How Big is Your Long Tail Keyword?

Choosing keywords to optimize for is a tricky business, made all the more tricky as keyphrases grow longer than a couple of words. As Google has said, up to 20% of search queries in any given day are completely unique. Should you try to optimize your tauntaun sleeping bags product page for "tauntaun sleeping bag," for "childrens' tauntaun sleeping bag," or for "childrens' star wars tauntaun sleeping bag from hoth"? How can you research whether or not to optimize for such a long tail query?

This week we're asking the question: How big is your long tail? No innuendo intended. This is a totally serious question for the search world, wink wink, nod nod, say no more.

Many of you are familiar with the fact that the world of search is really dominated by this concept of the long tail. Google talks about this incredible metric that 20% of any search that's performed every day is completely unique. Google has never seen that search before performed on their engine at all. No one in history has ever made that search. That happens on one out of every five queries every single day.

Manual Labor in the SERPs

Although Google explicitly denies it and Yahoo! obviously uses it, in the search research world, it has been suggested many times that search engine use manual approvals and rankings of sites for the top 2-5000 queries. These queries make up between 20-35% of all queries done in a commercial search engine and by manually ranking pages for the top 10 returned results, search engines can shave significant burdens from the server load. It's no surprise, too, that search researchers believe that these manual rankings will also improve the quality and perception of quality of results for common searches.

For obvious reasons, SEOs are fearful of this shift, but it is, in fact a boon to the industry as a whole over the long term. Imagine being manually ranked in the top 10 for an exceptionally popular search term. The only way you can lose rankings is if the quality of your site/result deteriorates in comparison to the competition. Instead of link-building (which I personally find boring & distasteful), our jobs would be primarily about building the best, unique content available for the subject. That sounds like a switch I'd be happy to make.

" The Philosophy of Ranking First "

The Philosophy of Ranking First

A short post from yellowwing, an SEW member from up north in Winnipeg, had this to say today:

I've taken the philospohy of SEO as 90% Linguistics and 10% Math. Beat the competition, not the search engine. It is much easier to analyze other sites than to reverse engineer what the vast team of Google Phd's (sic) have come up with lately.

 

This brings up an interesting perspective about the two ways that SEOs approach their dilemna. In my experience, simply beating the competition (at least at Google) is not enough these days to rank at the top. You must obliterate the competition, in terms of quality and quantity of both content and links.

This could be due to the much maligned 'sandbox' that Google has many sites in, or it could be simply a matter of getting enough attention. In either case, the same hard effort is neccessary to compete.

Google Link: Command - Busting the Myths

I am NOT a fan of the Google link command, and I'm shocked by the number of folks who operate in and around the SEO, webdev and technology industries who haven't realized this. 

Here's what Google themselves have to say on the matter:

You can perform a Google search using the link: operator to find a sampling of links to any site. For instance, [link:www.google.com] will list web pages that have links pointing to the Google home page. Note there can be no space between the "link:" and the web page URL.

To see a much larger sampling of links to any verified site in Webmaster Tools:

1. On the Webmaster Tools Home page, click the site you want.
2. Under Your site on the web, click Links to your site.

Note: Not all links to your site may be listed. This is normal.

Here's what Matt Cutts (head of Google's Web-spam team) had to say in a video on the subject:

The short answer is that historically, we only had room for a very small percentage of back-links because web search was the main part and we didn't have a ton of servers for link colon queries and so, we have doubled or increased the amount of back-links that we show over time for link colon, but it is still a sub-sample. It's a relatively small percentage. And I think that that's a pretty good balance, because if you just automatically show a ton of back-links for any website then spammers or competitors can use that to try to reverse engineer someone's rankings.

Google themselves is telling us not to pay too much attention to the link command, but that doesn't seem to be stopping folks. Let the myth busting commence.

SEO For The Big Three (Google, Bing, Yahoo) !!

Ranking your website highly on one of the "big three" search engines (Google, Yahoo or MSN) is a daunting task let alone ranking your website highly on all three. Three engines, three algorithms, three different sets of rules - and yet there are websites out there that have first page rankings across them all – how do they do it?

While all of the major search engines use different algorithms the end goal of all three is the same: to provide the searcher with the most relevant results available. It is this one common thread that makes it possible for an SEO to rank a website highly across all the major engines. While there are a variety of factors at play and an even wider variation in the weight each of these factors are given – the possible variations that can produce relevant results are limited.

For example, if inbound links are given 0% weight then insignificant sites will ranki highly for high-competition phrases. Many reputable companies such as Microsoft could lose rankings for their own names so links must and will always hold value. On the other hand, if links were to hold 100% weight then sp@mming the search engines would be a simple matter and so there are a limited number of possible variables in between these extremes that this factor can have, no matter which engine we are optimizing for.

Solid SEO Through De-Optimization !!

That's right, today we aren't going to so much discuss optimization as it's antithesis. Some may wonder what sense this makes. How can one say that the road to higher rankings is built on trying not to rank? In fact, the effort is always to rank highly, it's just the tactics that are a bit different.

What Is De-Optimization?

De-Optimization is the reduction of those tell-tale signs of SEO that once-upon-a-time worked very well and only recently have come to be viewed as blatant attempts at, well, ranking highly. To properly de-optimize a website the following areas need to be addressed:

• Keyword density
• Back-link anchor text
• The use of special text
• Site relevancy 

With these areas addressed properly a site stands a much higher chance of ranking for the phrases being targeted and perhaps more importantly, holding those rankings over time.

The Dark Art Of Search Engine Optimization

The title of this article is designed to illustrate the point of this article. Today we won't be taking a look at black-hat search engine optimization tactics. Admittedly, I've toyed with them in a "know your enemy" kind of way but I'm no expert on advanced cloaking techniques nor effective link sp@mming tactics. What we're going to cover here are the hidden (i.e. dark) areas of effective optimization strategy.

I've written numerous times in past articles and blog posts that using tricks to rank your site highly is, in the end, ineffective as tricks imply a manipulation of the ranking formula and will eventually become obsolete as the search engines work to advance their algorithms and shut down such possible abuses. But here I'm going to illustrate some of the tricks we use to drive traffic to our site. Is this a conflict? Not really; these "tricks" aren't so much directed at search engines as they are website owners and visitors. These are marketing tricks, not SEO tricks - they just happen to help you with your rankings.

Google+ and the Potential Impact on SEO

Although you can only join by invitation at this point, you've no doubt heard of Google+, Google's latest attempt to join (or, in time perhaps, completely overtake?) Facebook and Twitter as a must have social networking tool. In the months before Google+ was launched, Google also began implementing the "+1" button as a usable option for users to signify that they enjoy a particular site or page in an attempt to gather as much raw data as possible about the popularity and social value of sites and content before Google+ was rolled out for the masses. Preceding the Google+ and +1 button was the introduction of real time search, which was able to incorporate search results from Twitter, blogs and Facebook. Google, it would appear, is realizing the immense value of social media and the impact of social media on web search.

Search will continue to have a social element infused into it as the addition of the +1 button will change search results, as will live feeds from Google+ pages, much like Facebook "likes" and Twitter "tweets" are currently affecting search results by influencing user decisions due to their value as endorsements of certain sites and content.

Google Commands for SEO? Are you familiar with these?

All SEO Google Commands

 

• cache:www.themarketingweekly.com
• related:www.themarketingweekly.com
• info:www.themarketingweekly.com
• allintitle:www.themarketingweekly.com
• intitle:www.themarketingweekly.com
• allinurl:www.themarketingweekly.com
• inurl:www.themarketingweekly.com

Here I have taken www.themarketingweekly.com as an example. Whenever you are using these commands, just simple replace www.themarketingweekly.com with your website URL

Lets look at these commands and few more, a little more in detail, and see what are they all about.

WWW or No WWW: Which is Better for SEO?

 

“Should I use www or no www in my URLs?” is a question that I see almost daily from new webmasters in search engine optimization (SEO) forums around the Internet.  The same question gets posed many ways, but basically they want to know which version of their URL is best for SEO. 

So I thought I would take the time to answer it here to save myself a lot of typing in the future when responding to forum posts. Yeah. I am lazy… err… efficient like that!

Is using www or no www better for SEO?

The search engines do not care whether you use www or no www in URLs on your site.  There is nothing in their ranking algorithms that causes them to rank a www version of a URL higher than a non-www version of the same URL (or visa versa).   So the www and non-www are treated exactly the same by the search engines from a ranking perspective.

Hyphens in URLs: Good or Bad for SEO?

People frequently ask whether or not using hyphens in a URL is good or bad for SEO.  It is probably one of the most frequently discussed topics on SEO forums around the web and is often one of the first questions asked by new webmasters. So I thought I would do what any red-blooded SEO would do… and toss out my opinions on the topic. 

Hyphens in URL folder and page names – The Good! 

I like using hyphens as word separators within folder and page names in the URLs of my sites.  I do so primarily for the benefit of my users.  I also do it to give the search engines a hand by explicitly indicating how they should parse my URL’s folder and file names into their targeted keywords.  After all, I wouldn’t want them interpreting “expertsexchange” as “expert sex change” when I meant it to be interpreted as “experts exchange”, or visa versa I guess!

Since search engines typically display your URL as part of your organic listing in the search engine results pages (SERPs), a keyword rich URL can give users strong clues about what they can expect if they click on your link.  In other words, it can affect click-thru-rates and therefore traffic. Using hyphens in the URL to explicitly separate words in the folder and file names makes it VERY easy for a user to read the words in the name of your folders and pages.  URLs without hyphens are not always so easy to read if youcramthewordstogether. 

Free Keyword Analysis That Is Actionable

Keyword analysis CAN be free!  You do NOT have to spend money buying tools or subscribing to a keyword analysis service in order to obtain accurate and actionable information on keywords to target on your site.  All you really need is a web browser.  It doesn’t get more free than that!

Keyword analysis should be the first step in on-page SEO when creating a new page on your site.  You should identify your targeted keyword phrase(s) before writing a single line of content.  The process outlined below details one method of analyzing topics and determining which keyword phrase(s) you might want to target using free tools readily available on the web. Let’s get going!

Keyword Analysis

There are many reasons to perform keyword research and analysis.  But the most common reasons are: