| Topic S |
| Search Term Popularity |
| While it's a good idea to monitor popular search terms, it is just one [of many] metrics you should be watching. |
| I don't profess to be a search engine expert, however, I make these observations in an attempt to better understand how people actually find information. Some SEO "experts" seem to think that there's little value in getting high rankings on phrases that are not popular. I think that's flawed thinking because popular terms are likely to be ambiguous term that almost always lead to more specific searches to achieve a "discovery transaction"; i.e., the point at which a user actually finds something of value. |
| And it's this basic understanding of how people find stuff that has caused me to regard traditional SEO as a fundamentally disreputable model. In fact, SEO is being disrupted now. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see the problem that Web logs have created for SEO techniques; good or bad, it's disruptive. |
| So why are SEO techniques flawed (or disreputable)? Simple |
| The argument that low popularity terms and phrases are not competitive, is also flawed. There are many instances where two searches per month can yield millions of dollars in revenue. Dominating a "competitive" term is relative only to the person who shares that domain of interest. If you happen to sell secure RSS tools, it’s extremely relevant to the very few people that need secure RSS tools. |
| There are certainly businesses that want to dominate highly competitive terms like "plays" - |
| ESPN and Broadway are two that come to mind. However, highly competitive terms are [generally] ambiguous and in most cases encourage, and eventually demand users to enter search terms that are less ambiguous. Measuring the number of searches in a month for "plays" is irrelevant if that’s not the phrase that was used to find what they truly wanted. More importantly – you must measure the final key-phrase used that led to the discovery of actionable information and a commercial transaction. Furthermore, a good SEO strategy accounts for this behavior by recognizing that [depending on whose data you use] the average key-phrase is 3.6 words, not one or two. There's also the issue of the keyword ontology in your content. |
| Our business model is not about key-phrase domination. Rather, it’s about providing a method (and technology) to dominate a market segment with discoverable information (for enterprises as well as small Web site owners). A good example is Steve Fendrich (Pioneer Drama). |
| "We're closing in on 200,000 hits on the website. Should happen in a day or two. We have been getting a large number of new customers who tell us they are happy they found us. Thanks for all you two have done." -- Steve Fendrich, CEO, Pioneer Drama. |
| Pioneer Drama is a drama content publishing and information provider. The owner (and customers) really appreciate the value of their publisher's diary and Weblog (built in MyST) which currently delivers high ranking for about 500 key phrases relevant to that business domain. One of the phrases is "Children’s Christmas Plays". Very few people search for this phrase, but when they do, his company is visible. In fact, Steve dominates the top ten (#1, #2, #7, and #8) Google results for this phrase. More importantly, he just writes about his company and products, and this happens automatically. |
| IMHO, the SEO industry does a great job of force-feeding results. However, they typically optimize for terms that are most popular, not terms and key phrases that are most popular and that also lead to a transaction or actionable event. As people search for content they begin the hunt with very abstract one, or two-word queries. They continue to play with the phrases until they reach a point where they stop searching. By design, the search process causes the user to depart from phrases that are further away from "popular" terms, and close to "productive" terms. This is a key element in understanding how people find information and how to develop your overall SEO strategy. Popularity is good, but it's not the most important measuring stick. |
| Businesses typically attempt to dominate a term or phrase not on merit, but through brute force. This is an arms race mentality; one that is difficult to sustain but may produce good results over a short period of time; necessitating the re-hashing of the pages from time-to-time by an SEO expert. The alternative approach is that you dominate a set of search results based on knowledge (e.g., a cloud of content that represents a superior collection of information objects that are assembled in a way that search engines [and customers] appreciate). This is what MyST has [unintentionally] achieved. |
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