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I really don't see myself having a shot at making first (or even second) page on those high volume words. My question is: should I just optimize for those low volume ones I found, and put all my energy there, or should I try to include the other, high volume words for themes (that is, even if no one will find me by searching for *those* words, maybe having them will increase my score on the other, less competitive words). How are the words for themes chosen, anyway?
Or perhaps I should distribute: go for the lower volume words everywhere, but the higher volume ones on selected pages?
How are the words for themes chosen, anyway?
It depends:
- If the site has already been created, then the content will define what keywords are being targeted
- If you are creating the content and site from scratch, then the Theme of the site should be the general topic or idea that relates to your content. Brett has great tutorials and articles on this at Search Engine World [searchengineworld.com]
Using a pyramid as an analogy, you should start at the homepage and focus on the broadest targeted word or phrase that relates to your topic and work down from there.
Example:
If you were a cook, and you launched a site called franksrecipes.com and the site contained all different kinds of recipes, you would want to set your site up something like this: (I've used subdomains as an example, but you could do also apply the concept with sub directories)
1st Level
franksrecipes.com
Second Level
pasta.franksrecipes.com
Third Level
pasta.franksrecipes.com/spaghetti/
pasta.franksrecipes.com/lasagna/
pasta.franksrecipes.com/linguini/
Fourth Level
pasta.franksrecipes.com/lasagna/specific_recipe.html
At each level, you would optimize for the phrase that relates to that section.
Level 1: recipes
Level 2: pasta recipes
Level 3: lasagna recipes
Level 4: vegetarian lasagna recipe, classic lasagna recipe, chicken lasagna recipe, etc.
If you apply this approach to all your content, you'll initially draw all your SE traffic from level 3 and down. However, over time, as more people fing your site and link to it, you will slowly begin to climb up for terms in the upper levels.
The key thing to keep in mind is that gaining positions/traffic for the most popular, broad terms, is really the bi-product of a solid, long-term strategy. It isn't something that happens on an individual page level.
1st Level
franks-recipes.com
Second Level
pasta.franks-recipes.com
Third Level
pasta.franks-recipes.com/spaghetti/
pasta.franks-recipes.com/lasagna/
pasta.franks-recipes.com/linguini/
Fourth Level
pasta.franks-recipes.com/lasagna/specific_recipe.html
I would use the hyphen and you will have one more for free iam right?
/Ove
I'm not one who thinks that keywords in the root domain are a huge benefit, but it wouldn't hurt. My only hesitation is that from a branding/name recognition standpoint, hyphenated domains are a bad idea. When you consider all the other marketing channels that come into play, I think you would be better off using the hyphens within the subdomains.
Something like
pasta-recipes.franksrecipes.com
By nature, people don't think of typing in hyphens, and they certainly don't use them when talking to friends and associates. The friend at the cocktail party won't say "You should checkout Franks Hyphen Recipes Dot Com!:)
/Ove
I also agree with Ove. I have better luck with hyphen than without. I'm going for keyword though and not branding.
With branding I think you need to capture all the variations of your domain and at least park the domains so someone doesn't come along later and steal some of your thunder.
Still, with all things being equal, I don't think it really helps. It certainly doesn't appear to help in keyword niches that are fairly competitive. The example I used is actually how the network of sites that dominate virtually all recipe searches is set up. There are also tons of sites within that space that used keyword-hyphen domains, but none of them show up anywhere at the top.
The same holds true for the SEO industry. There are a ton of companies who are very big on the idea of hyphenated keyword domains, but those types of domains are virtually non-existant at the top of most search engines.
Using a pyramid as an analogy, you should start at the homepage and focus on the broadest targeted word or phrase that relates to your topic and work down from there.
I don't understand why I need to do this. Taking your example, let's say I only have one recipe, for lasagna with mozarella - and I'm only interested in targeting people who are looking for that.
Do I need to build the pyramid from recipes, pasta, lasagna, lasagna with motzarella? Why can't I just target lasagna with motzarella?
My specific case is not exactly like that - people who search for the larger volume words may be interested in my site, it's just that the competition is pretty intense, compared with the smaller volume words (which are actually even more on target)
One more question: does the themes pyramid need to be in the url structure, link structure, or both. All the examples seem to illustrate a pyramid with both - I just want to make sure that this is necessary (I'm suprised that the SE's don't allow web masters to structure their site internals however they want, as long as the end-user-experience, i.e. link structure, is good)
Do I need to build the pyramid from recipes, pasta, lasagna, lasagna with mozzarella? Why can't I just target lasagna with mozzarella?
This isn’t an either/or but more of a suggestion that has proven time and again to work. You can certainly target only “lasagna with mozzarella” and build your site all around that but how much room does that give you to draw people in? We may think everyone is coming in on the keywords we expect the visitor to come in with when in all actuality they are coming in on many variations of that ‘theme'.
My specific case is not exactly like that - people who search for the larger volume words may be interested in my site, it's just that the competition is pretty intense, compared with the smaller volume words (which are actually even more on target)
On target is good. With a theme based approach you strengthen the theme in steps. The homepage is the broadest form available for that keyword or theme. This is true if it’s widgets or sports or recipes. How far can you take it out and still be on terms with it? You can be very specific with this. You may not sell all widgets only blue ones so blue widgets is as far as you take it out. From there you bring it back in, layer by layer and page by page until it gets down to the smallest form of what it is that you have to offer. If you only have blue widgets do you have 6” blue widgets and 24” blue widgets? Do some of the blue widgets bend while others don’t? How many possible ways are there to describe your blue widgets? If this only creates two layers for you than so be it. If you can bring it down another, I think that’s even better. The point is that you want to support the whole.
Now, when you bring sub-domains or canonicals into it, for me it’s usually a case of needed to categorize my widgets even more. Say I sell all types of widgets. I may then want a blue.widget.com page and a red.widget.com page, simply because I then know and the search engines know, that whole canonical is all about that. It’s an easy way to manage more complicated themed sites.
One more question: does the themes pyramid need to be in the url structure, link structure, or both. All the examples seem to illustrate a pyramid with both - I just want to make sure that this is necessary
Basically yes because what you call or address your page should in my opinion be what your page is about. You are then taking advantage of all aspects of optimization available to you. There are some good link topics related to this topic. I’ll see what I can hunt up for you on that.
(I'm surprised that the SE's don't allow web masters to structure their site internals however they want, as long as the end-user-experience, i.e. link structure, is good)
As an aside, I’ve really enjoyed your questions and comments lately. Keeping me on my toes :)
f_d, you’re equating volume with the number of terms that the market uses to find info on the one hand and competition with the number of other sites/pages on the other. On that basis asking about keywords relative to theming.
Do you want qualified visitors or tons of traffic?
Keep the equation simple, why not simply concentrate on what the market uses for finding you. As Andrew said, “the keywords you choose depend on the target audience” That’s the real issue.
As a very secondary step tackle the competition on “their own terms”.
“Relevant” keyword selection plus theming based on the discussion above and elsewhere on the board is likely to take care of more competition than you planned for!
I just saw on [webmasterworld.com ] that having more than one keyword in a page actually dilutes the value of the other keyword. If I understand correctly, this means that if a page has the word "widgets" (as an aside, we really do need to come up with a better example) many times, and the user searches for "widgets", than the page will do better if it does not have the word "slicing" in the title or in many times in the page. If this is correct, does this mean that I should pick one or the other, but not go for both?
I'm more than a bit confused, since I thought an integral part of themes is that if words "widget" and "slicing" are considered related, even if the user only searches for "widgets", than the site will do better if it has "slicing" as well. This seems to be the exact opposite of what the other thread says (Brett, if you're reading this, help! You were the author of that other thread, and you are also one of the pioneers of themes - please resolve the contradiction). Perhaps I am missing soemnthing. . .
paynt, thanks for the encouragemnet - it's always nice to know that other people find your questions relevant and new
