Ok, the irony is that i am in SEO myself..so i am quite used to optimizing for keywords. But i see it all the time: You can optimize a site for a given keyword 'til you are blue in the face, and GOOGLE does things you didn't expect at all....or just organic traffic happens which is NOT (or not directly) related to this specific keyword ! For example: I optimized a site for "reconditioned power tools". It's bizarre...but i got #1 rank for "refurbished power tools" and NOT "reconditioned power tools". This i see all the time. I optimize a site for "cheap XYZ"...and i see traffic for a lot of keywords coming in related, but mostly NOT for the exact term. The opposite is often the case: It's like Google doesnt like optimizing.Optimize for "Cheap Graphic Cards"...and you can almost be sure that "Cheap Graphics Cards" has not that great a position in the SERPs ! Ex. if you insisnt of having this KW in the H1 and H2 tags exactly as every SEO tells you to do. Then, also very bizarre, i have several sites where terms are rather lose or more randomly...say i do NOT have the term "cheap gadget XY" in H1 or H2 orr even mentioned anywhere on the page. BUT the term "cheap" appears somewhere on the page as well as the term "gadget XY"........this gives me BETTER results and i do get good SERP for "Cheap gadget XY" even if that exact term is not there in that order !! Furthermore..i have sites where i do NOT use a term (say: "cheap") at all and i get good SERPs for "cheap gadget xy" even without ANY occurence of "cheap" in the site ! Also..if you have a site (example: you sell as an amazon affiliate) and your site has a few 1000 of pages.....you will get many, many hits depending on the sites indexed.....and often those are products or descriptions and they have nothing to do with your initial inention to optimize your main-page for a certain KW. What i want to say is: If you have a site with a decent amount of content and the basic SEO rules, often everything works itself out. I have articles on my SEO site and get hits for "advertising craigslist" or "how to get backlinks" and similiar...because the article/blog is about that subject...and i didnt do any optimization for any specific KW. Sometimes....just stop obsessing over KW and SEO, have good content...and then see in google analytics and webmaster tools what hit you will get...and often its very surprising. Cheers, Georg.
That's called LSI, correct? Good quality content is important because it helps to get backlinks but doing good keyword research IS STILL IMPORTANT!
hello, here the live proof of what i am saying: http://biggest-dog.freehostia.com/ this site is optimized for "biggest dog" or "biggest dog in the world". However, i am #1 in google for "World's biggest dog poop" Because i mentiioned "poop" somewhere in the text. This happens all the time, it's like G deliberately pulls out phrases NOT from the H1 and H2 tags. I can guarantee you if i go and optimize this site for "world's biggest dog poop" then i would lose the ranking. I mean thats a funny example...but a perfect one so you can see what i am saying in my first post !
Dumb thread. Keyword research is one of the most important aspects of the SEO process. Why not have more control targeting specific keyphrases instead of just hoping to rank for random stuff?
not a dumb thread. Listen, i am SEO myself. So, every SEO tells you how important H1 and H2 tags are, how important KW density and bold texts etc. are. VERY SIMPLE basics. But obviously wrong since those old and very known "basics" do NOT get the results as i just prove with an example ! Also..the dog-site is of course just a joke and an example. I optimized for "biggest dog" since i DID keyword-research. This is no random BS, i chose the KW after i found "biggest dog" a relatively good KW. So i made a site. The irony and the point of this thread is that G did rank #1 for something different. dcristo, i even have a SEO site and offer KW-research to my customers! But you dont find it the slightest odd that the very known SEO advice you here EVERYWHERE does not do what people say...and Google ranks (in this case) for "Dog Poop" while i NEVER did any effort to optimze this site for "dog poop" <- I think this is a very legitimate and interesting debate regarding SEO and what G actually does and what most SEOS actually say ! dc: you can go on my site http://www.1up-seo.com and you will see how i value and recommend KW-research constantly! Also here in the forum! But strange real-life results should make every SEO think !
My experience is the opposite of the original post. I do extensive keyword research and onpage optimization for the chosen keywords. I track 62 of those specific keywords (some of them substantially competitive), and currently 18 of them are on Google's first page. Keyword research and appropriate use of those KWs has been one of the most important contributors to my site's visitor counts. And yes, I'm talking about the exact keywords, not accidental variations showing up in the search engines.
Precisely. And as the search engines grow increasingly sophisticated in analyzing the semantics of a web page, those random bonuses may show up even more often. However, I suspect that they will continue to be a sidelight to the "main road" of targeted, well-researched, and optimized keywords and KW phrases.
I can guarantee you that if you optimize for "World's biggest dog poop" you will KEEP the ranking. You keep saying that you are an SEO but honestly, you don't sounds like a very smart SEO. It sounds to me like you do the keyword research but nothing more. Every websites pulls unrelated searches (LSI?), but if you do qualiy on-page optimization 80% of the searches will be highly related.
live-cms, how can you say that ? I do on-site and off-site and i donÄt do it better or worse than others, i strongly assume. The point here is whether there is a slight chance that G actually sees certain SEO efforts maybe as "overdone" and, opposite what many SEO say values the appearance of certain KW in the H1 AND H2 and appearance in bold etc..etc..just as "too much" <--- as said, DESPITE what the common knowlegde of nowadays SEO is. I am not talking about KW-stuffing and knowingly "over-SEO ing" a site...we all know that too much is too much and can actually hurt SERP. But it just strikes me as odd and i see it MANY times on various of my sites that if i go and optimize for a certain KW i do not get the results i wish for. This applies for many different aspects...ONE of them for example the old "keyword in the URL" is good. For some reasons i think this is NOT the case aymore and i *could* see that G sees it rather as spamming and actualyl penalizes for sites having a KW in the URL. This just my $0.02
You say that if you optimize for "world's biggest dog poop" you would stop ranking for it but if I was to optimize for "world's biggest dog poop" I WOULD keep ranking for it so I think you are either very bad at on-page optimization or don't have much experience optimizing for certain terms. There is 0 direct competitors for the term "world's biggest dog poop" so if you can't successfully rank for "world's biggest dog poop" you have a problem. There is also only 1 partial competitor which is DP and then there are 100,000 unrelated competitors. Using intitle:+quotations, quotations and no quotations. The reason you are not ranking for the terms you are targeting is that you are targeting terms too difficult for you to rank for but are still ranking for terms that anybody can rank for, terms with no competition and no searches. Google does not see SEO as spamming, you are just looking for excuses as to why you are not ranking for the terms you are targeting.
live.. hold on. See your other thread there where i commented. I am still not sure about your research and 32 search results in KW-Elite as opposed to real life results in G. (Bu well, this is another thread) ) Your statements about my abilities to SEO are nothing but assumptions and have no base. ) My statement "if i would optimize for 'biggest dog poop' was rather self-ironic and meant as example of my observation that G often does unexpected things...if i tell you that some sites rank for phrases and KW i dont even HAVE anywhere in my sites you just have to take this as fact. I meant it in an self-ironic way..and certainly not in a way to make me look like a dumbass who doesnt know how to on-site SEO .
The main problem I have with your thread is this - "I can guarantee you if i go and optimize this site for 'world's biggest dog poop' then i would lose the ranking". It is absolutely incorrect and if you truly believe this then I think you don't understand SEO.
GeorgR - Are you trying to be controversial to gain attention or something? Do you have client's actually paying for your SEO services? I hope not because you have no bloody clue what your talking about. You lost all credibility with me after saying this:
we obviously cant have a constructive discussion here ? I did nothing else than posting my observations. In my research i see eg. sites which rank for keywords higher than, say, a test-site i made and optimized for the same keyword - and those higher ranking sites have neither KW in the keyword-tag, nor mentioned that KW in H1 or H2. Instead of a constructive debate about SEO methods and why this happens i think its VERY childish to ge here and "accuse" me of incompetency and whatnot. Cheezzzuusss kids. This is also not the place to "prove" from my side what and how many sites i already ranked high (which i certainly did For example, to save this thread (is there any chance...lol) it might be good you start and "prove" to me in numbers and with your own research that a KW in the URL actually does what the common assumption is. Eg do a G search for "biggest human" please and analyze the first 10 results, how many have actually the exact KW "biggest human" in the URL and how many actually use exactly "biggest human". You will see that that first 8 or 9 results do NOT have this KW anywhere, and also not "biggest human" bout merely mentioning "human" or "biggest" somewhere in the text in mereley random fashion.
How is posting complete crap being constructive? SEO aside, as a webmaster, how would you naturally name pages? Also man, it is pretty common knowledge exact match domain names have a boost in the serps. This is because they have the keyword in the domain, you heard it right, it uses the keyword in the URL.