conversion objectives.

Considering it pruning off-topic or lackluster copy while adding a few internal links to ball roll multiple pages into a coherent mass of topical relevance (in other words, the Wikipedia effect on a smaller scale).

The Ebb and Flow of Publishing Cycles

The power of the publisher and who has dominate syndication and indexing in search engines is where ranking battles are daily won and lost. With authority under your belt, every page in your domain has the potential to reach the masses with your message. The colossal stance of media and search and closely tied, which means newsworthy content rises to the top.

Although it may eventually subside in a few weeks, content ages and typically within 3 months it has enough page rank and reputation to hold its own in search engines. The key is to constantly monitor the cycles of what content you publish, which keywords are prominent and what internal and external links are peaking within the cycles of link weight rising and falling as variables have a tendency to normalize over time.

The Power of Syndication

Based on the usefulness of the content it is then shuffled to a latent state (similar to hibernation or a being archived in a secondary index). Then when enough keywords are combined or enough links rouse it from its sleep, the page makes its presence known again when invoked from a query.

The way to keep your pages from going into hibernation is supply a steady flow of links (either from internal links or external links) to ensure that spiders keep the page in mind as a relevant resource.
The real value is to have sleepers for relevant terms as well as constantly adding more pages for future tense rankings.

The power of keyword stemming can be immense as 80% of the queries in search engines are new and unique.

You never know the types of phrases people will use, so, by blanketing a plethora of keywords and key phrases, you hedge your odds of appearing at the helm of a long-tail search. In essence, your website can devour a market, literally one keyword at a time.

Article written by SEOnotepad.com