Content Strategies and Keyword Search

Content Strategies and Keyword Search

Think that SEO is a purely technical process? That web programming is equitable to rocket science? And that you need to memorize several technology blogs to get it? Afraid you’ll have to stop sleeping just to find the time to keep up? Here’s the good news: Google favors the little guy—remember, from our principles? That’s right; the ongoing search engine strategy is to weed out the tricksters of the trade, the professionals who look for the technological back doors and purchased content to conduct SEO. Instead, Google is continuously looking for ways to reward the actual bloggers and writers of original, fresh, industry-relevant and expert content. Do the necessary research and work on this level, and you’re already going in the right direction.

What Drives the Search Results You Receive?

This should be a very simple question, but it’s not. Part of the reason is that search engines won’t list all the factors and their weights because they don’t want to be taken advantage of by SEOs (again, Google favors the little guy). Regardless, SEO gurus and software firms (and me) spend a lot of time researching and writing about how you can improve your rankings with the search engines. Note that these factors do change somewhat, particularly as Google releases its updates (in the past, such as Panda and Penguin—I’ll bet the next one is Paparazzi or something).

Search engines drive search results via their algorithms. Their algorithms are ongoing technological interpretations of searches, content—everything the search engine can use to make sense out of the web—and they use that to best serve relevant results to searchers. This is a simple answer. But what all is judged by these algorithms, and what are their weighting factors? These are the answers Google doesn’t easily let out of the bag.

Years ago, a team of university Internet science researchers produced a study analyzing search engines as beehives. The concept still works today. As searchers, we have the chance to choose between, and take in, the information results communicated from the search engines—like information returned to the hive from the countless bees who have researched surrounding fields. The more bees who have foraged the same area means more communication within the hive about that specific area. The fields beyond where few have gone means less information communicated within the hive. Similarly, search engines value and serve content both based on how many people are interested in that specific area of content (demonstrated by keywords searched) and how many have visited the specific sites within that field. So if you’re interested in a specific area of information, the search engine results you’ll receive will be ranked by a specific site’s available information and how many other visitor “bees” have already been there and stayed, socially shared, or responded to said info. And here we get into the quality of the content, in part gauged by those visitor activities, in part by “bounces” versus visitors’ length of time on a site.

In other words, if web searchers land and stay upon a site for a while, they are displaying a quality of content, an evaluation, whereas those who land on a site and immediately “bounce” back to the search engine represent a poor quality of content on the site’s behalf and a poor resulting search engine ranking. These elements all factor into the probabilities of a site being communicated in listings by the search engines. And like Internet trends, more and more bees will trend by visiting one site en masse now and another one later.

---

Note: Want to Learn More?

Interested in more on this study “Web search engine working as a bee hive?” See it at http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.161.4991.

---

As an SEO myself, I have my favorite go-to expert info sources on the web, such as SEOMoz, Google’s own info resources, Danny Sullivan/Search Engine Land, and so on. You should know that browser history also affects search results. In other words, the more I visit those sources online, the more I will be served such sources in my similar Google searches (when using the same browser without dumping browser history). This much we know. What’s interesting is that even with all this, when I search my same browser for various keyword strings similar to “how do search results get served to me,” the results strangely include everything from “serving in the military” to “best restaurant dishes served.” But nothing (at least not on the SERP page 1) pertaining to my specific queries (note that there’s nothing in my recent browser history pages visited pertaining to the military nor serving restaurant dishes). I tried at least four different questions to get my requested answer. No luck. I say all this to demonstrate it as the kind of search experience encountered 10 years ago. It’s just peculiar now. Google is basically saying, “Hey, I don’t know exactly what you mean, so I’m giving you these results instead.” This is similar to what it does when you input misspellings; it tries to correct them for you. Yes, Google is like your mother. Or your spouse.

Regardless, know that browser history does typically skew your search results. Given my profession, if I search the word “media,” Google should serve me more results on “social media” than the news media, television, or the paparazzi. So as SEOs, whenever we want to test search engine crawls of keywords or sites neutrally, we should empty our total browser history (see Figure 1.2 for clearing browsing history in Google Chrome). Be sure that you are also dumping your cookies (or toss your cookies—really, it’s whichever you prefer), because cookies do hamper search engine spiders and consequently alter results (same with session IDs, which are session-temporary cookies).

Figure 1.2 Clearing browser data.

In addition, when you’re seeking neutral search engine results, log out of your Google, Yahoo!/MSN, email, and social media accounts. You probably don’t even realize that much of the time you are already logged in to your search engine account, and it is remembering the keywords you’ve searched there as well as your own web and blog content. Regardless of the computer or browser, your account history is embedded.

---

Tip: Search Tricks

There are tricks a searcher can use to filter the kinds of search results she wants. For example, searching keyword phrases utilizing the words “OR,” “AND,” or “NOT.” And if a user searches phrases directly with full “quotes,” the primary search results are pages comprising that specific phrase, with all words, in that order. So if you search specifically for “Four score and seven years ago,” you will get results with that famous speech specifically. What you should not get are speeches by Miley Cyrus or Justin Bieber. Want more? Using a tilde (~) to precede your Google search keywords will include synonyms to that keyword’s results in your SERP. It’s helpful if you aren’t absolutely certain of the specific word you’re looking for to search.

---

Over the years in SEO, we talk about contextual search versus semantic or latent semantic content and indexing. In those grand old days of the startup web, a keyword was just a keyword. Search results included just that keyword. Google, in continual advancement, started analyzing our keywords based on the overall context of the total keyword phrase searched, and likewise for the copy it indexed. Google was attempting to interpret the meaning of the keywords.

Today, with semantic analysis, Google associates synonyms, as well as searchers’ own orientations, to serve specific semantic content results for matches. Theoretically, it’s possible for a searcher to receive results including only synonyms of his keyword phrase, without his keywords in the content at all. For me, this is what makes my own search dilemma at the start of this section so fascinating. Google should have known, given my keyword phrases and search history, that I didn’t care about “serving in the military” or “serving the best restaurant dishes.” Typically, it knows. But, no worries, it’s just semantics.

All these factors go into the search engine’s analysis of the searcher, for the targeted results served. But the search engine also examines the quality of the websites being served in the results. For example, if a web user is searching for “bees and flower pollination” there may be a website with half its content about this theme. But if the other half of content is completely unrelated, perhaps about the sport of curling in Quebec, Canada, then there is confusion and lesser quality, and consequently poorer rank for the site (on either content theme). I can’t tell you how many unrelated websites I’ve come across where half the content is about Canadian curling. It’s a bloody epidemic.

Yet another example of poor quality of content on a site would be bounce rate. If the vast majority of web searchers land on a site but “bounce” back to the SERP in under 30 seconds, this is another indication of poor web content quality (or a misrepresented content theme). Assessing factors like these, the search engines assign “trust” and “authority” scores to websites, and again, the higher they are, the better the rank and search results.

Attributes of Search Engine Results Listings

Most web users—93%, in fact—begin their web sessions with a search engine. (Wow, that’s a lot!) So it’s pretty clear that the search engine results page (SERP) is where the rubber meets the road. Do your optimized results appear there? How high, and how many of the following items were included to aid the optimized listing? Figure 1.3 shows an example of a SERP.

Figure 1.3 The Search Engine Results Page.

• Cached page: I consider cached page results to be one of the more temporal aspects of the SERP (see Figure 1.4). Five to seven years ago, Google served and emphasized results on the SERP with the option of clicking through on a listing to its “indexed page version.” This would bring up an older version of the specific web page or blog post result, showing highlighted instances of your specific keywords. Today such results are far less relevant, but still accessible (via clicking the arrow below the primary listing link). For one, website content is continuously updated—especially blogs (hint: think about this for your own WordPress blog) and indexed pages are always at least a couple of days old. However, due to semantic content and results, as previously discussed, a highly relevant web page or blog post result may use synonyms rather than your specific keywords.

Figure 1.4 A Google Cache Page.

• Editorial results: For certain educational or informational keyword searches, Google will serve primarily editorial results, meaning news and educational content rather than corporate or product promotional content. Why? Because, for whatever reason, Google interprets the keyword phrase this way. This is part of the reason that the best top-level domains (TLDs) are .edu. It is also a reason why you might want relationships with .edus for SEO—and ideally, inbound links! See more on inbound links further in this chapter).

• Sitelinks: So you’ve searched for something such as a specific university or hospital. It comes up number one in Google, and below its link and description you see additional subpage links of the site listed below in organized columns. For example, refer to the “Apple” listing in Figure 1.3. These are sitelinks. If you can achieve them, you want them. At the time of this writing Google chooses whether or not to serve them with your listing, but the better optimized your site is, the older it is, and the more traffic your pages receive, the more likely you are to achieve sitelinks.

• Local/reviews channels/maps: You’ve seen these: you search for a restaurant, or a plumber, and immediately a list of “pins” appears beside a small preview of Google Maps (refer to the Apple Store locations shown in Figure 1.3). Not only do these pins visually jump out at you, but they are “local” to the area you are searching, or the area from which you are searching. And they have stars—reviews or ratings. This type of vertical-results content holds a lot of weight and is a phenomenon of the web today. Read more on vertical results in Chapter 3.

• Ads: PPC, SEM, CPA (pay-per-click, search engine marketing, cost-per-action)—all these are different acronyms that surround the mystique of paid ads. On the search engine results page, these typically appear on the top and/or to the right (see Figure 1.5). Here’s the question: When you search in Google and see both these and traditional organic listings, which do you click? There’s an entire chapter in this lovely book devoted to PPC (Chapter 10, “PPC and Advertising”). You can enjoy more on paid ads there!

Figure 1.5 Ads appearing at the top and right side of the Google SERP.

• Authorship: In your Google accounts, such as your Google+ account, you can flesh out your whole profile, add your photo, bio, and so on. This is huge for WordPress because when you sync your WordPress blog with your Google accounts, and assign yourself as the author of your site blog posts, this information shows up in the Google SERP. And now this rich data will boost you in Google rankings as well (see Figure 1.6).

Figure 1.6 Organic Author information on the Google SERP listings.

---

Note: Who Gets the Most Click Throughs?

There are many different stats which can be interpreted differently on the effectiveness of organic or SEO search results versus advertising click throughs. To answer this question for yourself, look at the industry you work in and data supporting its effectiveness in digital marketing. Resources such as PewInternet.org and niche industry associations are good places to seek such data.

---

• Rich snippets: Rich snippets are a broad term signifying organic search results with more data, reviews, or content options than Google’s typical description for the web page in the SERP. (See Figure 1.3 for ratings in rich snippets. We’ll get more into this in Chapter 3, but you can also visit www.schema.org.)

• Images and video results: The usual media search channels include YouTube, Google Images, and Flickr. But even in the standard SERP, images or videos can appear among the regular text listings, thanks to good SEO practice. Google can extract these images from your website (WordPress or otherwise) and video from YouTube. Google is not alone with all of this. Bing is a master imitator. Bing also shows images and other rich snippets in its SERP (see Figure 1.7).

Figure 1.7 The Bing SERP and Rich Snippets.

What’s the Long Tail?

What’s the Long Tail - and Just How Long Is It?

We can’t talk about SEO and its history without chatting about the “long tail.” So bear with me while I explain this critical attribute to search marketing strategy.

In the 1890s, a little-known company called Sears and Roebuck started mailing catalogs—first of watches and jewelry, then of general merchandise. It revolutionized business. The company was able to offer a broad variety of items to people all over the country. What someone in Maine didn’t want out of the catalog, someone in San Francisco might buy. And because their products didn’t involve multiple shipments, multiple warehouses, and price markups along the way, the Sears catalog could sell products—whether general or niche—at cheaper prices than other stores across America.

From this, an ongoing industry of catalog direct-mail marketing was born. Direct-mail marketing approaches, target segments, and statistical analyses birthed email marketing strategies, list buying, and frequency measurement. Catalogs had been able to reach niche buyers with niche products because the only costs were those of including the specific products in the overall catalog. Email had the capability to reach audiences through an additional channel and was a low-cost alternative to direct mail. The statistical segmentation of direct mail, and then email, could efficiently market to audience micro segments.

Because I’m sure the majority of my readers love knowing about the history of statistical calculation, here’s more on that: Email marketing inherited direct-marketing segment testing approaches, where certain materials would be sent to one segment “A,” with an alteration in materials sent to other segment “B” (and additional, multiple segments if desired). In email marketing, recipients could be directed to a web landing page (which could also be slightly differentiated per segment). This “A/B” or “multivariate” testing continues today in search marketing. Whether in PPC advertising, or even in SEO, such testing strategies can be very revealing.

I just want to know why no one buys those bright red long johns anymore. Those always look so sweet in old westerns.

In 2004, Christopher Anderson, Editor-in-Chief for WIRED Magazine, wrote an article there about his “long-tail theory” for business in the digital age (www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html). He then wrote a book about the same and revolutionized digital marketing and SEO. The premise shows the traditional restrictions of costs, assets, locations, and markets for brick-and-mortar businesses that always hindered them from going after the extreme niche customer. Anderson went on to show how not only were most of those barriers removed for eCommerce retailers, but the digital realm (search engines and social media) allowed for low-cost marketing, connecting niche product content with consumers all over the world. Not only could modern businesses connect to previously untapped niche customers anywhere, but by doing so they extended their product life cycle—they could achieve new sales for products beyond their mass markets. This is the “infinite niche”—the idea that there is always one more customer out there worth tapping.

The idea, the moniker—everything about “long-tail” jelled with search engine optimization. Extreme niche keywords could be applied to search marketing. Why should search marketers fight for broad, competitive terms such as “shoes” when they could target their positioning, and see more successful results, from keyword searches such as “black leather wedge heel shoes for women.” It also follows that someone searching for the latter, and finding related products on a website, is much closer to purchase than someone merely searching for “shoes.”

So why not micro target accordingly?

Today we face a brick-and-mortar business world continuing to collapse when faced with competition and reduced costs of eCommerce, greater variety of products (long tail), and the shifting sands of the economy (see Figure 1.1). U.S. eCommerce spending has gone from $122 billion in 2007 to $186 billion a year (at the time of this writing; see http://marketingland.com/first-time-retail-e-commerce-spending-surpasses-50-billion-second-quarter-in-a-row-43071). We have arrived at a thought-provoking time in retail called “showrooming,” which means that traditional brick-and-mortar stores are used by consumers to see, touch, and feel a specific product on the shelves. Only then do they go online to make the purchase for a cheaper price. All these issues should be considered in SEO strategy, particularly for consumer goods.

Figure 1.1 The long tail of twenty-first century business.

The market forces in this mix include the following:

• Weakened traditional economy

• Growth in Internet use (for work and leisure)

• Fewer brick-and-mortar stores available

• Increased retail competitiveness

• More and more comfort in consumer online purchasing, security, and credit card transactions

• More and more comfort between consumers and search engines

• Consumer behavior driven more by premeditated purchases thanks to personal spending concerns, competitive pricing, ease of online research, and social ratings and recommendations from friends and other consumers.

Best Fifteen “WordPress SEO Success” Principles

Fifteen “WordPress SEO Success” Principles

So we know a bit about SEO history, the background of the web, and long johns. Let’s put it into focus with something tangible for conducting WordPress SEO, the real deal. People complain that SEO is always changing. From a technology and tactical standpoint, this is true. But here are the principles I have found to be timeless in SEO. Use these regardless of timing and technology changes:

1. Identifying objectives and focusing on strategy more than tactics is critical! Always be clear what your SEO strategic objectives are, such as

• Corporate brand awareness

• Service expert content leadership

• Sales/lead-generation

• Testing/research

• Social/reputation management

2. The rising tide floats all boats—That applies to your web architecture, digital footprint, SEO plans, social media use, and blogging. The more you do, the more content you have. The more you optimize, the more the whole network and its rankings benefit.

3. SEO is complex enough—Don’t make it more so, such as with

• The latest whiz-bang, untested technology.

• Multiple keywords targeted (right now, search engines prefer one unique, primary keyword for each page of content).

• Premium tools with big promises (yet with data little better than the free Google Analytics). There are definitely some good tools out there that can offer analytics, such as social posting and click-through analytics and relationships to your website. If you want this data, more than Google Analytics, by all means buy it. But most people don’t maximize the use of their Google Analytics accounts.

• Don’t buy bunches of URLs or build crazy cross-linking scenarios for yourself; all those redirects can actually hurt you. And you don’t want to divide your rich content and link juice. Keep it simple. (Read more on link juice and network architecture in 

• Keep it free; like social media, the best content is free.

• Got automation? When in doubt, don’t automate. It’s natural to think automation is better than nothing (automated content/articles/spinning, automated social media pushes, and so on). But often search engines penalize automation. And don’t set default/repeat content for SEO elements such as meta descriptions—search engines don’t like it.

• Don’t do mass submissions—the promise of every sketchy (black- and gray-hat) firm—for example, “We’ll submit your bookmarks and posts to over a thousand channels.” Most of the time, this is spam, and the channels to which they are submitted are irrelevant or worse—black hat. (More is described on the unfortunate practices of tricky black-hat SEOs later in this chapter.)

4. Search engines value “the little guy.” The real, sincere SMEs (subject-matter experts), continually blogging and generating fresh, honest, original web and social content—these are the ones that search engines will reward—certainly not the SEO black- or gray-hat.

5. There are no guarantees in SEO, and “Number One” takes time.

• The search engines see and accredit you over time.

• You can do everything right and still it will take time to get to the top. (Remember, it’s best to be the genuine, honest expert content-creator).

• Sometimes blacklisting, IP-sharing, poor reputation, or other under-the-radar elements can keep you from good SEO results.

• You can’t meet all ideal SEO expectations.

• SEO is about compromise. That’s okay. Breathe easy.

• In fact, we’ll even give you the major sources of compromise in digital marketing and SEO (Chapter 3).

6. Social media and reputation management (monitoring brand mentions in social media, reviews, and on SERP) are critical.

7. Start with niche keyword SEO and progress to broad results and success—from long-tail to head or short-tail.

8. Content is king. It’s a digital marketing cliché, but it’s true. Search engines love good, unique, but relevant content. The more such content, the better (not exceeding page word-count maximums or page-load times), but don’t duplicate content!

9. Traditional keyword metatags don’t matter. However, you can make the argument that they work for rich snippets/microdata. Tools such as Yoast and All-in-One SEO offer options for this. (More on this later.)

10. Write for your readers, not for search engines if, for no other reason, you’ll get better rankings from having more readers that are reading more of your content.

11. Google (and other engines) can tell you what you need to know.

• They provide recommendations for keywords and SEO (thanks to many tools discussed throughout this book, such as AdWords Keyword Planner and Webmaster Tools, which can draw from general consumer search records as well as your own website crawl data).

• They even complete your search terms, showing you what they expect based on the majority of searches. (Go ahead—try searching for the word “subservient chi...” and see how far you get before it lists the viral web classic “subservient chicken.”)

12. SEO is independent, but must work in concert with other digital marketing efforts. SEO is not PPC. For starters, it’s not paid, hence the term “earned media” (Your online social engagement efforts “earn” customer responses, shares, follows, and the like.) But they can work together, such as with copywriting or UI .

13. Canonicalization is critical—You don’t want search engines perceiving duplicate web pages, which is what canonical errors are; and most of the time you don’t even know this is happening.

• This is especially true with WordPress; fortunately, there are WordPress plug-ins that will execute canonicalization commands.

• However, you have to know what/where they are; this book shows you how.

14. WordPress evolves.

• You have to monitor and update the theme, plug-ins, and so on.

• Too many plug-ins means too many conflicts.

• The advantage of WordPress is that so many items are built for it.

• The disadvantage of WordPress is that so many items are built for it.

• Plug-ins, themes, versions—all can conflict with each other.

• When in doubt, go back to keeping SEO simple.

15. Last one: Believe it or not, you have the power to make the search engines your friends or enemies. So follow the principles and instructions here and make them your BFFs!

What Is SEO and Do I Really Need It for my Wordpress Content?

1. What Is SEO and Do I Really Need It?

Chapter objectives and questions:

• Understand the role and value of search engine optimization (SEO) and content strategy.

• Understand search engine history, the “long tail,” and modern application.

• Understand what WordPress is and how it begins to factor into SEO.

• Provide an overview of SEO in today’s digital world.

A (Brief) History of SEO

In the early years of search engines—as with their predecessors, computer programming commands—the search engines couldn’t understand or accurately cater to the syntaxes of common phraseology, statements, and questions. To achieve the search engine results we wanted, we had to learn to think, and talk, like the search engines—with keywords and query strings. Ironically, as time progressed, several things happened:

• We spent more and more time online (and more time in search engines).

• We learned how to think more like search engines (and also to filter out ad results and fruitless directory/landing page results).

• We went from using myriad search engines with scattered results to identifying a favorite search engine (and speaking its language; for example, AskJeeves, which today is Ask.com).

• Simultaneously, the search engine(s) grew wise to human phraseology and contextual keyword search. Suddenly, a word was not merely a literal word from a dictionary, but search results were affected by the surrounding words.

• Google hit the scene and became king.

• MSN attempted to compete with Google using a new search engine also planted on Yahoo!—Bing.

• The search engines grew with semantic interpretation of keywords, integrating search history, social media content data, and web user interest to affect search results.

• And Google was king.

Google is still king. It keeps releasing notable updates, and YouTube (also part of Google) is considered the world’s second largest search engine. Google’s other search properties include Google Blog Search, Google Images, Google Books, and so on.

Bing, although small in use compared to Google, keeps trying. (At the time of writing this book, Google is at 67% and Bing is at 29% of web search engine usage; see http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2289560/Googles-Search-Market-Share-Shoots-Back-to-67.) But Yahoo! (which still represents 11% of web search engine usage while utilizing Bing as its current search engine) has many legacy search content sites and directories that haven’t completely died yet. Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Sports, and Yahoo! Local are just a few. For obvious reasons, Bing is the default search engine and common home page for Microsoft hardware and Internet Explorer; consequently, it acquires use that way. It will be interesting to see what Yahoo! does going forward with its efforts in publicity. Many big-name search engines that were popular prior to Google have withered to almost nothing. RIP AltaVista, Lycos, and Netscape.