Weekly SEO news: 24 January 2012

Welcome to the latest issue of the Search Engine Facts newsletter.

Keywords with little competition require different tactics than keywords with high competition. If you want to get the best possible results for your website, you must use the right tactics with the right keyword.

Also in the news: Google gets more paid clicks, 31% of all display ads are never seen, Google's new search feature has a negative effect on the search result page quality, you can get detailed information about your competitor's search engine strategy and more.

Table of contents:

We hope that you enjoy this newsletter and that it helps you to get more out of your website. Please pass this newsletter on to your friends.

Best regards,
Andre Voget, Johannes Selbach, Axandra CEO

1. Different keywords require different SEO tactics

Keywords with little competition require different tactics than keywords with high competition. If you want to get the best possible results for your website, you must use the right tactics with the right keyword.

1. On-page optimization has a higher impact for long keywords

The relative value of on-page web page optimization is very high if you target very long keywords with little competition:

Diagram: the effect of the tactic on your search engine position

Here's an example: say you want to be listed for the search term "buy blue nike 'the overplay' basketball shoe in Atlanta" then it is enough to optimize one of your web pages for that search term because the competition for that search term is not high. You don't need many inbound links to get high rankings for that keyphrase.

If you target more competitive keywords, you need more backlinks to get high rankings in the search results.

2. Even if you target competitive keywords, it is important to optimize your web page content

The chart above might create the impression that web page optimization is not important to get high rankings for very competitive keywords. That is not the case. Optimizing the contents of a web page is the essential basis for high search engine rankings.

By optimizing a web page for a keyphrase, you tell search engines that the web page is relevant to that keyphrase. If more than one web page has been optimized for that keyphrase (which is usually the case) then the web page with the best inbound links will get the highest position in the search results.

For example, the website www.cnn.com has 46,600 inbound links according to Google. Although CNN.com has so many inbound links, they do not rank for the keyword "buy blue nike 'the overplay' basketball shoe in Atlanta" because the website has not been optimized for that keyphrase.

3. Optimize your web page content, then work on the backlinks

If you want to get high rankings for a keyword, the first step is to optimize one of your web pages for that keyword. Then work on the links that point to the optimized web page to outrank other websites that have been optimized for the same keyword:

Diagram: the importance of different SEO tactics

4. The more pages you optimize the better

When you optimize your website, optimize different pages of your website for different keyphrases. Start with longer keyword phrases that don't have much competition and then proceed with more competitive keywords.

For example, start with the keywords "buy sneakers in atlanta", "buy cowboy boots in atlanta", "buy pumps in atlanta", "shoe shop atlanta", etc. When you have managed to get high rankings for many of these keyphrases, Google will know that your website is relevant to the topic "shoes".

As soon as Google knows that your website is relevant to the topic, it will be much easier to get high rankings for more competitive keywords such as "buy shoes" or even "shoes".

The more pages of your website you optimize for different but related keywords, the better.

5. It's not necessary to have more links than your competitors

It's not always necessary that you have more links than your competitors. You need better links.

Try to get links to your website that use the targeted keyphrase as the link text (also called anchor text) and that point to the web page on your website that has been optimized for that keyphrase.

Don't focus on quantity, focus on quality. Getting hundreds of links from a link farm won't help your website as much as a few dozen links from relevant web pages with authority.

If your website has both optimized web pages and good inbound links then it will be easy to outrank web pages that only have one factor.

Our SEO software tool IBP can help you to optimize your web page content and to get backlinks to your website. You can download IBP on our website.

 

2. Search engine news and articles of the week

Google: more paid clicks

"Aggregate paid clicks, which include clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of our Network members, increased approximately 34% over the fourth quarter of 2010 and increased approximately 17% over the third quarter of 2011. [...]

Average cost-per-click, which includes clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of our Network members, decreased approximately 8% over the fourth quarter of 2010 and decreased approximately 8% over the third quarter of 2011."



GoogleGoogle slows web crawlers to help blackout sites

"Hello webmasters! We realize many webmasters are concerned about the medium-term effects of today's blackout. As a precaution, the crawl team at Google has configured Googlebot to crawl at a much lower rate for today only so that the Google results of websites participating in the blackout are less likely to be affected."



Amazon to launch cloud search service

"Amazon is working on a new cloud search product that is very likely already being used by early customers, according to industry sources who have seen the product. [...]

Amazon’s cloud search will compete with Google’s site search– but from what we hear, it ups the ante significantly."



GoogleTime: Why Google’s biggest problem with ‘Search Plus Your World’ isn’t antitrust

"User dissatisfaction with Google has been simmering under the surface for some time now. [...]

The increasing clutter in search results – well cataloged by Carl Franzen – was something that folks like Rick Webb put up with, but what if they could no longer count on Page Rank? If nothing else, SPYW may be giving users the impression that results are no longer 'unbiased.' [...]

Users, however, may not wait for the company to get it right. They can and will switch. And sensing a weakness, new competitors may well enter the search space."



Study: many display ads are never seen

"The display advertising market today is characterized by an overabundance of inventory, often residing on parts of a web page that are never viewed by the user. This dilutes the impact of campaigns for advertisers and represents a drag on prices to publishers. [...]

The remaining 31 percent were delivered but never seen by a consumer, a likely result of a consumer scrolling past the ad before it loaded or a consumer never scrolling the ad into view."



Competitive intelligence reloaded: get much more information about your competitors

"Getting detailed information about the search engine strategies of your competitors can help you to identify problems and opportunities for your own SEO campaigns."



Search engine newslets

  • IPv6: countdown to launch.
  • Google IP vandalizing OpenStreetMap.
  • Google fixes Checkout bug that leaked customer data.
  • Is Google selling investors private search data?

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3. Success stories

Tell other readers of this newsletter your success story!

Let us know how IBP has helped you to improve your website and we might publish your success story with a link to your website in this newsletter. The more detailed your story is, the better. Click here to tell us your story.



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