John_Caius - 12:13 am on Jul 8, 2003 (gmt 0)

There are distinct groups of WW members here - some who go for "build a content-rich site well and watch for a general trend in ranking and traffic improvement" and some who go for "build a highly targeted site and go for high ranking in a single highly competitive keyword/phrase". The first group will probably generally agree with my first post and I would consider myself amongst them. The second group will probably generally disagree with my first post as the highly competitive areas are indeed often dominated by spammers, networks of interlinked sites etc.

However, perhaps it would help the second group in their endeavours to consider the views of the first, specifically in two areas:

1) The page versus the chapter approach

Taking the first post's approach of thinking like a search engine and taking the search term 'asthma' as an example. If I'm ranking pages in terms of relevancy then I might have three types of results, in order of importance:

a) the authority, e.g. The American Asthma Association
How do I know it's an authority? Well, it's got 10,000 external incoming links all with the word asthma in, from some very important sites like the WHO and the CDC.

b) a chapter on asthma in an online medical textbook
There's the chapter homepage and then another 30 pages of content. The SEO bit is to link the subpages back to the chapter homepage with anchor text "asthma homepage" so that the googlebot sees and comprehends the hub arrangement, seeing that the homepage is actually the top of a pyramid of lots of pages of relevant content.

c) a single page on asthma, perhaps someone's personal site.
Since there's only a single page of content the googlebot has to assume that it's not as relevant or valuable a result as the 30 page chapter.

This approach can be applied to any keyword area. Even in the most competitive keyword areas, pages frequently stand alone as a single, albeit highly optimised, page of content. If you're trying to outrank your competitor then build a chapter of content under that main page and make it clear to the googlebot that the main page is now the hub of a little pyramid of information, hence more relevant and valuable than a single page of content.

2. The broad site theme versus the narrow site theme

When Google launched Google News, did they have to optimise that section very strongly to rank in the top ten for the keyword 'news'? Did they have to find a thousand high PR incoming links? No - because the main site, albeit based on a different specific theme, passed on ranking weight to the new service, such that it could compete instantly with some of the most widely linked sites on the web.

What lesson can we learn? Well, most sites built to compete in a highly competitive area do one thing - maybe they sell widgets, maybe they give booking information for Widget Hotel, whatever. Unfortunately, if your site only does one thing then you need a heck of a lot of optimisation before it will compete. Look at Google - its main focus is as a search engine and after several years and a quarter of a million incoming links, it's still behind Lycos and Altavista in the SERPs.

If your competition has optimised sales pages then they also only have links in from sites who want to link to sales pages. If you have sales pages linked to from your comprehensive informative guide to your product area then many more people will link to your informative product area and that passes significant ranking weight to your sales pages.

Added to this, you're no longer having to bank on your position in a single search term, which may fluctuate drastically from month to month - rather you're now competing across a broad range of search terms, in some you'll go down, in some you'll go up, overall you'll be more stable.

Analyse your own posts

If you're complaining because you feel a less relevant site is outperforming you then make the googlebot see your content as more valuable by enhancing it. If you've got an incredibly optimised single page then develop it into a chapter, which will make the chapter homepage rank better.

If you're complaining that "my ranking dropped from 5th to 17th so I hate Google" then you're hanging your hat (and your traffic and ROI) on a single keyphrase. Develop broader content and watch your monthly traffic both stabilise and increase.

Personal experience

One of my sites has about 100 pages of fairly simple content, in a theme that includes a lot of highly optimised but narrow commercial sites. Since January I haven't modified the site in any way and my average unique visitors per day over each month has remained stable within a range of 10% - even through Dominic and Esmerelda when SERPs for some keyphrases dropped quite a bit. I'm not ranking outstandingly well for any huge keyphrase, but I'm ranking very well for a wide variety of two, three, four and even up to eight word phrases. I've tagged on two or three targeted pages for associated commercial services and these have gone straight to the top five in the keyphrases I targeted, plus several others I didn't even think of. The main content added powerful ranking weight to the targeted pages when they were competing against pages that were part of just three to five page sites.

Remember that there's always more than one way to skin a cat. If the keyphrase "buy blue widgets" is completely stuffed with sites you can't compete with then build the best informative site all about blue widgets, get traffic for all the associated terms and use intelligent within-site design to make your visitors into customers for your product.