Six months
later, they've actually sunk a bit lower in the
SERPs. The good news is that the site is getting
some traffïc from the links built and from the
lowly search engine position, but nowhere near
the 100 visitors/day they were hoping for from
search results.
Company B, meanwhile, had content written around
a long list of keywords with little or no
competition in the search engines, using
up-to-date search engine copywriting techniques.
They've been enjoying a growing stream of
visitors to their site almost since the first
page of content was added. Three months later,
the site's search engine traffïc has grown by a
hundred unique visitors per day, or 3,000 per
month. Moreover, Company B's repeat visitor
traffïc has also jumped. Type-in traffïc has
increased, presumably as visitors forward the
URLs of useful pages to their friends. Page views
are up, too, not only from more repeat visitors
and type-in visitors, but also from first-time
search visitors staying longer and browsing more
pages. Six months later, the website's content
has built a loyal following on the net,
generating even more repeat visitors. The search
engine traffïc is as good as it ever was.
What happened?
Pitfalls of Link-Building for Search Engine
Ranking
Company A thought it had a fairly sure thing:
build enough optimized links for the keyword,
taking care not to trigger search engine
penalties. Yet as they've discovered, there is no
sure thing when it comes to search engine
rankings:
- Over-optimization
penalty minefield. The search
engines, particularly Google and Yahoo!,
are very risk-averse when it comes to
ranking sites well for competitive
keywords. On the whole, they are
perfectly willing to risk dropping
several good sites from top rankings in
order to try to keep one bad site out.
They are constantly tweaking their
algorithms to identify sites whose link
structures are not indicative of a
quality site. In the process, plenty of
good sites with good SEO also get swept
up. This risk of failure is the inherent
risk of SEO. True, most of the time, a
good site with good SEO does move to the
top. But in a large minority of cases,
quality goes unrewarded.
- Competition
and the moving target. As Site A
was moving up the search engine results
for its competitive target keyword, so
were the other sites. There is no rest
for the victorious when it comes for SEO.
The top sites for highly competitive
keywords are constantly building new
optimized links. That's why any SEO
effort has to aim to do at least ten
percent better than the site currently in
the position it's targeting.
- Lack
of keyword diversity. Too often,
websites with modest SEO budgets (and
$5,000 is modest when it comes to a
competitive keyword) aim for just a few
keywords. Given all the potential
pitfalls of an SEO campaign, you need to
be going after ten or more target
competitive keywords, and at least
another ten related but less competitive
keywords. That way, failure for a few
keywords won't scuttle the whole project.
Meanwhile, search engines look for
diversity in targeted keywords, so you
get much more out of targeting a largër
group of keywords. If you can't afford to
do this, you're really better off not
going after competitive keywords. Sure,
you might get those rankings. But what
happens if you've spent your budget and
still have little to show for it?
Meanwhile, the fundamental advantage of
pursuing low-competition keywords is
that, by definition, it's much closer to
being a sure thing.
Advantages of Web
Content SEO
- Greater
certainty. Not only is a page of
content extremely likely to bring in
search engine traffïc — unlike the
similar investmënt in links — it
won't suddenly disappear. The sites
linking to you might stop anytime, or do
something to stop links' passing search
engine value (such as adding the
"nofollow" tag or switching to
a search-engine-unfriendly content
management system).
- Cost.
Traditionally, copywriting has been more
expensive than link-building. But that's
changed. As "nofollow"
link-Scrooge-ry becomes more and more
common, and as paid and reciprocal links
get downgraded, the real cost of
obtaining quality links increases.
Meanwhile, the copywriting market has
increasingly adapted to the needs of
search engine marketing. To get a search
engine visitor, you don't need a
Pulitzer-prize winning essay or a killer
salës letter. You simply need highly
focused, readable, keyword-optimized,
information-packed pages of around 250
words each — and more and more
copywriting and SEO firms are delivering
this service cost-effectively. Blogs,
meanwhile, let you and your employees add
content easily. Bulletin boards (modified
to be search-engine-friendly) let site
visitors add content, too. In fact,
"natural content" from blogs
and bulletin boards is now much more
viable than natural link building.
In conclusion,
when you look at SEO, don't forget that your
number-one goal is not to rank high for a certain
keyword, but to get more search engine traffïc.
In some less competitive sectors, high rankings
may still be a realistic and effective
proposition. But increasingly, ranking high for
competitive keywords is no longer the best way to
get traffïc.
About The Author
Joel Walsh is a professional in the fields of
copywriting and SEO who has recently launched http://www.UpMarketSEO.com, an SEO firm.
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