Create Topical Relevance for Keyword Stemming

What degree of contextual extraction from search engine snippets contributes to ambient or unintentional search engine rankings? Considering that over 50% of keyword queries are unique and even search engines have not seen them; information retrieval relies on contextual relevance to determine a pages quality score determined by the domain authority.

Search engine optimization (SEO) involves fine tuning your pages for optimal performance in search engines.  While many webmasters and SEO‘s only focus on metrics you can measure, there is a holistic and alchemical element that occurs naturally over time when the value of each page blends and fuses to create topical islands of relevance. This topical relevance allows pages to rank for a plethora of key phrases unintentionally and deliver an array of traffic to fuel conversion for your website.

There is a window of relevance that search engines use to determine which content stays and which content goes. For example, pages from sites that have not been visited since 1997 without inbound links, references or any type of inference from peers (other sites) lack the necessary impact to remain a relevant result and are either minimized to ranking for 1-2 terms or are essentially pushed out of the index.

On the contrary a new page from a trusted site or a new page from a site being linked to from other topical sites, social media sites, news aggregators, directories or editorially from various sources does have the needed ingredients to toggle the metrics necessary to be considered a relevant page and thus ensures its survival in the SERPs.

Essentially, each page that crosses a relevance threshold for the on page and off page synergy starts to stem and rank for keywords found sparsely on that page. This translates into hit after hit for keyword that was not considered primary phrases for the page in question.

This is typically referred to as mid-tail to long-tail traffic, however, this type of traffic can often exceed intentional (sought after) primary keywords consistently. In addition, using this aspect of how search engines scale relevance (before awarding a site a top ranking) keyword stemming should be utilized as a strategic advantage.

Mapping out the most relevant shingles to define your page to search engines, then using accommodating anchor text (on page) within the site with internal links and reinforcing that with (off page) links from other sites with related topical reference (peer review) creates authority for those keywords and key phrases.

So, for those still trying to measure the ROI of SEO prematurely, the results are cumulative and essentially continue to overlap over time. The takeaway is, with the exceedingly high degree of click fraud occurring in PPC (up to 35% in some instances) taking control of how you communicate your pages purpose to search engines and how they evaluate your website (as a reference or authority) is an added benefit of SEO.

For every keyword you target with purpose, 10 more are also pulled into the spotlight (which you can use to stem and pull up multiple related pages within your website into the top 10 results).

What is the value of a top 10 ranking you might ask? That all depends on how trafficked the keyword or the topic are. However, aside from visitors typing in keywords and searching for those pages, search engines can evaluate when your content has passed the contextual point of relevance and will essentially return those pages as relevant results (when someone searches).

With this in mind, you can target the low hanging fruit of today to capture the most competitive keywords in the long-run and create a pure win/win relevance model for your website.

Viewing SEO from this standpoint, you can reap the immediate short-term benefits of rankings funneling visitors to landing pages or take the approach of devouring market share so that “just in case” prospects search for a particular topic; your website is there at the helm of all things related.

Block segment analysis dictates the value of weight / ranking  factors a web page is given for a set portion of the page. For example, text in the header and footer of a document are treated differently than say text in the body section of a page.

The header is given more weight than the footer and typically the body text is given more value than both (since that is where the page has the ability to distinguish itself from borrowed elements, i.e. navigation, etc.).

The reason for this is simple, page composition dictates that proximity and distinction (the more unique one document is from another) by distinguishing your content, the better. Search engines can easily discern duplication (through shingle analysis, singular value decomposition, etc.) in areas such as navigation, sidebars/blogrolls with the same links and footers all using the same text. This has the tendency of diffuse a pages ranking potential.

In order to leverage a page for SEO, it must (1) get indexed and (2) stay indexed in order to pass its ideal ranking factor, be used to bridge ranking factor as a hub by building internal links to and from that page. If search engines determine that your pages are redundant or ubiquitous the dampener kicks in algorithmically and the ranking factor can be suppressed via de-indexing or filters (like the supplemental index) as a basis of sequencing leaving the same repetitive hash mark (from document to document).

This aspect of the ranking algorithm is based on the c-index whereby term weight and similarity are used to assign relevance through singular value decomposition as a base vector across web pages. If enough of the singular values are identified across the global collection of documents then you have co-occurrence (which may in this instance work against your ranking objectives).

Duplication via a template or though tag pages that lack unique content can go supplemental in a secondary search index, if they are not nurtured with enough internal link flow. The gist here is, the larger your website grows, the higher the probability of diffusing or diluting your global nodes / top ranking keywords (a.k.a keyword cannibalization) like an over-optimization penalty.

Just like a base that shifts to accommodate scalability, the foundation (like a triangle) must continue to broaden its base if the vertical threshold continues to rise. Similarly, the more pages you add about (1) topic A shift the focus from topic B. The common thread in most websites is the navigation (which if left to a simplistic ontology is not sufficient to feed an entire website).

You can stem a websites topic into multiple topics, however each has a threshold to cross and moving on many fronts requires more inbound links and internal stability though secondary navigation to sculpt the on page factors that identify each segments (to pass value).

This is why virtual theming (linking from relevant keywords in one document to another document) is so important. It allows the ranking factor to transfer link weight to the champion page through term frequency which essentially raises the bar in how search engines will interpret each respective keyword when considering it for retrieval.

Deep linking (acquiring inbound links to a specific page vs. just the homepage) is equally as beneficial for eliminating the tendency for pages to go supplemental (or lose ranking factor as a unique asset). When you spread a site too thin (expand the content through automation) such as using a shopping cart that pulls similar values from a database. You must ensure that you have the ability to customize data (titles, h1, and content) to make each page distinct enough to add additional leverage to your primary, secondary and tertiary keywords that define your website.

As an SEO company involved in this illustrious industry, I feel like we owe those sincere seekers who yearn for legitimate SEO techniques and only find dozens of sites with shallow posts, vague references and theory. I don’t mind sharing a few tactics here and there about keyword optimization, as the tendency to create, test and implement them typically happens faster than I can write them down.

This post in essence serves as a web-log of a fundamental technique, that we have used time and time again to bolster multiple top 10 positions in search engines. Naturally, we have to hold back something, otherwise we would make the SEO community obsolete, but in any case, these tactics are what we use when targeting an entire industry for long tail search engine domination, they can also be used for more aggressive/competitive terms by using this tactic.

But, in the even that you wish to rank in the top 10 for a result that has 1.2 – 1.8 million results, you can essentially pick them off like flies using just a fragment of this technique. The terms we consider worthy are usually the ones that takes months to acquire. So, don’t build links to fast from off topic locations, it’s better to focus on quality vs. quantity, however having a diverse base of IP addresses to use is ideal (such as an article marketing resource box that you can moderate) Hmmmmm.

The exercise:

1. First start off by writing down every possible singular keyword that pertains to your industry. From there narrow it down to the top 20-30 terms.

You could also just use a keyword discovery tool, but in this instance, think like a consumer trying to reach your site. The reason is, many of the search terms used to reach your site are unique and do not fall into realm of showing up on the “keyword radar”, so common sense can equal conversion if you pick the right phrase and beat your competition to the punch.

2. Then after you have a list of 20-30, start combining two word combinations strategically using the premise of how you think someone may type a query into a search engine.

web page optimization, optimize my website, how do I SEO my site, etc… come up with your wild card list of key phrases which you can have fun with later, since if you optimize your site for one group of keywords ALL OF THE KEYWORDS in the anchor text get a boost. So even though you may be building links using exact match, you still get the benefit of each individual word in Google.

3. After you have your list of 30 singular, 20 two-word combinations and 10 or so three-word combinations (just seeing if you were paying attention, since I didn’t say anything about the 3 word combinations) take each of the two and three word combinations, place the phrases “in quotes” and enter them in a standard Google search query one at a time.

Look at the results of the keywords in quotes and this will give you a good indication of the allinanchor and allintitle relevance by using the quotes. Usually if you do this, you can remove the quotes and 90% of the sites remain the same. Without quotes it may be 1-10 of 2,000,000 results, with “the quotes” it may show 1-10 of 20,000. It is the term in quotes you want to look at in order to gain a metric on the competitiveness of this key phrase.

Also, the more words you add, the easier it is to optimize, even if the chronology of the words does not make sense, you are still optimizing your site for any combination of keywords that are contained in the anchor text. In case it’s a new term, this is anchor text, so use it wisely as it is your number 1 tool for developing links, relevance and rankings (for now at least) in Google.

Getting back to the exercise, if the term comes back with under 100,000 results then move it into your to do list of links to build as a likely target for your SEO. Granted that this is merely one tactic, feel free to combine it with your own methods. Now, without giving away too many secrets, you will be responsible for finding ways to build links.

Not just any links, but links that allow you to have control over the anchor text (the text in the link). Use these terms to whittle away at the root phrases building 100 links per keyword combination, then run analytics software of check out Niche Watch and see where you stand using a before and after methodology.

Every site is different, but say for example you have a PR6 site, you can skip most of these tactics and just put a keyword in your title tag, mention it a few times, build links from your own site to itself and dominate the SERPs. However, since we know that you are going to be challenging websites such as those in the SERPs as you step over them in concentration for allinanchor relevance as you specifically augment your site by fortifying it with keyword combinations, you can actually surpass a lazy or passive higher page rank site in this fashion.

Our site for example can chip away and rise approximately 100,000 results per month for competitive terms using moderate link building methods (1000-2000 quality inbound links per month for example), so if we were going after a super competitive keyword such as “SEO Company” for example with it’s 1.4 million results, it would take roughly 1 year to build links to get to the top 10 using this tactic.

Each site is different as the authority that results from each link varies. The point here is, each website has a link velocity ratio that is consistent with how aggressively it can move up the rungs until it arrives in the top 10 search results for a keyword “in quotes”.

If you wanted to find out where you stand for the keyword in advance, you could always click your url first, then use the search command www.google.com/ie?&num=100 to get to the 100 results per page stripped down Google interface. From there (since you have clicked your link in advance) you can put the keyword in question “in quotes”, hit return and find out where you stand.

If you are position #200 for example and you are building links for every word that comprises the phrase (services SEO, SEO Services, Search engine Optimization Services, Engine Optimization SEO, etc.) then you should see your ranking move up and up closer to the top 10 for a number of terms.

When it hits the top 10 for the allinanchor: terms, if the keyword is not being challenged directly by another competitor your site should hit the top 10 as well. If there is competition you should be in the top 30 or top 20 results and you will have to figure out which other SEO factor is holding you back from there.

If you wanted to be more specific and chart your progress, you can find the link to link velocity ratio to determine how many links or how much time it will take you to crack into the top 10 for each of the respective search terms. Or you could find the best page for each link using the Google command site:www.yoursite.com keyword, to increase the links per page (LPP ratio) as a deep linking strategy to increase the impact of each link (don’t forget to socially bookmark them as well for an added boost).

This is how you get your rankings to spread out to other terms. *If you use exact match terms for two word key phrases, then you can see the results usually within a week. The idea is, start with three words, when you see them moving, then alternate one of the keywords with another word from your list from before. So you can rank for keyword keyword company, keyword keyword services, keyword keyword professional, etc.

Examples like SEO Marketing Consultant, SEO Website Marketing, Internet SEO Marketing, etc… this will become apparent later just how effective this tactic can be for blanketing a plethora of terms.

Then you focus specifically on the phrase you want to rank for, create a custom page using a keyword density tool or writing copy that utilizes the phrase one time in the title, one time in the h1 tag, one to 3 times in the document and continue to build links to that page with those keywords in the anchor text. This is the advantage of having a blog as you can camouflage your link building tactics under the guise of an informative post. I will just hint at SEO content copy writing here, but you get the gist (link bait, social media, social bookmarking / link building ahem, ahem).

My suggestion, build 50 links to the page and move on to another term. Then give it a week or two and go back and check the status of the keywords and how your allinanchor:, allintitle: and allintext: ratio’s are performing is contrast to the keyword combinations, make note of your progress and try to find your site in the SERPs again. You can go back to the Google interface and check or you can just scroll through the normal results to see where you stand.

If the keywords you select are under 20,000 results, if your site has some authority you can take those over from just posting an on topic post that is tagged properly in your blog. But to sustain them, you have to feed the pages keyword combinations to keep them afloat in the SERPs. This also provides a cushion around them to help fend off competition from leap-frogging past you up the ladder.

Acquisition (climbing the rungs) and defense from others can be done through varying the tactic slightly. Slow down once you have acquired a top 20 and let the link velocity push you up the ladder. Then you can build 1/3 of the links using the exact match terms until you hit the top 10. If you crack the top 10, then go back, add a few more occurrences of the keywords you want to rank for in your document/page. Add a few more links, wait a week and then see if that pushes you over the hump into the top 5.

This method may seem a bit chaotic, but you get the gist, you can manage one keyword or several at the same time. The key is to use a common denominator as the pivotal term that is used to tie together all of the variations of the word stemmed singular, plural and adjective based keyword combinations until you have effectively saturated each keywords density in the external links to your site.

You can always check on Google Webmaster tools which keywords have the highest occurrences that are directed at your site. The idea is, to build a base term, add a qualifier, then do this again and again, until all of your main keywords are essentially lodged in the anchor text pointing at your site from a wide variety of unique and Class C- IP addresses.

For example if you did a search on a term like “seo professional” this term returns 126,000 results. If your site has a PR4 for example and you have content that supports this type of industry of jargon in your domain name, on your pages or in your page titles, you should already have some leverage for the term.

Terms that have slight correlation to your site’s theme can be optimized, but the rate of which all depends on your website authority, the links you use and how much link juice they carry, where you point them, the competition and how algorithms see your link building techniques (natural or unnatural) if you invoke a penalty, you will not rank for that term for a while until it’s lifted, so it’s better not to get greedy and vary your titles, anchor text and pages when deep linking.

I hope you found this information useful, if you did, then cast your vote to share it, sign up for the RSS feed or just enjoy…See you in the SERPs.

Are you playing it safe with keyword blinders?, or have you diversified your Search Terms?

It’s better to be safe than sorry as a result of “having blinders on” when it comes to search engine optimization and selecting the best keywords for your offer. Instead of thinking in terms of “the money phrase”, or, as soon as I hit the top 10 for “my ultimate competitive keyword”, that floodgates of website traffic will open, sales will inundate our sales team and we will have to hire 20 people to scale our sales department to keep up with the surge of orders and traffic. This is not to say that things like this do not happen, they do, but rarely as a result of one keyword alone.

Don’t believe keyword hype

The misconception typically originates as a result of assumption, or misinformation gleaned from data mining tools / keyword research tools (it says this phrase gets 20,000 hits per month, so it must), which is understandable. I can assure you, we have dominated multiple rankings in top 10 competitive keywords with double organic listings, only to be disappointed by the lack of traffic that resulted. Yet, on the other hand, been completely surprised when you write or optimize something (supposedly less competitive) and experience surges of traffic for weeks from one keyword you may or may not have expected.

It is important to be clear what search engine optimization is not, in order to know what it truly is. SEO is not the answer to conversion, it is just a tool to rouse the masses to investigate your offer, but ultimately the responsibility lies within the realm of the individual or individuals structuring the offer, to determine just what the anticipated end result will be.

Are your Pages Eye Candy? or do they Own a Focus

The internet is full of hungry eyes with agile minds attached, so many in fact, that your pages may just be another snack along the way. In order to change the menu and make your site “the main course”, nine times out of ten, some changes need to occur to make the transition from pages with an idle online existence to a page that for lack of better terms, offers you a deal you can’t refuse.

What Can You Learn (and apply to your own site) from a Squeeze Page

First, the headline – Call to Action and Conversion Starts Here. When you look at a typical squeeze page, once you get there, there is no question what the page is about, in fact they make it hard to see anything other than what the topical relevance is when you first set eyes on the page, but why? Because the headline takes up 25% of the screen, is usually in a ridiculously loud color, with quotes and highlighted in yellow. Anyone who fails at that point to surmise what the contextual relevance is for being there, should have their internet license suspended for surfing blind without emotional attachment.

In any case, the point being, the pages, despite how obnoxious they are serve a very fundamental purpose, which is to set the tone and funnel the reader’s attention to the meat and potatoes of the document (typically found at the very bottom alongside a pay pal purchase button). This is were the old adage of (A.I.D.A) attention, interest, desire, action comes into play in it’s sublime simplicity.

Next, the testimonial, but why? Because they know you are skeptical and they know they need to subvert your defenses in order to engage the rational mind behind the emotional response when you shop (do I need this or do I want this, can I ignore or suppress the urge to purchase, or am I genuinely interested) all the while thousands of queries such as this race through the subconscious and either lead your to (a) move along (b) read further, since your there or (c) take the plunge and purchase, because, what the hay, it’s only money right.

Next, the problem / solution, which is usually built on the premise of using questions to preface it’s significance. Are you tired of? “the problem” Do you get frustrated when? Now you can be free of, by using our super duper X,Y,Z solution for mere chump change (only $39.95) for the ultimate answer to your prayers.

O.k, so I was a bit over the top, but I’m sure it’s not the first time you have seen this pitch, purchased or nearly purchased something as a result of it. Most of us are conditioned not to respond to such an overtly obvious pitch, however, I must admit, I am an impulse shopper and randomly purchase e-books in this fashion and never get around to reading them (the ideal customer for squeeze pages).

Then, the close, here is where they hit you with information about the product or service with the focus is on the “how you can benefit” mentality and inevitably the call to action, ORDER NOW!, ORDER TODAY, ORDER IN THE NEXT 5 MINUTES AND RECEIVE A FREE “rubber ducky, widget,etc.”, once again, it’s all about conversion.

Sure that page may get 1000 visitors that day, and from that 1000 visitors 100 order, that is more than enough to offset the other 900 that did not, so you can see the beauty in their plan. Pages like this could teach a great deal to businesses seeking conversion for their efforts instead of just visitors window shopping and burning up bandwidth, and I must admit even our pages in the main site need to take the positive benefits from such a blatant business model. The squeeze page is just that, a page that funnels their attention to a conclusion and then compels them to take action.

Have you heard of Funneling Attention for Higher Conversions?

Business models that make money are using the funneling tactic to amass massive amounts of income, using a tried and true / simplistic theme. Even though is mainly has it’s place in direct sales, affiliate programs, sales for e-books or inexpensive items. I have seen this tactic used for offers in the thousands and still convert readers (it just took more filler in the middle to build the argument and present the solution). Getting back to the basis of this article, the conclusion is SEO does not ensure conversion, it merely sets the stage.

Branding is one thing, but how many people are online just for the sake of saying ” I am the number one brand for industry X”, perhaps this is important for corporate America, sure, but,for the rest of us out here trying to make ends meet, we need conversion in some way shape or form.

Knowing this, instead of thinking narrow when it comes to using SEO, one could opt for a more holistic approach whereby they identify the behavior of the types of clients they would like to attract, thinking of individuals as opposed to demographics from a one dimensional prospective. If you think holistically, you can cover your bases and optimize entire segments of the niche as well as use multiple tactics and search engines to draw traffic from a variety of queries and implement “attention and retention insurance” for all of your respective offers.

For example, instead of one or two phrases, why not have twenty instead, it essentially takes about the same amount of effort and can be accomplished through modifying slight variations of content and how your build links.

Just having a top 10 ranking does not ensure traffic, simply because, not all keywords convert! It truly is sad to see so many people just scratching the surface for topical relevance, when in reality mosts sites are capable of acquiring heightened depth (for readership) and conversion and could achieve 400% more times the amount of traffic from just applying rudimentary steps to lead people through the “expected action for that page”. But, they have to get there first, so my suggestion in a nutshell is, to optimize root phrases with pertinent keywords instead of simple “exact match key phrases”, use strong internal links to get viewers deeper into the site and use graphics or video’s to cut the bounce rates in half.

We will continue along these lines for the next few days and covering topics related to SEO, conversion, structuring your offer and how the way you craft your content, ultimately impacts the bottom line. Stay tuned for the next post…

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Since the value of links is all based on the collective support they rally. The stronger the backlink the more value it can pass to your site as far as aiding your pages in maintaining or increasing positioning.

If you have ever tagged a site using social bookmarking, then you have scratched the surface. For example social bookmarking utilizes the premise of link insurance. Not only is it great to seal the deal with spiders (by getting their attention), but with enough inbound links strategically augmenting a page, it can provide long-term value for the link-freshness factor which can keep your internal pages buoyant and moving up in the search engine rankings.

A stable authority site (built over time with a tremendous amount of link weight) has less chance of losing favor with search engine algorithms. However, what about other transient links, that drop off, get buried over time or the site architecture from the site offering the link is so taxed that by the time the pages are spidered they are tapped out as far as their real value is concerned? What is a viable solution to revive potential rankings?

The Solution: Building links to your links as insurance

I am not suggesting to abuse this tactic, what I am insinuating is, maintaining a stable influx of link juice into a site benefits all of the pages in that site (as long as you distribute the inbound links in moderation). The premise here is, balancing the ratios of content development to inbound links (and their various anchor and modifiers) along with systemic deep linking is the cornerstone of relevance of SEO basics in action.

Links also can have more internal value from a page that was recently promoted in the Google algorithm. For example, if a page went from a page rank of zero to a PR2 or PR3 page in one update, if it gets indexed regularly and is succinctly tied to the sites main navigation, then you have an authority link right under your nose you can use to augment your main keywords as you wish.

You can always review such content an amend it for a common goal. Ten links from strong internal pages to a sub folder or page buried deep in the site can change the landscape of a page or sites SEO value. Combining this with the fact that you can point new links from those pages at older links (to keep them fresh) or use them to kick off new content with a splash, the possibilities for recycling your sites internal link dynamo is promising.

One Example of the Equation:

1) Find a slouching ranking and determine a keyword you want to invigorate
2) use a site:yourdomainname.com keyword (command) to find the most relevant page in your site
3) Build a new page using the main keyword in the title and text
4) Link to the new page from the old page (with page rank) using the (keyword) as the anchor text / link text
5) publish your content
6) build links back to the old page (using social bookmarking or other ethical link building methods) to flow link weight back to your site and your new page.

When the page gets crawled, it already has the ranking factors intact, relevance and an endorsement from your own internal links. This is a great strategy for a maiden voyage for a new page, although this is a rudimentary version of the tactic, you can see the value in building links to your links.

Every three months, you could essentially go back through your analytics, look at the most searched keywords, perform an audit and ensure that your older links are getting enough nurturing as a result of fresh links. The stronger they are the stronger your site is.