Keyword Relevancy and Authority

Posted on 09. Jul, 2009 by Pete Hollier in Keyword Research, Search Optimization

I recently read a comment on a discussion forum relating to a small business entrepreneur stating: Keyword research and Search Engine Optimization was not worth the investment or the time.”

Upon reading this statement my first couple of thoughts were:

• I wonder what went wrong with this Search Engine Optimization implementation.
• If this is how he feels how will he make his web site obtain a reasonable ROI and perform well for his business with out some form of SEO?

Believe it or not the old adage of “Build it and they will come” just doesn’t’t cut it anymore. Effort must be put into web site promotion due to the incredible amount of competition for consumers attention online.

Obviously this business owner has initiated a Search Engine Optimization program that did not perform up to their expectations, I replied to the comment to learn more about the issues involved and to offer advice on where improvements could be made however, at the time of writing this blog post I still have not had a reply.

So what went wrong?

Since I don’t know the exact circumstances I of course cannot give a definitive answer but from experience I can make assumptions on why this business had poor SEO results.

Due to keywords being mentioned I will focus on some of the issues which can affect the performance of keywords in relation to how well a Search Engine Optimization Program performs.

Keyword Research and Selection

Keyword research, analysis and selection are the primary factors of a successful Search Engine Optimization program. Simply creating a list of keywords which are relevant to your business’s products and services is not necessarily going to bring you to the top of the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) due to the numerous factors involved.

Search Engine Algothrim’s select web page for placement in results pages by two primary factors Relevancy and Authority.

Relevancy

Relevancy is something you are able to control for just about any keyword you select to use by crafting the content in a Search Engine friendly manner.

One thing to keep in mind is to focus the development of your content to be human friendly. Only when high quality user friendly content has been developed can you begin to tweak that content to conform with the Search Engine’s requirements.

When considering your content for relevancy the Search Engines will be evaluation a number of keyword issues including;

• The prominence and location of the selected keywords within content, headers, Meta tags and URL’s.
• The content’s keyword density. Not enough keywords and the web page is considered not to be relevant to the topic. Using to many keywords within the content could be construed as Keyword Spamming by Search Engines which may result in not only poor placement in the SERPs but possibly penalties. Search Engines do not in any way or form condone Spamming.

Authority

Relevancy only gets you so far, then the Authority of the Search Engine Algothrim’s steps in, obtaining Authority for a given keyword is generally more difficult to accomplish.

Search Engines take into consideration a number of factors when determining the authority of a web page for inclusion in the SERPs, such as the age of the Domain Name, how long the web site has been online and of course the most important factor; the number, source and the Anchor text of the inbound links to the web page.

Learn to pick your battles!

Now although there are and endless possibilities why the above mentioned business found their Search Engine Optimization program to be ineffective, my first choice of a reason would be:

• Lack of research into the competitiveness of the keywords selected.

If you want your web site to rank well for a particular keyword or keyword phrase be realistic. Do your keyword research, find the terms which are relevant to your business products and services. Then before you spend the time and effort to optimize your web page for the selected keywords, do a reality check.

The reality check is the time to be honest with yourself about your web page compared to the web pages ranking in the top 5 or 10 for the selected term. Face it, if your site has 50 inbound links and the 10th placed web site has 1400 inbound links without even evaluating other factors you have a long a difficult journey to catch up let alone displace this web page from its prized location in the SERPs.

I of course don’t know what the issues were with the above mentioned Search Engine Optimization program however, I feel pretty confident that lack of Authority would have been one of the major contributing factors to the failed Search Engine Optimization program.

Does your web site lack the authority to do well in Search Engine Results?

Additional Reading

• Top 5 Requirements to Web Site Success
• Designing A SEO Friendly Web Site
• Building Link Popularity Techniques
• Keyword Research and Analysis
• Keyword Research Packages

Written by: pete@seowizardry.ca a Web Site Performance Consultant

Want to use this content on your web site? If you would like to use this article on your web site please contact pete@seowizardry.ca for an html version. All I request is you provide Pete Hollier and Seo Wizardry with a reference to this article and provide a link back to www.seowizardry.ca