Is Content King for an Unknown Company?

[member22]

A lot of people in the SEO community say that content is king (to me it means that if you have a good content people while want to link to it which will then turn into social sharing around the community). Then more people will talk about you and link to you and you will get then better rankings.

From what I understand this is what google wants to achieve, they want to make sure a website comes up in the search results because they are a trusted resources that " real people " trust or have talked about... ( it is a like when a friend of mind recommends me a plumber , I go see that plumber because it is recommended instead of calling someone that I don't know but who is in a phone book ! )

My question, how can a company that nobody knows become " famous " and rank on the web ? If nobody knows that company nobody will recommend them or trust them ?

[SevenCubed]

Sevencubed where does that number 2 links per 750 words comes from ?

Experience thru trial and error but I did add that your results may vary -- test test test.

...I don't repair watches I don't understand how it can help search engine...

I was only citing examples. Obviously you have to use keywords that support your primary focus -- rare is a keyword that does not have a supporting cast of characters.

That's where keyword research comes in. Know the supporting terms and apply them as well. Then in many instances you can also drill down on the secondary supporting terms and find their supporting cast members to the primary keyword actors.

How boring would a Broadway play be if you only had a star keyword without other colourful characters to add to the drama?!

[SevenCubed]

@member22 to answer your other questions I can only say that writing for web content is both an art and a science. Apply science for dumb algorithms that will never be able to develop AI to any truly useful extent -- they can only measure, not reason.

But, write artfully for your readers. Find the balance between the two and you are on your way. There is no cut and paste solution. It's fluid.

[member22]

I tried to see if doing internal links throughout my website would help me move up the ranking on certain keywords and the results is the following :

let's keep using the example above and say I am targeting "luxury diamond watches" on my homepage.
So what I did is created 5 internal links out of 30 that say " luxury diamond watches " because I want to rank on that keyword and I also want to rank on "diamond watches" so I used the keywords diamond watches, or synonyms for the 25 internal links left.

The results are that after about a week I moved up on the ranking on the keyword "luxury diamond watches" but not diamond watches and I am trying to figure out why...

I am thinking that it is either because I have stuffed too many times the keyword " diamond watches" or synonyms to rank on that keyword ( 25 out of 30 links ) versus 5 out of 30 for "luxury diamond watches."

Or the other reason is that the links for that were done for " luxury diamond watches " were done in a way (I am not sure which way) that is better than the one that say diamond or watches.

Has anyone had a similar experience ?

[tedster]

The shorter, 2-word phrase is much more competitive and a lot harder to move. It's generally easier to get traffic for the longer phrase that CONTAINS the shorter phrase and then, over time, there's a better chance that you also begin to rank for the shorter, more desirable phrase.

Just don't try to do it all with internal anchor text alone - you will usually get penalized at some point along the line for that.

[backdraft7]

Regarding that long lost trust - We run a paid site that offers 100% unique & original content. We were the first to ever offer this content on the web back in the 1990's. Our site name is a federally registered mark and we have taken credit card orders every single since the 90's. We are a BBB member withan A+ rating, we use AlertSite to scarecrow hackers, we have always participated in Adwords, Adsense and of course WMT / Analytics. Regardless of all that hub bub, our traffic is at all time lows.

If trust means being king of the hill and being listed 7 times per page, then the 'new trust' lies somewhere inside the walls of well funded johnny come lately sites.

So what are you supposed to do to get your Google Trust merit badge these days?
I think the new requirement is several million in V.C. - Good luck with that Ma & Pa!

[JesterMagic]

I read that if I link 29 times with the keyword "watches" as anchor text I am penalized by google.

Where did this come from? From my experience I don't think it is true.

[tedster]

I'd say it's not true - if the link is in the navigational area. However, in a situation where every single one of 29 total pages on a site has a link in the main content area with identical anchor text, I have seen penalties. And I know that was the cause because rankings returned within days of removing those in-content links.

[CainIV]

One answer - social media.

[member22]

Thank you for your replies, I agree that 2 keyword is more competitive than 3 keyword but why would the same exact page ( in the case our homepage ) improve its ranking for the 3 keywords " luxury diamond watches " and get its ranking worse for 2 keywords " diamond watches " , to me it can't be because of competitiveness there as to be something else... because it is the same exact page and the 3 word keyword contains the 2 word keyword in it... and all that we did that made us move was internal links.

So apparently that are some internal links that helped us move up the rankings on the 3 word keyword " luxury diamond watches " but not on the 2 word " diamond watches " this is what is bizarre... and what we are trying to understand.

It seems that the internal links is the key for those changes but how that is what is difficult to figure out.

[tedster]

why would the same exact page... improve its ranking for 3 keywords and get its ranking worse for 2 keywords. to me it can't be because of competitiveness there as to be something else.

That's an important question... and based on an important observation. It points to a change in the way Google builds search results today, compared to the traditional way.

I don't claim to fully understand it, but I'm pretty certain the change is related to phrase-based indexing, rather than conventional "word" indexing.

A search for [three words] today does NOT simply give you the result set for [two words] minus the pages that don't include the third word.

To say it another way, [two words] is treated as a single unit today, and so is [three words]. And the overlap between the results is not what we expect.

Each commonly made query phrase for [two words] or for [three words] has some preliminary scoring already related to it. This scoring is based on how strongly the phrase predicts the presence of other related phrases on a web page. And those other related phrases are chosen according to how well they match certain user intentions. The data used to build up these kind of relationships can also include the accumulated revision histories for a phrase, for example, and not just indexed web pages.

So each word in a query phrase is not related to the others with equal semantic strength or importance. Think, for example, about [white house paint] and [white house informer]. You can even see Google search results where Google decides that one of the query words is not important at all (it's not "predictive") and so that word does not actually need to appear on pages in the result set.

I'd say you can get a taste for how longer phrases stack up by studying the drop down Suggestions. If the three word phrase doesn't even show up after you type in the first two words, then the relationship is not very strong. That is an over-simplification, and that's why I said it gives you "a taste".