It is fairly common knowledge that the
words that appear on web pages are one factor in the way that those
pages are ranked in individual search engines. This means, of course,
that a page that contains a search term one or more times has a better
chance of ranking highly than a page that does not include the search
term. However, while more and more sites begin to include search terms
in their web page copy in order to rank higher in web searches, high
search engine rankings are really only a part of the equation. Another
large part is whether each of your pages is directly addressing the
searcher’s topic of interest (deduced from the search term).
The Shoehorn Approach
When a site is already built and
established, many search engine optimization experts or individuals
trying their luck at SEO will employ a “shoehorn” approach. This
can be less costly and usually involves fewer alterations to an
existing site than a comprehensive approach, but has a primary
drawback. It is perhaps easiest to explain by giving a fictional
example.
Acme Widgets
Drawing from the Road Runner cartoons,
let’s talk about a fictional company called Acme Widgets. Our
company is a widget manufacturer, and we currently have a small
brochureware site.
Working in a Keyphrase
One of the keyphrases we want to target
is “custom widget manufacturing”, since we have looked at
Wordtracker and discovered that a large number of our potential
prospects are typing this phrase (it’s doubtful anyone searches for
this fictitious example, but let’s pretend that many do). Since we
want to make minimal changes to the site, we are taking the shoehorn
approach, which means that we are going to try to work this search
term into an existing page. We take a look at the “About Acme”
page of our site (a page that describes our company and our
philosophy), and realize that we could probably work the phrase
“custom widget manufacturing” into the copy a few times without
too many changes. This will help us to achieve better rankings for the
search term- so everyone is happy, right? Well, not exactly.
Limitation of the Shoehorn Approach
The problem with this scenario is that
while we may have added some helpful ingredients for our search engine
rankings, we haven’t really added much helpful information for our
visitors. In other words, they may find our “about” page when
typing in the search term “custom widget manufacturing”, but the
existing page copy doesn’t really address this phrase specifically-
it just gives them blanket information about our company that happens
to contain the term. Many searchers (perhaps even most) may quickly
decide to look elsewhere, because we have not adequately addressed the
search term.
The Comprehensive Approach
Although it takes more effort, a
comprehensive approach can greatly increase your likelihood of keeping
the interest of your visitors and eventually getting them to take the
action on your site that you desire.
Creating a New Page
Using the same scenario, we look at the
Wordtracker numbers for the search term “custom widget
manufacturing” and realize that this term is of interest to many of
our potential customers. Rather than asking “Where in the world can
we fit this search term into our existing site?” we ask “Why in
the world do we not have a page of our site devoted to this popular
topic?” We then go on to create a new page for our site, built in
to the main navigation, which directly addresses the topic of
custom widget manufacturing- how we design custom widgets, our
proprietary custom widget manufacturing process, and why we are better
than everyone else at dealing with custom widgets. Now, when a visitor
finds our page on a search for the term “custom widget
manufacturing”, they are finding information that is much more
likely to address their interest, and we have a visitor who is much
more likely to read what we have to say (and again, hopefully take the
action that we desire).
Repeating the Process
Continuing our comprehensive approach,
we may find many other popular and specific search terms that command
pages of their own (i.e. “plastic widgets” or “rotating
widgets”, where we talk about our approach to each of these
specialized items). The main idea is that we use software such as Wordtracker
to identify the interests of our potential prospects, and then we
devote pages of our site (always built in to the navigation) to
telling our prospects about our experience and expertise in the topics
that interest them.
Conclusion
A comprehensive approach is not
necessarily visibly better than a shoehorn approach in terms of sheer
search engine positions- the two approaches may yield similar ranking
results. However, a comprehensive approach will almost always yield
better results when it comes to the time each search engine visitor
spends on your site, and, more importantly, the overall sales that
originate from the site. And bottom line revenue, rather than high
positions alone, is what search engine marketing is really all about.