There are three stages to managing keywords for an SEO campaign. The steps are (1) keyword research and discovery (2) preparation and (3) acquisition. What happens in between determines if you achieve a favorable position or rankings recede as a result of neglect.
Search Engine Optimization Keyword Management
The Three Stages of Organic Rankings:
- The original spike
- The roll-over effect
- The comeback
Managing these three stages (frequency, stability and trust) are critical in maintaining buoyancy in the search engine result pages. You are either (1) breaking into a new SERP from scratch with a new keyword (2) improving the rankings for a previous keyword or (3) defending your position from others.
Also, depending on whether those keywords are (1) hyper-competitive (2) moderately competitive or (3) low hanging fruit with long-tail implications (high search volume from more specific prospects with lower competitor in the SERPs) determines the effectiveness of the campaign.
The 3 Stages of Keywords
These three critical areas are of immense importance throughout an SEO campaign.
The original spike – this can be the most critical step and set the tone for the follow up stages that are required to manage a page or websites vertical ascent. The original spike correlates to a page being published creating a 304 http request (indicating to the spiders there is food on the table for them to consume) and the page getting crawled, indexed and scored.
Depending on the authority of the site the page or post originates from a website with an authoritative presence corresponds to how long a page can remain buoyant in the search results. We have seen instances such as our website merely mentioning a keyword in a new post and ranking within minutes in the top 10 results in Google, Yahoo and Bing.
Keywords with millions of competing pages can be supplanted from a strong authority site using this method, but eventually, when the link juice wavers and competitors start pushing up on the pages relevance score, eventually it can slip and fade away unless augmented properly.
The roll-over effect – This is common with websites that use a content development strategy and cyclical content. Cyclical content is content that has a set number of posts on a page then the results roll off the page into either (1) an archive or (2) page 2, 3, 4 and so on.
If your domain’s main page (such as a PR5 blog) has link flow pooling on that page, then all outbound links leaving that power-house page are also being augmented by that pages PageRank.
As a result, when the post rolls off the page, so does a large portion of the corresponding link juice the target page received from the post.
There are indicators to look for (such as a ranking vacillating or slipping significantly) that identify when link equity or cyclical content lapses and is the culprit for the corresponding dip in the search engine result pages.
You will need to carefully manage primary keywords to stave off competition, inertia or SERP (search engine result page) decay by ensuring an increase in stable links from a diverse array of sources which each provide their own distinct type of contribution to the websites trust, immediate original spike or serve to cement “the comeback” (which means the page or post has transformed from the caterpillar to the butterfly) spouted page rank or the ability to “rank itself”.
The comeback – As mentioned above, the comeback is where the real magic of trust and stability happens. With the noise to relevancy ratios of the web constantly being pushed to the limits from spam, competitive companies seeking placement and affiliates alike, it is the websites that have earmarks of trust then when they pass the algorithms litmus test and rise to the top unchallenged by new posts that are in the earlier stages of qualification.
Although we have specific methods used to create corresponding augmentation to facilitate stability and / or improvements (depending on where a keyword is) superior optimization tactics incorporate the stage or step of the SEO process and understand the short-term vacillations and long-term requirements needed to cross the keyword-specific tipping point and secure a top 10, top 5 or top 3 position.
thank you..
Jeffry you are definitely on it.
Thanks for great post and the great plugin, Ultimate SEO.
Juz soze ya noze . . .
I’ve been bragging about Ultimate SEO over here:
http://shirley.shirleyszone.com/platinum-seo-pack-the-ultimate-wordpress-seo-plugin/comment-page-1/#comment-2468
I thought you might find it interesting to see what I had to say and the client case study I did.
just scroll down to where you see my first comment:
Mike Claggett says:
May 11, 2010 at 2:26 am
Thanks for all your hard work.
Mike Claggett
Mike:
Much respect for (1) taking SEO Ultimate to the street and (2) configuring it to its capacity for cleaning up SERPs.
Glad you like it and stay tuned for the additional 20 plus modules we will be rolling into it over time.
Thanks for visiting and all the best!
cool