in Internet Marketing by Jeffrey_Smith

The Value of Content, Timing and LinksIt is no secret that great content, introduced at the right time (sooner rather than later) and supported by links with authority create consistent visibility in the top-ranking search results.
The Secret Sauce for SEO, Content, Timing and Links, by SEO Design Solutions.

Regardless if the desire to rank for a series of keywords using SEO comes from (a) an impulse (b) knowledge of the market (c) common sense or (d) keyword analysis is not important.

What is important is harnessing the the intrinsic value of content, timing and links and how to transform ordinary content into extraordinary optimized SEO copy.

Grasping the process of how a search result is optimized for maximum efficiency is the first step, then knowing how to implement the process with the greatest impact using quality content, chronology and the introduction of quality links over time are the ingredients for “the SEO secret sauce”.

Planting the Seeds of Future Rankings

Chronology plays an important role in search. Just like the early bird gets the worm, those individuals who set out on a quest to corner a specific range of keywords with an optimization campaign years ago obviously have the jump on a new company with a mere speck of content to support their fledgling SEO campaign.

The good news is, content is scalable and links are abundant, if you appeal to the right sources or quite simply know where to direct your efforts. What may not be clear is (a) the amount of content or (b) the amount of time required to overcome the less optimized pages in the SERPs.

The incubation phase

It takes time to creep up on the authority sites and surpass them as a result of themed content, links or trust. You need to send the right signals to search engines and humans alike.

If you optimize content (strictly for search engines) and humans do not click on the results, then your pages recede down the relevance ladder, as user-engagement is a metric that determines which pages consistently appear in the top 10.

The rules are simple:

1. The greater the occurrence (site-wide for topically related content) the easier it is to rank for related phrases. Many may or may not be aware of semantic similarities that exists between certain phrases, the higher the proximity on a page for search modifiers, the higher the relevance for that page, for the related terms.

The exercise – If you are serious about ranking for a specific type of query, make sure that you have an abundance of material on the subject or leverage authority pages in your site to bring up the new fledgling pages which are created to introduce the content.

If you want to rank for 12 new keywords or key phrases, then use them all in “exact match” on a page or series of linked pages (limit 3 keywords per page over 4 pages for example) then build links back to that page (from both the internal links from your own site and external links from other sites) using those same “exact match” keywords. If you can utilize one of the overlapping keywords in the title as well, this will provide the necessary indicators that your content is consistent and relevant to the phrase.

Once you reach the appropriate balance (of on-page and off-page factors) you should see those pages making a debut in the 40’s to 50’s in search engines. From there nurture them with links until they hit the top 10. How you may ask?

2. Leverage your site’s internal linking power. Many webmasters neglect employing deep links from highly visible pages (like the homepage of highly trafficked product pages) to link to other related pages on your site. If you are not deep linking to your own content, then you are missing various opportunities to catapult latent pages into the top ranking SERPs (search engine result pages).

The exercise – Identify your most trafficked pages and link to the new content you just created contextually (in the context of a paragraph that is related). Just like Wikipedia leads into a more thorough definition when a keyword is introduced in a paragraph pushing you deeper and deeper into more relevant search results within their site, you can apply the same internal linking methods.

After you have identified your keywords, then write a new sentence or paragraph about a related topic and link the keywords you want to rank for (on the target page) from that page as the link / anchor text. This is a great way to add validity to your new content and expedite the authority process for the new pages.

In addition, adding links from aged pages (using keyword-rich anchor text or keyword modifiers) does two things (1) it creates a greater site-wide relevance for the keyword and (2) it provides an authority link to the new page to give it the needed weight to (a) get indexed and (b) garner a topical theme as the links counts as an indicator regarding the contents of that page.

This process also aids new pages in getting indexed as the more popular pages are crawled more often and then the spiders discover the new content muck quicker.

Once you receive enough links (endorsements from the right sources) then search engines will rank the page accordingly in the index. One of the fastest ways to rank in the top 10 for a specific phrase for examples, is getting a backlink from a page already ranking in the top 10 (that is an authority link). Other tips like these can be found by following the links below for link building methods.

3. The third and most important aspect is how you link to the content for the greatest impact. Since that is another topic in it’s entirety, here are links to some of our favorite posts on link building that provide ideas or SEO techniques for building authority for your content. 

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About Jeffrey_Smith

In 2006, Jeffrey Smith founded SEO Design Solutions (An SEO Provider who now develops SEO Software for WordPress).

Jeffrey has actively been involved in internet marketing since 1995 and brings a wealth of collective experiences and marketing strategies to increase rankings, revenue and reach.

13 thoughts on “Is Content, Timing and Links the Secret Sauce for SEO?
  1. Hi Jeffrey. I am going to read the referenced suggestions about link building etc.

    Believe it or not, I had NO idea that the internal linking structures provided any real bearing. Link building has never been something I focussed on, but I obviously need to do so. Thanks for the info. I’m passing it on. :-)

  2. @Spostareduro:

    I know a few SEO’s who have leveraged internal link building to the degree that they are able to reap tremendous rankings at a mere fraction of the external links (compared to other sites from the same category) from focusing on the flow of link juice and logical progression from theming content.

    I have sites I have worked on (years ago) that continue to climb the ranks without any significant backlinks other than their own internal link structure and architecture.

    Not only is this an ideal structure for local search, it is often overlooked as a viable resource, but not from those who want every advantage they can muster.

    Thanks for promoting this post.

  3. “2. Leverage your site’s internal linking power.”

    I was waiting for this to be mentioned.

    This is by far the single most neglected and possibly the simplest and effective SEO tactic around.

    From the point of the search engines, they see things this way — if an article is relevant and of value to you the author, then an internal link is an endorsement.

    Great points, Jeffrey…

  4. @Wayne:

    I fully agree, underestimated is an understatement, I have pages that rank in the #1 for terms in the 1.2 million range from 1 link from another internal page on our site. I had to mention it in all fairness as my personal favorite SEO tactic, the “internal link audit”.

  5. Good article. I think a further powerful tweaking process is to find the way keywords are used to find your web page and optimize your title and content based on that.

  6. @Barry:

    Thanks for the comment. I agree, part of the process is to study analytics data and determine which keywords are delivering the goods and leveraging them for future posts as topics. To take that one step further you can use this Nice linking tactic
    outlined here to get a nice double listing as a result.

  7. I believe that among the 3 you’ve mentioned content has to go first followed by links and lastly by timing…a right blend of these ingredients will surely make your SEO campaign a success. ^^

  8. @Federal Watch:

    SEO is a wonderful thing, it is however a holistic process that is truly interdependent.

    Without timing, the authority links keep you from ranking above them, naturally without great content you ultimately lose as traffic and engagement is all about quality but without links your just a big fish in a small pond.

  9. I like this article. Your really hit some right points! Keep up the good work!

  10. @Bobbink:

    Thanks, Glad you enjoyed the content.

Comments are closed.