SEO for Large Websites Part III

Topics covered in the previous posts were:

• Define Ranking Objectives. (Covered in Part 1)
• Plant Seedling Keywords. (Covered in Part 1)
• Determine Preferred Landing Pages. (Covered in Part 2)
• Reinforce Competitive Keyword Categories. (Covered in Part 2)

Now, we will conclude this triage with the last few areas pertaining to optimizing large websites specifically through:

• Strengthening Internal Linking
• Using Succinct Titles and Meta Descriptions
• Managing Site Wide Duplicate Content (Custom templates, Noindex, Follow, 301 Redirects, XML Sitemaps).

Strengthening Internal Linking - The purpose of internal linking is to reinforce specific keywords, topics or stemmed arrays of relevant information to search engines. Each link on your page is telling search engines “this page is important”, so, the first thing you need to understand is, make sure you are sending the right message.

Ironically, many webmasters omit using internal links to connect contextual content or help establishing a pecking order for important content. Here are a few posts that provide more detail from a how to perspective or tactical viewpoint on internal links, but for the sake of context we will stick to the premise of why it is important.

From the standpoint of a hierarchy, the page which is a destination for the most internal links from other pages within a website, earns a higher search engine position as search engines associate links with authority (both from other sites and within a website).

The larger a website becomes, the more important it is to distinguish each page from others so that it can (1) develop its own authority and (2) rank for a specific array of keywords. The less work you do, like share one template for example instead of create a series of topical templates to facilitate key landing pages, the less likely those pages will stand out from others.

The idea is, consider your trophy keywords; these landing pages should have the highest concentration of absolute internal links to them. To accomplish this, focus on the first occurrence of a keyword on a page within the body area of the content and use it to provide the link to the page you wish to emphasize as the new champion page for that keyword. Do this throughout the entire site to really see the beauty of this technique or you could implement a script or plugin to accomplish this tactic with ease.

It is important to seed these keywords or use keyword co-occurrence whenever possible to reinforce the internal linking effect to your top level landing pages.

Say for example you have 1000 pages in your website, and you have 10 landing pages you want to emphasize as the top level keyword and key phrases. Depending on the keyword threshold and how competitive it is, you may wish to add editorial content to support the main landing page.

This does two things (1) it helps to flag your website as a relevant match over and above say for example a site that is using a general shopping cart and just has cookie cutter descriptions to distinguish it and (2) it provides a platform for leverage for internal links and keyword stemming.

There are two solid ways to produce rankings (1) content or (2) links both have advantages but the precedence is even more prominent when you utilize both in tandem to accomplish a series of rankings for competitive keywords.

So, with 1,000 pages to work with you could potentially use 100 pages per landing page to support at the top of the hierarchy or silo/subfolder to produce buoyancy for your pages.

As a website gains more pages, the site gains more Pagerank; and not the kind in the toolbar, actual on page authority. Internal linking (linking to pages with relative keywords or key phrases) is your first line of offense and defense in layering a foundation which will provide stability and rankings as time progresses.

Each page only counts if its indexed and duplicity is not rewarded, so, using supporting pages and internal links can keep your content relevant to search engines (since they can determine the concentration of ranking factor) as well as alleviates the need to place all of your ranking factor on one page alone.

The way to leverage on page internal links is to find the other pages deemed significant and then provide a link to the target / preferred landing page potentially as close to the beginning of the body text as possible. Not that sidebar or stand alone links in the footer don’t pass value (a minute amount), but based on block segment analysis, keywords or links in the body text carry more weight for SERP (search engine result page) positioning.

Out of those 100 pages if you have one page that has 5 of the keywords from your 10 primary landing pages, then build an internal link from the content from that page to each of the 5 keyword/pages.

The idea is, concentrate as many keywords to as many pages as possible, but try to use the same target page for a given keyword or key phrase (so you don’t diffuse ranking factor). Once each landing page is sufficiently reinforced, then its dependency on off page ranking factor (links from other sites) is diminished and it will (a) get or stay indexed as well as (b) be able to pass that ranking factor along by consolidating link flow to another page (by way of the links that leave it to other pages).

Using Succinct Titles and Meta Descriptions - Your title tag is the most important element in search engine optimization. You can rank on an “exact match shingle occurrence” in a title tag alone. Then if reinforced by a supportive occurrence of the keyword, a plural or synonym variations and then reinforced in the H1 (header tag), in the links on the page and links to that page, creates a thorough degree of relevance for that page to search engines.

Top level categories should be succinct and descriptive. For example -  ”Brand-X Designer Shoes: Shoe Collection from Company -Y” would be ideal if the company sold shoes or a collection from that designer.

The idea here is, if you have a main category page that feeds subsequent listings and then use the most competitive description in the title. The description could state… “Company-Y Provides Designer Shoes by Brand X as well as Model A, B and C”, this way the meta description reinforces the title. This type of relevant redundancy word well as long as it is not abused.

Never stuff titles with more than 6-8 words and keep your descriptions to 12 words or less whenever possible.

In addition, if your page has 500 words of unique text, a header (h1) tag that matches the first word in your title (your main keyword) and uses a relevant description and has internal links pointed to it, the only missing ingredient is a few deep links from other sites to cement its position from other large orphaned pages from competitors who are selling the same wares.

Managing Site Wide Duplicate Content - I mentioned before in Part I that search engines are not a fan of duplicity or duplicate content, so, the less you replicate across a site, the more distinct the signature becomes when attempting to equate relevance.

So, is having a page that has 100 links on every page across every category the same going to really help contribute to facilitating a higher relevance or quality score? Or what about having the same meta title on every page in a category in a large e-commerce site (as if search engines will not notice)… It is possible to SEO your CMS (content management system) to fine-tune relevance and eliminate duplicity with a few custom hacks/settings.

There is one thing to be said about duplicity and large sites “try to avoid it as much as possible”, which means create more templates or more content and make each page unique. True, domain authority can push through a great deal of duplicity and keep pages in the index, but if rankings are the objective, then think of each page as an island that needs to have its own ecosystem to survive in the SERPs.

So, to provide methods for sustenance you can employ tactics such as custom templates, using a noindex, Follow tag in the header / meta data, 301 Redirects or XML Sitemaps to provide irrigation to pages starving from link attrition.

Custom templates - If you have a large site such as an ecommerce site, try to create themed categories that logically support the next.

mysite.com/products/shoes/

*This is your top level category, hence anything linked from this will rank well on the merit of the page strength funneled to it from the main site. The main site/navigation would like to it with the keyword “shoes”. That way, If you offered shoes, watches, jackets, etc., each would have its own main landing page / top level category.

On the top level category this should have the least amount of links leaving it and the most inbound links from other pages internally as well as links from other sites.

Then by adding brand modifiers or descriptors in the next tier you would have allinurl relevance meaning that your URL (universal resource locator) a.k.a. web address would reflect relevant naming conventions that reinforce topically what that pages contents are.

Combined with the keyword/naming conventions used in the title and description, this is a winning combination for relevance that borders on redundancy, but really drives the point home to both users and search engines alike.

If you wanted to further stem that tier, you could add mysite/products/shoes/black-highheel-pumps-size6.html

As an example, or the option to truncate the .html is also an option based on MOD rewrite preferences (preferences conducted and assigned at the server level). The point is, the more information you replicate and reinforce, the easier it is for search engines to sort and assign relevance score towards.

You could also take it a step further by using a specific category based template that only refers to the top level category in the sites secondary navigation (usually text links on the left side bar) to provide additional shopping options to users.

Then instead of having the template bleed ranking factor by trying to link to everything (like the main page of the site), consolidate links to only categories that are part of the same product type.

For example the main navigation on the internal shoes pages would have primary navigation to

Shoes | Pumps | Heels | Flats

Don’t forget to use breadcrumb navigation as well to aid user awareness, but then in the footer (using footer links) under each product I could have the other brands of shoes positioned there to reinforce internal links or even add links to other categories such as

Jackets | Socks | Hats - to provide a robust user experience…

The idea here is to create self contained segments that reinforce topicality and then use links from each category to push link flow deeper into the site where it can become buoyant over time. Using a series of rotating .php includes with pre assigned related links is one alternative that you can use to avoid duplicate content as well as drawing from a series of 2-3 different meta descriptions or opening paragraphs.

Nobody said getting deep pages indexed was easy and many simply rely on the brute-force tactic of links alone, yet 60% of the ranking factor comes from on page SEO and on page continuity. If you understand that as the premise, you can get pages indexed and ranking with just a few links each from the right sources and bury your competition.

Sitemaps - One of the best use of sitemaps is to create a sitemap of your sitemaps and then consolidate them to your key pages that pass the most link flow.

If you had a top level category called shoes (using the example above), then your sitemap linked from the top level category should be to a sitemap that contains all of the pages that have shoes. Each brand, subcategory, etc. should all be accessible from that sitemap (xml or html).

As a result, those pages are food for search engine spiders and as long as they (a) link back to the top level category and (b) the homepage, the cycle is complete. The idea is, not to have any page more than 4 folders or clicks away from the homepage and the more specific you are with your content the better it can rank on its own (making the home page less significant to its ranking factor).

Wikipedia applies this for hundreds of thousands of keywords and ranks in the top 2 results for virtually any keyword from any topic as a result. If you only apply 25% of their method, you can do extremely well in contrast to someone simply using a flat site architecture and relying on navigation alone to push ranking factor into thousands of “me too” shopping cart / product pages or hum drum blog posts or supporting articles.

I will have to pass on the value of using 301 redirects in the video follow up of this post since, at this point, it would have been a great topic for an e-book or webinar as each topical point leads to 10 more granular tactics that could be implemented.

I hope this has provided you with a few ideas or concepts for implementing a self supportive site architecture. For every tip provided, there are 10 more such as leveraging tags, canonization issues, etc. So, this is a wrap for this 3 part post.

Granted, there are multiple intricacies and layers to every metric discussed, each in fact could be taken to the extreme from the level of minute details to a thesis level dissertation.

However, the take away here is, if you apply principles of optimization across a broad array of metrics you increase the likelihood of attaining a higher relevance score for each page and developing a broader range of authority for your domain.

Optimization is to increase search engine exposure and positioning, yet positioning only matters if the content is geared for the user to take action.

Thanks for reading the SEO Design Solutions Blog, where you will find useful SEO tips, tactics and strategies that you can use to create viable shifts in search engine positioning for your site.

SEO for Large Websites Part II

Now, in Part II,  it’s time to move on to the following metrics (that are equally as important) to round out the summary of what a optimal blueprint would look like for creating a robust SEO campaign for a large website (which ultimately has different needs than a smaller website).

• Define Ranking Objectives (covered in Part 1)
• Plant Seedling Keywords (covered in Part 1)
• Determine Preferred Landing Pages
• Reinforce Competitive Keyword Categories.
• Strengthen Internal Linking, Consistently.
• Use Succinct Titles and Meta descriptions (as they can pull their own rankings alone).
• Manage Site Wide Duplicate Content (Custom templates, Noindex, Follow, 301 Redirects, XML Sitemaps).

Determining the Preferred Landing Page - This is possibly one of the most important aspects to an organic optimization campaign. Most simply assume that their homepage is the most relevant place for conversion, yet, nothing could be farther from the truth.

You should know that instead of just entering the front door/homepage that people will enter a website from the side door, the back door, on a whim from an iframe from a social media site, a Google blog alert from Google Blog Search, an RSS feed reader or otherwise.  So, depending on your homepage is not an option as your website grows and develops more authority unless you want to leave a pile of cash on the table for your competition to devour.

Each page MUST quickly establish what its purpose is and clearly communicate a core benefit to the user in order to facilitate conversion - so this is where your preferred landing pages come in.

If you understand that each page can rank for specific keywords on its own merit and understand that it is a process well within your control, then it doesn’t have to be a guessing game when it comes to conversion. Organic optimization under this light becomes more like a preferential selection of significant landing pages that are augmented by subordinate means within a site such as (a) dynamically generated php includes with topically aligned products or pages (b) contextual linking from related pages “much like Wikipedia” (c) sitemaps (d) RSS feeds or syndication formats such as Google Base or other means to provide deep crawling and indexing.

In another post named “How to Make SEO Landing Pages That Rank Like PPC“, I cover this tactic in greater detail. However, to summarize, you simply create enough topical pages or leverage the co-occurrence of keywords (from pages or posts, tags, tag clouds, footer links, etc.) to link to the preferred landing page with the root keyword and stemmed variations you wish to rank for.

You simply need to conduct competitive analysis on the first page you see ranking on its own merit (ranking with a specific page and not the homepage) in search engines for that keyword. Then you can check the websites’ concentration ratio of frequency and co-occurrence for that keywords saturation/percentage. For example in a Google search box you can use the search operator

site:competitorsdomain.com keyword

It will state “results 1-10 of X Amount”, X-amount will vary depending on the number of supporting pages are targeting the keyword. Targeting implies that it appears in exact match, phrase match or broad match in the title, description or on the page or in links in some way, shape or form in the site.

Using that search operator, you can see how many ball park / supporting pages they used to acquire that position. Granted site age, domain authority and page strength / relevance and continuity have a great deal to do with their position; you still need comparable metrics that you can use for gap analysis. After you have a metric, you can then analyze their strongest pages as well as the other top 3 competitors to look for similarities or indications of their ranking tactics.

For example, are they employing fewer more authoritative links and dozens of supporting pages for each topic or a larger number of internal links and less external links to each page to produce their ranking factor? Each has its advantages and disadvantages, but at least you will have a benchmark such as (100 pages and 20 links per page with varied anchor text) to topple their competitive advantage.

Reinforcing Competitive Keyword Categories - This is where ranking battles are fought and won daily in reinforcing multiple granular layers to send a clear signal to search engines that you are working under the premise of optimization.

For example if I wanted to rank for the keyword “designer shoes” or “athletic shoes” which is a great example of a broad category replete with brands, makes, models and features. I could then set up the parent category so that it is only a few clicks away from the root folder and then feed the relevance model by using title tags, site architecture and content to reinforce topicality.

Designer Shoes has 2.5 million competing pages in the top 1000 search results in Google. Since that is not extremely competitive, depending on how you leveraged the off page factor, I would say a timeline of 8 months to acquire that result is fair.

Looking at the threshold, the more supportive layers I add to this topic, the easier it would be to scale relevance, which means that adding multiple sub folders and using the subordinate pages to get spiders and links to those pages internally would be the first priority.

From personal experience, I would add 100 pages of contextual content to use to support the landing pages. The contextual articles could be a blog or articles designed to instill a footprint in search engines with an array of anchor text and relative pages “designer shoes for sale”,  ”why you should avoid designer shoe knock offs”, etc., to reinforce the theme of the site.

I would then structure the site in such as way that the top level categories are broad enough (shoes) to encompass one more layer where I can instill make, model (designer pumps/designer flats) and a unique description to set myself apart from other companies that may be employing copycat content from mfg. specs.

One example would be shoedomain.com/shoes/prada-black-highheel-pumps.html that way I could consolidate or parse each aspect/designer/make within one query string after the /shoes/ sub folder or elect to specify one additional silo to support. The category would be where I focused the anchor text to from within the site, in addition to each specific make, model and designer after the site architecture was in place.

By feeding the sub folder “shoes” and funneling internal and external links to that “keyword-rich / relevant sub folder”, I am indirectly providing buoyancy to each page contained within that folder (making it less dependent on off page ranking factor). If I can internally reinforce the landing pages in this capacity, then time, absolute links (using the full URL vs. relative links /page.html) will eventually create Pagerank and flow upwards and back to the main categories and site theme if structured properly.

Then after I was done with that category, I would move on to the “athletic shoes” category and set up similar internal support mechanisms. You could then cross link the two categories with secondary navigation, footer links or the contextual content to provide a push to your deeper internal pages.

As the site grows and ages, it will be able to manifest ambient rankings from keyword stemming (queries finding near matches in the descriptions, title tags and content throughout the site) and return an array of search results from the long tail that supersede your original ranking intent.

This broadening of relevance and keyword stemming is a blessing in disguise, but it is the site architecture and the use of deep links and internal links (deep links from RSS feeds, or other sites even if it’s only a few links from other websites) will differentiate your site from a competitors who has zero inbound links to deep pages.

This concludes part II of SEO for large sites and in the last and final post SEO for Large Websites Part III (coming soon), we will cover my favorite topic, internal linking, the thread of relevance between titles, descriptions, url structure and landing pages in addition to some other unique tactics that you can use to leverage your on page SEO factors.

Stay tuned for more from SEO Design Solutions Blog, where we share free search engine optimization tips, tactics and strategies that you can actually use to conquer your competition online.

SEO for Large Sites Part One

Although phrase based indexing and retrieval is a prime method for extracting relevance and context, there are multiple layers involved ranging from site architecture, internal links, external deep links and accessibility that all contribute to the formula that decides (based on the least common denominator) which pages are the best match for any given query.

To Assist Search Engines We Suggest that You:

• Define Ranking Objectives.
• Plant Seedling Keywords.
• Determine Preferred Landing Pages
• Reinforce Competitive Keyword Categories.
• Strengthen Internal Linking, Consistently.
• Use Succinct Titles and Meta descriptions (as they can pull their own rankings alone).
• Manage Site Wide Duplicate Content (Custom templates, Noindex, Follow, 301 Redirects, XML Sitemaps).

Define Ranking Objectives - Depending on your keyword positioning and ranking objectives, you will need to select the best method to accomplish them. For example, if your focus is on the Long-Tail of search (meaning less competitive keyword combinations), then link prominence (links from other sites only to the homepage) and flat site architecture (all the pages in the root folder) will work just fine for accomplishing this type of result.

If the market were more specialized and you had less competition (like a high ticket item like MRI equipment), then you could elect for a smaller site with key nodes of relevance (like tips of an iceberg) to wrap up singular, plural and other popular keyword combinations over time.

By adding a series of keyword rich naming conventions and using pagination such as breadcrumb navigation you would reinforce 2 out of the 3 primary metrics search engines assess for relevance (url naming conventions and anchor text) within your own site to subsidize off page ranking factor.

The more work or more streamlined and granular your layers are optimized the less dependent the site becomes on getting a jump-start from other sites and the faster it develops its own authority (to rank on its own coherence/merit).

This strategy would differ from a large ecommerce site with thousands of SKU’s (stock kept units) which means that the model numbers would be the keywords and there would be a large degree of duplicity across the website due to generic mfg. descriptions, etc.

Each keyword has a threshold and tipping point and term frequency within a document, how clearly the hierarchy is promoted within your own website and how large of a footprint your website and link profile make (compared to your competitors) all determines how buoyant your rankings will become.

Plant Seedling Keywords - With keywords, keyword research, modifiers and action words the last thing you want to do is work backwards after the fact. Keywords are the foundation of organic optimization and are the wireframes that eventually support the schema of what a strategic page acting as a piece of the puzzle can accomplish based on its position in the pyramid of relevance.

That pyramid is (1) stable site architecture (2) relevant landing pages based on keyword continuity and (3) a strong internal and external link profile. However, before you can progress to stage 2 or 3, you need to have your hit list of keywords ready to engage the market and search engines alike.

There is no need to recreate the wheel, just look at search trends, related searches (in Google in the footer), keyword research tools and common sense to find a nice cross-section of relevance to use as your blueprint to frame out the site.

If you have a site that lacks coherence, it is not too late to add a new segment to consolidate the ranking factor, execute 301 redirects, add new naming conventions and implement a clear structure that implies a hierarchical method of consistency.

We often implement a an optimized blog on clients sites to concentrate ranking factors that allow us to bypass poorly implemented errors or dated site structures which omit crucial metrics for search engines (such as meta tags, internal links, a one size fits all template, etc).

By baking SEO into the template or new section, you know it is only a matter of time if you manage the areas which impact relevance over time. A stable search engine ranking for a competitive keyword can take anywhere from 4-12 months, but you have to remain focused on the ranking objective over time.

It is not uncommon that when you finally give up and think you have done everything possible to acquire a competitive position (and just relax) that it takes a top 5 or #1 position. The main thing is not to get frustrated or abort inadvertently since you may not see the real result without patience.

So, instead of targeting a handful of keywords, target an entire set of keywords to build the relevance for that subject/topic. By adding internal links to reinforce each other, your pages can implement the buddy system to feed off each other and steamroll the competition since you are using a tight niche of keywords.

To provide a more thorough overview, here is a post from the past on keywords and keyword modifiers that will explain the importance of alternative and supporting keywords and what role they play. This post on theme density will also aid in getting the point across that by concentrating your topics intelligently, rankings are a by-product of great content.

I can see clearly that this topic will require more elaboration, so, if you haven’t already, I encourage you to subscribe to our RSS feed to catch a follow up video and the rest of the topics outlined in this post above. This is a great topic and should have more than just an overview with bullet points.

In the follow up video and posts, I will break out each segment below in greater detail with examples to provide clarity:

• Determining Preferred Landing Pages
• Reinforcing Competitive Keyword Categories.
• Strengthening Internal Linking, Consistently.
• Use Succinct Titles and Meta descriptions (as they can pull their own rankings alone).
• Managing Site Wide Duplicate Content (Custom templates, Noindex, Follow, 301 Redirects, XML Sitemaps).

Stay tuned for more from SEO Design Solutions Blog, where we share free search engine optimization tips, tactics and strategies that you can actually use to get ranked.

Also, if your haven’t already (shameless plug), many of features we discussed are already available in our SEO Ultimate All-In-One Plugin for WordPress (hint, hint). This SEO plugin is definately worth checking out and is modular based so, we will continue to add functionality over time to expand its capabilities each week.

The Trinity of Relevance SEO, Traffic and Conversion!

Search engine rankings are to websites what the stock market is to businesses, they are a metric which others use to measure the degree of peer review, acceptance and impact they have on the collective marketplace as a whole.

In many instances, the position of your website in search engines communicates the degree of authority your website has vested within it about a particular keyword or topic. Yet, despite the topic, if the visitor fails to see the value in that authority or does not take action, then it will not matter what keyword they used to reach your site.

Aside from relevance, search engine positions are based on a moving target of criteria. These criteria have specific thresholds and demands that require a seer like intellect to divulge the source of which variables are more important than others (titles, supporting pages/links, domain age, pecking order within the site, accessibility, etc). Get them right and you remain intact, fail to impress search engines (or visitors) and metric will not matter as that visitor will simply move on to find a better offer.

In addition, with newcomers challenging established search results in every competitive vertical online market, it is no secret that Google is shaking things up and re-weighting the SERPs and changes the face of business as we know it each week with new updates and tweaks to their algorithm.

Consider it an extended update where stability has taken a backseat to the authority sites with new found focus or new kids on the block who finally figured out that title tags really do work….

Whatever the reason for the new entries (the old sites had stale metrics, the market is expanding or the relevance weights have changed) all we know is that the SERPs have been displaying a unique array of results for the past couple of weeks.

The trend, authority sites with link weight and popularity to spare taking a bite out of other markets when sparsely mentioning a keyword in the title, description or sparsely throughout the site.

I would rather not get into name calling, but, let’s just say that if you have been resting on your laurels for the past few months, that may not get your website the first page exposure you became comfortable with in the past.

The new algorithms are looking for new and exciting metrics to deduce the signal to noise ratio online. Your website really has to emphasize an authoritative position and reinforce it from multiple angles (web 2.0 / social media engagement, videos, press releases, RSS directories, Unique RSS Feeds, Article Syndication, and more).

In essence, you need to be visible in Universal search by being universal in scope to reach a broader cross-segment of where markets, users and attention are all intercepted by your website or websites. A successful online business requires a trinity of metrics in order to gain traction in a maket place; SEO (for visibility), search engine traffic (for qualified leads or visitors) and conversion (from visitors finding what they are looking for).

Keep in mind, there is no shortage of competition, if you do not own your space, then you will not occupy it very long. Just call it the law of averages which can work for or against you, depending on how you embrace the metrics of search engine positioning and engagement from prospects.

Any lapse in any of the fundamental areas search engines use to assess relevance could mean slipping off the grid of organic search and being upstaged as a result of temporal differences or thresholds for relevance or engagement being challenged by competitors.

Managing your sphere of influence:

So often we get caught up in the vanity plate keywords or ego boosters’ vs. expanding baseline traffic. This is where analytics comes into play and really digging deeper to see significant trends in regional or local keywords, bounce rates and engagement times or specific advanced segments or goals.

As a result, we can do more with less effort by seeing what signals search engines have already earmarked for your domain so that you are essentially not going against the grain when it comes to expanding on keywords already handing close to the top results.

Taking a month for example to examine keywords on the fence and push them from dangling by a thread in the 20’s into the top 10 is a far more beneficial practice than starting on an entirely new campaign or new organic keywords. The notion is to promote keyword stemming then broaden the range and scope of topical synonyms.

From there parse your contents highlights that receive consistent traffic and start looking for affiliate programs to generate income from a friendly referral from your website or funnel that traffic back to your preferred landing pages to propose an offer for engagement and conversion.

The simple takeaway is, you never know which metrics will gain or fall out of favor with search engines which is why you must thrive to re-create your online relevance model in order to stay ahead of the bell curve.

The more flexible your approach is and the ability to scale content or reinforce older pages with authority, the higher probability of maintaining or acquiring a larger percentage of organic search engine traffic.

Also, remembering that conversion optimization is just as important as search engine position and conversion is the real yard stick that measures was it all worth it at the end of the day. Increasing traffic without being as astute with analytics or layering your offers in context to the purpose of your website or web pages will only leave you scratching your head when your competitors have mastered the art of the squeeze page, PPC landing pages or solid organic content.

Here is our suggested reading list (to stay ahead of the curve) as well as emphasize potential areas in your website you may have overlooked while inadvertantly obsessing over rankings. Online marketing is holistic and diversity is the key to longevity and depth to offset dependency on any one metric.

The Following Posts are to Assist The Triad of SEO, Traffic and Conversion:

• Uncommon SEO Metrics
• Create Traffic or Optimize Existing Traffic
• How to Use Action Words to Increase Traffic and Reader Response
• Internet Branding - Brand Imaging & Brand Identity
• Assessing Competitors with SEO Market Analysis
• SEO is Great, But Conversion is Even Better
• SEO Delivers Traffic, But What Happens Next?
• Increase Conversion Not Just Traffic
• SEO Visibility and Conversion
• Facilitating Value Based Conversion

For those of you who have installed the SEO Ultimate SEO Plugin for WordPress from SEO Design Solutions and are have patiently waited for information about the feature-rich dashboard and configuration settings, we managed to extract the developer John Lamansky from the lab long enough for him to provide you with an in-depth video tutorial on how to unleash its pure on page potential.

SEO Ultimate allows you to transform your WordPress blog into a finely-tuned Search Engine Friendly content management system in minutes with an intuitive and easy-to-use interface.

NEW FEATURE: The Linkbox Inserter

In the spirit of upgrades, we have added another feature today,  The Linkbox Inserter -  a feature that encourages linkbuilding activity by inserting textboxes containing link HTML.to your posts or preferred landing pages. The Linkbox Inserter functions like a post within a post or adds another area for strengthening internal links to related content while preserving the quality of your original post.

This All-In-One SEO Plugin has 6 modules so far, each adding another layer of customization and features that would require hours of set up time to implement any other way.

Experience the power of SEO Ultimate with new SEO modules, features and functions being added on a regular basis. For more information, visit our product page for updates, new videos and additional information on this up and comming plugin which is sure to be a staple in everyone’s SEO toolbox.

SEO Ultimate is compatible with WordPress Themes ranging from Version 2.7 and up.

Here is a quick list of the features currently activated….

• Title Rewriter - Lets you format the <title> tags of posts, pages, categories, tags, archives, search results, the blog homepage, and more.
• Noindex Manager - Lets you add the noindex meta robots instruction to archives, comment feeds, the login page, and more.
• Meta Editor - Lets you edit the meta descriptions/keywords for your posts, pages, and homepage. Also lets you enter verification meta codes and give code instructions to search engine spiders.
• Canonicalizer - Inserts <link rel="canonical" /> tags for your homepage and each of your posts, Pages, categories, tags, date archives, and author archives.
• 404 Monitor - Logs 404 errors generated on your blog.
• Linkbox Inserter - Encourages linkbuilding activity by inserting textboxes containing link HTML.

Stay tuned for the next update or join the SEO Design Solutions RSS Feed to get the scoop on the next SEO module as it is released, or you can download the plugin directly from WordPress or visit our plugins information page.

In fact, since most traffic to a website (aside from your brand or brand name) are long-tail keywords (meaning they have 3 or more words), are you focusing on the wrong tact for your natural search engine optimization campaign?

Competitive Keyword Relevance Thresholds and the Conversion Funnel

Search engine optimization (also known as SEO) is all about positioning, and the more competitive a keyword is (meaning the more results listed in the top 1000 results in the search engines index) the more optimization, time and finesse is required to acquire a top ranking position.

So, the dilemma presents itself as a dichotomy such as (1) do you focus on the most sought after competitive keywords? Or (2) do you target keywords within your reach, set up superb conversion funnels and then over time spread the net wider to encompass more and more competitive keywords?

The logical answer is #2, but let’s explore why:

1)      Not all traffic converts

2)      The user expectation must match the page they land on to communicate a relevant hit.

3)      Search engines assign more trust and relevance over time to a large body of documents.

With this in mind and your website being a work in progress, this presents opportunities to scale your content and topical relevance based on competitive market intelligence. The marketplace is a great place for feedback and this feedback can be translated into market share, KPI’s or keyword objectives. Most businesses neglect the notion that by devouring less competitive keywords not only does your base-line traffic increase, but the site begins to stem over time and now you have hundreds if not thousands of new keywords delivering curious prospects to your landing pages.

Although this is contrary to the blinder based “only the keywords at the summit matter” mentality, the rewards of occupying the path less traveled in this scenario can be lucrative if leveraged properly. As you dig deeper into the long tail, the clarity of the sales cycle becomes clear (1) people are more descriptive when looking for specific products or services (like using colors, model numbers, etc), as well as (2) the need to drive more traffic becomes less significant as the conversion ratio’s increase.

Understanding the Competitive Keyword Threshold:

Point#1: People surf for many different reasons, hence, the more aligned your content is with their original intent, the higher probability of conversion your pages have to   transform inbound traffic into customers.

Point#2: Traffic that bounces signifies a negative relevance signal. Either fine-tune the content for the keywords it corresponds to or use the page as a hub/subordinate page that funnels the reader to the real champion landing page.

Point#3: A larger body of pages with a higher percentage of relevant content equals a larger volume of keyword saturation search engines can use to invoke relevance using inverse document frequency.

Reversing the conversion funnel:

Leveraging your relevance threshold in an inverted fashion is often overlooked by most. What this implies in layman’s terms is this… If you rank for a root phrase or keyword that has 1,000,000 competing pages, your website has already exceeded the threshold of 100k-999K competing pages for that root phrase algorithmically.

Scaling a relevance model from the onset (starting with keywords with 50K or less competing pages) and then acquiring more competitive keywords is typical. However, over time keywords stem and the optimized website starts to develop authority for a variety of terms.

One method we suggest is to (1) sift through your analytics and find the top 100 keywords driving traffic to your website and (2) look at the bounce rate and engagement time on the page to determine if people are genuinely interested in finding out more information on the topic.

Based on the data consumption rate of 200 words per minute for most, if they are spending 2 minutes or more on the page, then that page is a candidate for stemming a plethora of related keywords and synonyms from either higher or lower in the keyword food / relevance chain.

With this in mind, you can go back and broaden the array of keywords your sales funnel engages by setting up primary landing pages for second and third tier keywords you could acquire with a fraction of the effort.

Using the chart above (which is based on personal experience) you can see the relative competing pages and link threshold required to acquire nationally ranked keywords. Although this will vary depending on the quality of the links and the authority of the domain (since not all sites are dependent on backlinks for rankings). It was really designed as a model to emphasize the value of each threshold applied over time.

For example, in order to rank for a keyword with 1,000,000 competing pages, your domain should have at least 5K strong links and have an established link profile and ample amount of content on the topic in order to outrank your competition. Each variable may change, but the chart above is to provide the gist. The missing part of the model is the amount of pages, the amount of internal links required, etc. However, that will changes depending on the market and the competition.

The Takeaway

Whoever said that keywords with less competition do not convert or have less conversion potential does not understand the marriage of matching a long-tail keyword or key phrase with an emotionally charged landing page.

The take away here is, you can add another dimension to your educational pages and invest them with links to less competitive keyword phrases to elevate those landing pages in the SERPs (search engine result pages) to mop up the market with a blanket of relative landing pages.

For example, if your page ranks for “SEO“, the core root phrase, then you could also rank for SEO company, SEO services, SEO consulting, etc… with a fraction of the effort since you already have relevance on file (in the search engines index) so to speak.

Consider this SEO Credit that you can spend as you wish. Scaling your relevance model, from the bottom up or from the top down is an integral step in devouring market share (which is the ultimate objective for SEO). Remember, once you reach the top of a keyword threshold, anything below it is fruit for the picking to funnel even more relevant traffic to your web estate.

How To SEO: Off Page SEO Tips

When you consider the ranking factors that influence a website on a page by page basis, search engines have to parse millions of pages to sift through the bag of words and assign relevance through an advanced grading system.

Based on the signals search engines deem significant from within the site and from other sites, they apply a grade, much like an “SEO score” or “optimization score” to pages that exhibit certain tendencies. Based on those tendencies they then determine where that page ranks in contention to other websites and pages contained in the index.

When a search query is conducted in a search engine search bar, the search engine puts its internal dynamo to work in a serious game of concentration to sift and sort through the index and match that search query to the most relevant document from an alarming number of online documents/pages.

The algorithms and binary sorting mechanism has to determine which website or web page has enough authority, relevance or combination of on page and off page SEO factors to cycle a competitors’ page to the side and elevate the page with the highest significance into the ranking results.

This happens every time a search is conducted, where the query retrieves a match from the index/ repository. So, what are some of the signals search engines use to assign a higher degree of relevance to those documents in the repository? The answer is co-occurrence and citation, hence the higher correlation your pages have within that context, the more significant they appear to the sorting mechanism/algorithm.

1)      Accessibility - Can Crawlers Access your Pages?

2)      Consolidation - Is there a Clear Champion/Preferred Landing Page?

3)      Does the On Page and Off Page Optimization Reinforce Integrity?

Search engine optimization is a collection of multiple layers and processes all united for a common goal. Depending on how coherent the layers are implemented as well as how you use indicators to aid search engines in categorizing your content in order of importance also determines just how reciprocal they are when it comes to assigning a higher relevance score / relevance signal to your pages.

1: Put your best page forward - Help crawlers find your content with sitemaps or relevant internal links. Make sure your URL strings are not full of dynamically generated garbage and try to keep the naming conventions for your pages, the titles and descriptions as relevant and succinct as possible to impress the search engine spiders. They have a memory (at least the repository does) so, your first impression can typecast your page, so, better to have all of the right ingredients and recipes in place so you don’t have to go back and try to convince them later that it was not your original intent.

2: Create an island of relevance using a preferred landing page - Don’t try to make one page rank for everything, just create a specific page that would be the most relevant page a visitor should see for that keyword, then add a singular, plural and few synonyms to the page, title or meta description to augment relevance for that “core phrase or keyword”.

Then, link to that page from subordinate/supporting pages to reinforce the path of least resistance for search engines to find it.

3: Help search engines discover the page - You do this by diversification of off page factors. For example, you can cement relevance from (1) using diverse array of IP addresses to build back links (links from other sites) and (2) diversify the anchor text that have your main shingle in the linked/anchor text that refer to your page.

The question is, does the off page reputation augment or reinforce shingle variation or diffuse it? In other words, if you are trying to rank for the keyword SEO company for example, then you do not just want to have back links from other pages with the anchor text “SEO company”, you need to mix it up so you do not penalize your site.

You should have variations in your inbound anchor text such as:

• Search Engine Optimization Company
• SEO Companies
• Professional SEO Company
• Search Optimization Company
• Company for SEO
• As well as just the URL http://www.yoursite.com/page.html

Etc…

Then, over time increase the percentages of links and overlapping keywords until the on page SEO and off page SEO create the signal that allows that page to cross the threshold and pass the tipping point for becoming buoyant and rise to the top of search engines.

Depending on (a) the competition (b) the depth of their SEO (c) the time, strength and authority of the domain or pages in front of you and (d) the strength of your SEO and domain/page authority all determine the timeline for reaching the top results (granted search engine crawlers can index the page in question).

The takeaway here is, don’t assume search engines are stupid or need to be spoon fed relevance. They can assess from the gaps where your website and pages fit into the link graph and relevance model for any given query on the fly.

Just make sure that all of your signals overlap in a way that contributes to a higher relevance score for each layer that you introduce and implement to acquire a dominant keyword position for a specific page.

SEO, Press Releases and Building the Buzz!

It is safe to say that content without context or relevance falls on roving eyes or click-happy trigger fingers ready to abandon a website in a moments notice to find a more enticing offer.

The great thing about search engines and search engine traffic is, search engines deliver pre-qualified opt-in visitors, since the algorithm already determines what content to showcase to visitors who are already viewing related content. All this juncture, the emphasis is to align your offer and value proposition to match the expectation of the viewer to encourage engagement.

From another angle, people and search engines (since they are programmed that way) are externally curious and there is nothing like news to intrigue readership to a website or blog struggling to make an impression.

We know that the key to effective marketing is exposure, and despite the different species of traffic and visitors, relevance is the one thing they expect to buy in to the buzz and pass it on. In fact, presenting the concept, building the buzz “both online of offline” and managing the conversation are essentially the premise of large scale successful businesses.

So why not apply a scaled down version of this fundamental truth on your website as a mechanism for feedback, a way to extend your customer base, build a brand or target a new audience for an introductory product, service or prospective. This is where the SEO part comes into play.

Search engines pride themselves on finding the most articulate and refined content that is relevant and recent. We call it the content freshness factor in SEO and it can provide tremendous leverage for slouching sales, company morale or landing pages conversions.

Knowing this, if your website is still trying to pass off stale pages as significant (although they might be), there is nothing like adding fresh relevant news or information from your industry or niche to let search engines and readers know that you are a contender for the top 10 spots that represent the helm of your business model.

Search engine optimization has a very specific function, to drive relevant traffic from search engines to increase visitor engagement, sales and conversion in a method that can be replicated on a granular level.

Yet, SEO is dependent on popularity as a metric, which means that you could have the best website in a niche, but unless you broadcast it enough to gain critical mass to cross the tipping point, the exposure, trust and authority that search engines give it will be limited.

This process is known as peer review and essentially it is like running the gauntlet and the sites linking to your own act as agents of change that solidify your website or web pages position as a result of them vouching for your credibility online.

Trust is paramount when information is presented and notably search engines reward websites with a deep understanding on a topic or websites which are highly sought for educational purposes. This is one reason why Wikipedia rankings dominate the majority of competitive keyword verticals with ease.

Now, for commerce the best way to sell your product or service may not be through preaching about it through white papers, case studies or the like; however, there is a fine line that you can leverage to build brand equity while attracting new eyes to your ROI laden offers.

Rather than get into online promotional techniques, in this instance tactics would be more suitable. The idea behind building the buzz is to create an affinity with news aggregators or align your business topically with trends.

If you increase your websites news worthiness, you can increase your crawl rate (get search engines visit more frequently), you can create deep links (links from other websites to specific page) as well as gain exposure to thousands of readers using Google’s unique broad match algorithm (which will already display your site whenever a similar topic is typed in a search engine).

This is the power of the press release, the power to syndicate your message means that is can influence the influencers on common ground (their own / opt-in discretion). As a result, the press release serves as a medium to bridge the gap, create the buzz and provide a feedback loop for your pages. Yet the links, traffic and engagement that result in their wake can also bolster search engine rankings for specific landing pages. Not to mention, you can attract some links that have substance from webmasters who manage authority sites.

Just like search engines and SEO, you can spend all the time in the word optimizing your site for search engines, but at the end of the day, it all boils down to influencing the people that arrive (to take action). Humans not search engines pay the bills and so make sure your SEO has a purpose (to communicate a point).

Action and action alone is what truly impacts the bottom line, not just rankings but conversion from people facilitating your proposition from the emotional appeal of your offer.

Authority or Rankings Which Matters Most?

In the wake of Google’s last page rank update (something I think was to conceal dramatic new algorithms shifts), many websites are making their debut in the top 10 results out of left field. This is a clear example of those websites who focused on search engine result page positioning getting upstaged by web pages with more domain authority.

In order to compete, you need both; the reason being, you never know when the metrics will change and website authority provides insulation to stave temporal shifts in term weights or other operators being tweaked for relevance.

When search engines reweight the SERPs, (reassign the relevance model) many things that seemed as if they were rooted into the very fabric of the web can slip off into obscurity (past the first page or more) and have to battle it out with the new found relevant / newcomers.

For example, out of the blue today SEO blogger (a tool from Wordtracker) hits the first page for SEO in our datacenter. Is this typical? Absolutely not, when you look at the page in question with its 9 pages in the subdomain and 700+ deep links to that page, how could they simply pass up pages who have been rooted in the SERPs for years or struggling to raise the mark for relevance?

In essence, they did not…as it is a temporal rift that may or may not stick…

Yet, according to Google’s weighting method, the domain authority for the root folder (the main site wordtracker.com) has that type of authority and by them simply choosing to follow known aspects of optimization were able to funnel that into a specific relevance model capable or leap-frogging  others who stood in between them and the top 10.

Think of authority like credit, the more you have the easier it is to distribute as you please to leverage other assets, which in this instance was a search engine result page position for the keyword SEO. Yesterday adobe ranked in the top 10 for a sparse mention of the word “SEO” in a tag and the day before that opencube.com with only 8 pages in their site referring to the keyword, so do you see the correlation?

As search engines look for other ways to ascertain the validity of their results, authority under the right circumstances can overcome weeks, months or even years of struggle to get to the top vs. just targeting keywords alone.

This leads to the million dollar question when considering that all metrics only have a limited time-line before replaced, that question being, is it better to focus on authority or rankings? Our vote is to focus on website authority (so you can rank any page you need to through leverage), but ultimately it’s up to you to decide.

SEO Ultimate Version 0.5 Is Unleashed and Available for Download!

We have taken many of our cutting-edge SEO techniques and placed them all into a customizable dashboard that easily allows anyone with a WordPress Installation (version 2.7 or higher) to harness the “Pure On Page Power” of SEO through an easy-to-use interface.

Version 0.5 for the SEO Ultimate All-In-One SEO Plugin for WordPress boasts the following new features:

• New feature: SEO Ultimate can export its settings to a file
• New feature: SEO Ultimate can import one of its own exported settings files
• New feature: A button that can reset the settings to “factory defaults”
• Two bug fixes
• Version 0.5 restores backwards-compatibility with WordPress 2.7

With version 0.5, SEO Ultimate settings can be transferred between blogs, and SEO Ultimate works on WordPress Version 2.7 again as well as for all WordPress Versions of 2.8 as well.

In case you missed the previous updates, here is a listing of the SEO modules installed so far.

SEO Ultimate features:

• Title Rewriter - Lets you format the <title> tags of posts, pages, categories, tags, archives, search results, the blog homepage, and more.
• Noindex Manager - Lets you add the noindex meta robots instruction to archives, comment feeds, the login page, and more.
• Meta Editor - Lets you edit the meta descriptions/keywords for your posts, pages, and homepage. Also lets you enter verification meta codes and give code instructions to search engine spiders.
• Canonicalizer - Inserts <link rel="canonical" /> tags for your homepage and each of your posts, Pages, categories, tags, date archives, and author archives.
• 404 Monitor - Logs 404 errors generated on your blog.

Download SEO Ultimate from WordPress Today!

Download SEO Ultimate Now!