There’s More to SEO than Rankings
RECOMMENDED
Keyword Discovery

More effective than Word Tracker. More precise than Overture. Based on over 20 billion searches.

Free SEO book
new for 2009

Sticky SEO
Winning Strategies
for the New Algorithm

Best SEO book
updated for 2009

Don’t get banned
by the search engines.
handy e-book
of top SEO tips

Detailed SEO guide

Number One
In Your Niche.
step-by-step guide
to SEO tactics

By David Leonhardt

Perhaps one of the biggest misconceptions in SEO is that ranking at Google and Yahoo is all that counts in search engine optimization. Potential clients come to me with a single goal: “Get me a top-ten ranking at Google.” Some will also mention MSN, and a few will rhyme off a list of search engines and want to rank well at the top 200 of them.

It is time to separate fact from fiction.

Yes, I can get you a top-ten placement at Google. But…

1. If the placement is for “dirty brown shoes”, it probably won’t help your shoe store one bit, even if I get you the first place ranking. Few people are actually searching for that term.

2. Being number ten might not help much either, depending on the term. People searching for “Essential Nectar liquid vitamins”, will probably click on the first result they see, or at least on one of the “above-the-fold” results that do not require scrolling. On the other hand, someone searching for “liquid vitamins” might check through two pages of results to familiarize herself with the options available.

3. If your title tag reads like a cheap list of search terms, it will not be enticing. For instance, if it reads: “vitamins, liquid vitamins, multivitamins, multi-vitamins”, you might skip over it in favor of the next result that reads “Liquid vitamins from the Liquid Vitamin Supplements Store”.

4. If your description tag is a mess, people will more likely skip over your listing, even if it does rank number one, in favor of one that sounds like what they are looking for. Google and others use the description tag usually when the term searched for is found in it, so make sure to include your key search terms in a description tag that actually reads well.

Predicting traffic from SEO results

I recently responded to a forum question, which went something like this: My site ranks number one for this term at this engine. The term is searched this many times per day, and the engine has this percentage marketshare. Can I expect this many visitors?

That’s not an SEO challenge; that’s a math problem: searches x marketshare = visitors

I responded with a few factors that override mathematics in the SEO game, including the site’s title tag and description tag, as well as whether the term lends itself to scrolling. I also pointed out that it depends on the title tags and description tags of the competition, too.

Another factor that makes predicting traffic difficult is the abandonment factor – how many people click on none of the results because they get interrupted or confused, or abandon the search for a new one because they find themselves off-topic or searching too broadly.

It also depends on how many sponsored links there are and how they are marked. Often at Yahoo and Lycos, for example, there are so many ads that the average searcher might never scroll a screen or two to see the organic (natural) results.

And, of course, it also depends on the color of the walls in the room the searcher is clicking from, the weather outside and how well they slept last night. But there is little you can do about that.

What you can do is to work with your SEO consultant to choose the most effective search terms for your business and make sure he develops a title tag and description tag that sell to both humans and the search engines. Then make sure he is monitoring not just the rankings for your key search terms, but also the description used by each of the search engines.

A good ranking at Google and Yahoo is just one measure of your SEO consultant’s success. A more complete evaluation is that he is your partner in building long-term, targeted traffic

Dear Bill Gates, You Clever Fox
RECOMMENDED
Keyword Discovery

More effective than Word Tracker. More precise than Overture. Based on over 20 billion searches.

Free SEO book
new for 2009

Sticky SEO
Winning Strategies
for the New Algorithm

Best SEO book
updated for 2009

Don’t get banned
by the search engines.
handy e-book
of top SEO tips

Detailed SEO guide

Number One
In Your Niche.
step-by-step guide
to SEO tactics

By David Leonhardt

Dear Bill Gates.

You did it. You casually left a live grenade at the Grand Charity Gala and walked out of the room to see if anybody, especially Google, will notice.

Once again, you have created an innovation in marketing that is poised to take the world by storm. What I love about it is how you have just tossed it out into the public for all to see, and yet nobody seems to be noticing it.

Flitting from forum to forum, everyone is talking about your new MSN beta search engine, but nobody seems to have discovered the secret marketing bomb you left ticking there.

Google sure was clever with its PageRank gimmick. In fairness, PageRank is not just a gimmick, but it was marketed as much more than it is — the big ka-boom that sets Google apart, despite being only a small part of its algorithm.

But your ka-boom will be bigger. You have actually given searchers like me control over my own rankings. While other search engines are talking about “personalized search”, you’ve given us the levers to incrementally change rankings in searches themselves.

You are probably aware that webmasters are kicking the tires on your new search engine to see how high they rank. Those who are more adventuresome or who earn their living understanding (or trying to understand) search engines are taking some of your special features for a spin. Most of those features are fairly mundane. Like “links to” (although it might just be the most comprehensive listing on the Internet – hint to webmasters) and “language”.

But what’s this at the very bottom, almost falling off my screen?

Results Ranking.

Hey, this is cool. I can control the results myself. I can give more weight to recently-updated sites, which is great when I am following a breaking story (After the America’s Cup, I do not want to find all the pre-race predictions, for example.). Or I can weight the results in favor of static pages if I am trying to find again the health information I had read last time my daughter broke out in blue and green splotches all over her body.

And you let me decide whether to weigh heavily exact matches, if I know exactly what I am looking for, or approximate matches if I know only that the itchy splotches come from some rare Polar virus transmitted by stampeding trans-Atlantic penguins.

I even get to choose to boost rankings for popular sites or, if I’m feeling like a rebel, for less popular sites. Yes, you have even appealed to my deepest psychological mood swings. This is really cool.

But what really counts is this: I control MSN!

I can just imagine the TV ads you have already planned: The ad character (a student, a construction worker, a nurse?) says, “Move over Bill Gates, I’m in charge now.” The voiceover says, “Search MSN” PageRank will taste like yesterday’s chewing gum.

I decided to find out if I really do control MSN, using one of my client sites. It sat at #3 for its top search term.

I turbo charged the popularity lever to 100%. Whoa. My client lost a spot. What does that mean? Somebody who does not rank as highly as my client got a boost by weighing link popularity higher (and, by extension, on-page content lower).

This tells me that my client’s on-page content is in good shape. It also tells me which competitor has the best backlinks to check out.

PageRank was an effective gimmick for wrapping webmasters and SEO consultants around Google’s fingers. But this results ranking thingy could wrap both the public and webmasters around MSN’s fingers.

Just one word of advice, Bill. Results Ranking? Is that the catchiest moniker you could give it?

Bill, you are to be congratulated for devising such a clever marketing tool, and for purposefully leaving it right out in the open like a live grenade without even a hint that it is there. That is what you did, isn’t it? You did do it on purpose, didn’t you?

Five SEO Tips To Improve
Your Search Engine Ranking
RECOMMENDED
Keyword Discovery

More effective than Word Tracker. More precise than Overture. Based on over 20 billion searches.

Free SEO book
new for 2009

Sticky SEO
Winning Strategies
for the New Algorithm

Best SEO book
updated for 2009

Don’t get banned
by the search engines.
handy e-book
of top SEO tips

Detailed SEO guide

Number One
In Your Niche.
step-by-step guide
to SEO tactics

By David Leonhardt

“Dear David: I just created a website on baby toy safety. What should I do to make sure gazillions of people find me through the search engines?”

I can’t promise you gazillions, but there are a few things you should do to make it easy for search engines to find you. I assume you have already decided to submit your site to the major search engines and directories. I assume that you will develop some sort of linking strategy (hopefully a better strategy than most websites use today). I also assume you will have picked key search terms for all the pages on your website.

Beyond that, here are my top five tips for making your website easy for those “gazillions” to find it.

http://www.seo-writer.com/reprint/five-seo-tips.html

1. A picture might be worth a thousand words, but search engines don’t read pictures. Make sure your key search terms are written out in text, not part of a graphic title you hire somebody to prepare for you. That also means you should not just show pictures of toys, but also write out the names, and possibly a keyword description with the title.

2. Have several pages of articles related to your website’s topic. Use a different keyword search term for each article. For instance, one article might use frequently the term “safe toys for babies”, while another might use the term “baby safety”.

3. What’s the URL of your website? Your name won’t help you there. Your key search term will. In this instance, I might pick www.baby-toy-safety.com, for example (if that is one of your top keyword phrases). Hire somebody who knows what he is doing to develop the right keyword strategy for you BEFORE you choose your domain name.

4. What’s the title of your page? I don’t know how many times I see titles such as “Article” or “Contact us”. Don’t expect the search engine robots to get all excited about that term. And don’t expect anybody to search for that term, either. Much better to title your page “Free article on safe toys for babies” or “Contact the *Baby Toy Expert* today”. By the way, this is the single most important place to include your keyword phrases.

5. What about that navigation menu that appears on every single page of your website? Does it say “Contact the baby toy expert?” Or “about the baby toy expert”. Or links about baby toys?” Need I say more?

If your website is about life insurance, you have little hope of hitting the front pages of any search engine. “Life insurance” is such a competitive search engine marketplace. Unless, of course, people are searching for a very specific and rare niche. Even then, I suspect you will need much more than these five tips.

In fact, there are dozens, if not hundreds of things you can do to win the search engine race. These top five search engine optimization tips are a great start, whatever your website is about.

SEO Case Study
RECOMMENDED
Keyword Discovery

More effective than Word Tracker. More precise than Overture. Based on over 20 billion searches.

Free SEO book
new for 2009

Sticky SEO
Winning Strategies
for the New Algorithm

Best SEO book
updated for 2009

Don’t get banned
by the search engines.
handy e-book
of top SEO tips

Detailed SEO guide

Number One
In Your Niche.
step-by-step guide
to SEO tactics

On-page SEO or Off-page SEO?
Your Search Engine Ranking By David Leonhardt

There is a raging debate over the relative importance of on-page search engine optimization and off-page optimization. This case study that offers presents some intriguing findings.

When I began working for the client, Dotcom-Monitor Web Site Monitoring, its site was bouncing between #8 and #10 at Google for “web site monitoring”, the most competitive search term in the sector. They wanted to get closer to the top. As I write, the site sits comfortably in the #3 spot. And the #4 spot, too!

But the client decided then to hire me for a second job. To get them equally high in Google rankings for “website monitoring”. Note the distinction between the two terms.

All pages on the site were optimized for the term “web site monitoring”. Nowhere on the site did the word “website” appear. So I was really just going through the motions to see where the site ranked for “website monitoring”. Much to my surprise, it already ranked #231.

The off-page SEO crowd will say that it is because there are links pointing to the site with the term “website monitoring” in the anchor text. As far as I know, there were none. Links all used either the company name, the URL or “web site monitoring”.

So there was no text on the page and no link text off-page. The only possibility was that there were inbound links from pages that had the term “website monitoring” somewhere else on the page. This clearly states the case for arranging relevant links.

The first step I took was to alter the home page. I slipped in the term “website monitoring” into a few places, including internal links and headings. I did nothing else to the site, nor anything else off-page. Within a few days, #231 was #34 … just from a very light on-page optimization.

The next step was to build a few links. I watched the site climb to #30 a few days later. With fewer than ten links optimized for “website monitoring”, we hit #16 on Google.