Less is the New More When it Comes to Getting Ranked
So, in the last tutorial, we went over some onpage optimization methods for marketers to make sure that your site is 100% optimized for your keyword. But there were a few things that I left out so I figured that I would spend a few moments on them.
In the first tutorial, I went through how the google bots go over your page. If you bought what I was selling, then you now know that getting google to index you correctly for your keywords is very important and therefore you want to give the google bot everything and the kitchen sink to help them figure it out.
Now, if this was all to SEO then we could stop there and eventually we would get ranked, right?
Well, not exactly. You see, onpage optimization can be a little more difficult than that. We are going to discuss how more keywords you are optimizing for, the less effective your keywords will be in terms of getting ranked……
SEO for Beginners- Less is the New More
So you have a site and figured out what you want your site to be about….using the last tutorial as an example, let’s say you have a site about hunting bows. However, you have done some keyword research and decided that in the title tag you have other keywords that you are gunning for as well….
Well, here is something to chew on. The more keywords you put in your title tag, the less significance each keyword will get.
More importantly, the 1st keyword is going to be considered MOST relevant in terms of on page optimization. Now imagine this….
- You have two sites that are equal. (equal pages, links, ect.)
- One site is keyword sniping its way using just one keyword.
- The other site is using the same keyword BUT is also trying to rank for three other similar keywords (as is in it meta description and title tag).
- Which site will have a greater chance of getting ranked higher?
Maybe this is flawed logic but what I have personally seen is that if you are trying to rank for some long tail niche, your chances of ranking highly are much more improved if your site is optimized for that one keyword.
In other words, if two sites are both ranking for lasik surgery in Dallas but one of those sites is using their primary word as lasik surgery and the other is using lasik surgery in Dallas, then it is very likely that the site ranking for the long tail keyword will be higher for that keyword, all things considered equal.
If you look at it from google’s standpoint, this makes sense because google is simply trying to find the most relevant information in regards to the searcher’s query.
And if someone is searching for Lasik Surgery in Dallas, then chances are greater that they will find what they are looking for from a site that is optimized for that keyword and not the general “Lasik Surgery”.
It is one of those things that most marketers and webmasters don’t think about. Rather than asking why it works the way it does, most webmasters would rather skip it and go directly to the ‘how’.
Next Article-Outbound Link Structure, Keywords, and Your TrustRank…Why ALL three could be important….
8 Responses to “Less is the New More When it Comes to Getting Ranked”
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hi, I want basic information about SEO
Hi david, how basic do you want to go?
Hey Leo,
There are lots of SEO gurus around but hey, you've got 10 years experience and after reading your 114 Things, I think you're straight up. Yes, the first rule is to compliment the person before you ask for something! I'm setting up my very first WP monetized site and would like your opinion on The Essential Plugins. I thought I was kinda smart until I decided to become my own webmistress. I don' know da code and learning the technical end of the biz is mind boggling on top of getting all the IM parts to come together as a whole unit. I thought it would be better to get the plugins installed before I get too far into posting. You know, set it up right in the beginning instead of having to fix it later. What a concept!
Hi Diane,
If you are talking about someone who for the last 10 years has made one bone headed mistake after the other and can prove it by writing long winded posts about his failures, then I guess you can call me straight up, lol.
But seriously, thank you for the compliment.
What Wordpress Plugins would I consider "essential"….well, Diane, that is a loaded question. You see, the question I would ask you is what do you hope that your blog will accomplish and then find the plugins to do it.
For instance, I am approaching this site in a far different way than one of my other sites. For this site, I want to build a community of people who like to theorize and creatively build strategies (or argue about them) and because I want CONVERSATION, I would naturally grab plug-ins that encourage CONVERSATION (like Seth Godin's plug-in, comment luv, ect.).
As far as SEO is concerned, I use the usual suspects for all of my blogs-
1. Google XML sitemap
2. All in one SEO pack
3. Wordpress Related Posts (to improve bounce rate…you can actually do this manually).
My advice to you would be to find an SEO optimized theme and stick with that. There are plenty of free themes out there that you can find. (the theme I use is Thesis but it is a premium theme)
Of course, before you start writing, be sure to make your URL's search engine friendly.
Thanks for stopping by…and if you have any more questions, let me know…if I don't know them, I could probably give you suggestions of other sites that do….
Thanks for the tips! I like "Thesis" but I'm not ready to plunk down the cash until I get a better grip on what I'm doing. There are so many plugins available it gets confusing and I probably shouldn't be spending any time cruising for stuff that I probably don't need.
Hey Leo,
I was thinking about this very same question today. Do you mean if you have 10 good keywords you would get ranked higher if you had 10 sites, one for each keyword, than you would having those keywords on 10 posts of a more general sounding URL. Of course, this would assume you have the same number of links to each post as you did to each niche website.