If you’re a practitioner of SEO or are simply searching for SEO services, then you should know that consistency is the secret weapon of choice for overcoming competitors for keywords in competitive markets.
How to Jump Start a Stalled SEO Campaign!
I’m sure it’s not the first time that someone, somewhere dropped the ball on an active SEO campaign or active keyword pursuit. This can occur from either monetary reasons or the simple fact that other priorities usurped the focus of priorities for a given campaign. While you may have left it in limbo floundering on the back-burner, there are ways to jump-start your SEO campaign to make the best of a bad situation.
Despite the fact that a gradual and methodical approach is preferred, there are ways to resuscitate a dated campaign. So, not all hope is lost for eventually securing a space in the prime web estate available in the search engine result pages (above the fold for your select keywords).
Managing Your SEO Campaigns Momentum and Velocity
Creating a tangible timeline and adhering to the strategies highlighted as a road map are crucial for creating accountable campaigns based on solid historical data. For example, if you built 40 articles in one quarter, submitted 3 optimized press releases (which resulted in x amount of links) and built 200 links with 3 supporting keyword modifiers; and your keywords are now on page 3 (from not even ranking in the top 1000 search results), then you can extrapolate the remaining momentum and velocity to acquire a top 10 position.
Managing the campaign from a systemic level incorporating time lines, counter measures and checks and balances to overcome the needed velocity is what differentiates SEO Professionals from corner store dime a dozen internet marketing agencies.
Creating a flash in the pan SEO approach may yield temporary results, however, in order to secure a dominant position in a competitive niche, you need to continually chip away at multiple metrics to assuage search engines with their algorithmic precision which tend to gather a multitude of data points to ascertain relevance, reputability and rankings.
There is a well known contingent called link velocity which is an off page SEO metric that determines the ascent in relevance for a specific keyword or series of key phrases based on how many sites link to a page to validate its position as a supreme candidate for relevance.
This link velocity translates to the volume and rate of links that a webpage or website loses or acquires within a given timeframe.
Just as a link that appears as a blip and then disappears a month later would not create a positive signal as an indicator or trust, the longer a link lasts intact, the more value it can pass on to the target site. Having covered the basis, let’s get to “The How to Part”.
Content Saturation Levels
Content requirements are unique and differ based on the website and the competition for their respective keywords. However, one thing remains consistent, the need for enough topical occurrences for a keyword to be taken serious by search engines. You either need to (a) be passionate about your topic in order to surpass the volume of content required to acquire a top ranking or (b) have enough link power (either internal or from other sites) to brush those aside who failed to do their SEO homework.
If you have not already, you need to determine via competitive analysis three critical metrics utilized from search engines to assign relevance.
- The age of the domains in the top 3 results for the keyword
- The amount of pages or occurrences they have dedicated to the keyword within the site
- The amount of time needed for your website to content for the exact match keywords or slightly stemmed variations
By cross-referencing these three metrics, you should be able to extract the tipping point for the amount of content and links needed to reestablish precedence for relevance. One example might be 100 topical articles, 500 links from a variety of methods RSS, Social Media, Directories, etc. and then allowing those pages, links and authority to mesh over a 90 day period.
Internal Linking and Link Discovery Rates
Don’t overlook your own website as a resource; you can build links within your own website that impact rankings equally as much as external inbound links from other websites. For more information on the topic, refer to the following posts for methods to leverage internal links.
You should also be clear about which page represents the helm of the keyword within your own website. We call this choosing a champion page and this alone can determine if you page that is most relevant for the query appears or if a generic page or home page appears as a result of the internal link preference.
Off Page Consistency
Consistency is important for a variety of reasons. For example, if you have ear marked a page in your website for Brand A widgets, set up a preferred landing page, created enough topical content and then your off page links are all going to the home page, then you just flunked SEO 101.
You need consistent internal and inbound links to specific pages to produce the desired effect (rankings) for that page to appear on its own merit in a search engine. Not only is the advanced SEO principle going to lower bounce rates and increase conversion (if your post-click value proposition is up to par). But, more importantly, delivering consumers to a page specifically calibrated for the keyword of choice is akin to using PPC (pay per click) to drive ROI and reap the rewards of revenue.
In addition, you can:
- Add a new sitemap or rss feed
- Add a new subfolder or section to theme and silo content
- Strengthen internal links and begin a deep linking campaign
- Start adding off page links to your most aged content, to then funnel more link flow to newer pages which will rise easier than reworking dated content
So what are you waiting for, as you read this, your competitors are well into their tactful time-released campaigns. The longer you put it off, the more leeway you give them to increase the barrier to entry.
It’s not only a matter of time, it’s a matter of trust, unique content, links and relevance that must all be managed consistently to bear fruit and yield a favorable ROI (return on investment).
thanks for your information
Nice informative post..thanks for sharing this post with us.Thanks for the post.
I like your articles, though a few points are far to technical for some to understand. My SEO guy directed me to your blog for an explanation of what he’s doing. This blog is awesome. He’s become one of the best SEO guys in all of the western suburbs. He says Naper Designs success is partly due to how much knowledge he gained from blogs like, and including, yours.
Thank you
The contents of this article is indeed very useful. However, those not familiar with SEO work is likely to be confused with the terms. You can improve the article further by writing it such a way that the ordinary layman can, which will make it helpful for more site builders.
@ John:
thanks and you’re welcome…
@Pete:
Thanks Pete and let your friend know that we appreciate his honesty and the referral.
@Team Creatives:
I appreciate the sentiment, but our audience is more SEO’s and not generally beginners. We do have a segment called SEO basics, but I feel there is enough topical or general SEO knowledge out there.
Our blog is an outlet and more importantly a log of SEO tactics that will serve as an archive one day. In the meantime, we will more than likely add definitions and then go back and provide hyperlinks (using the CMS of course)to provide additional context for those more interested in the topic.
Granted, the idea is to hire us to do the work, yet at the same time, provide do it yourself types with enough information or clients to aid the process.
Thank you all for your comments, and I hope you enjoy the blog.
As referred to by Pete…
I get a lot of insight from your post and find that you put topics in a manner far easier explained than I do myself.
I appreciate the collective grouping of good information.