SEO

[PhillipMarlow]

So I'm trying to figure out why one of our sites (at the law firm I'm working at) ranks for particular search terms, and what kind of content to add to get it to rank for others.

For example. One of our blogs is about cerebral palsy, but 60% of our traffic comes from people googling the term "spastic diplegia" Why this is, I have no idea. We don't have very much content devoted to this phrase. Logic is telling me it's because that's the least competitive keyword that we are optimized to rank for.


I found this article:

Black Hat Strategies for White Hat Companies

And I'm trying to wrap my head around it. Can anyone give me any suggestions? Thanks...

 

[jdprgm]

It sounds like you figured it out yourself. Also if your getting a lot of traffic for one term why not turn the focus of the site to spastic diplegia?

 

[PhillipMarlow]

That's definately one angle we could take, I suppose. These guys' markets are pretty nuts..."we need more people that want to sue for -----.

 

[stefanie]

I wouldn't necessarily turn all your efforts to spastic diplegia right away. First, I'd make a list of which phrases related to spastic diplegia are sending you traffic, and how much in a typical month. Then, use a couple of keyword tools to figure out how much total traffic is available for those terms (not to mention, whether those terms are driving meaningful results in the form of leads/new clients, if you can get that information). Google's keyword tool is giving numeric results now, so check on the high-traffic phrases with their "exact match" filter - but remember, you'll never get 100% of the available traffic. Also look to see if there are additional related phrases that might be capable of sending a lot of traffic.

It's possible that it's a less competitive phrase, and that you're already getting the bulk of what's possible out of it, in terms of traffic. If that's the case, you're only hurting yourself to optimize more for spastic diplegia, as you'd experience diminishing returns on the additional efforts. Of course, if you find that there's a ton of potential in those phrases, then by all means, push a little harder on those phrases.

As far as ranking better for particular terms is concerned, maybe this is too obvious, but have you spent much time looking at the backlinks of the sites that rank well for the keywords you'd like to improve on? You didn't mention your experience level or technical expertise, but I wouldn't worry about anything too complicated until you've exhausted the most basic opportunities.

 

[chip.hoffa]

Hire someone!

 

[Bompa]

It sounds like you figured it out yourself. Also if your getting a lot of traffic for one term why not turn the focus of the site to spastic diplegia?

jd's got it right, although, 60% could be just 2/3 in a month's time.

From you post tho, it sounds like you are depending on your on-page
SEO for ranking in the SERPs, but that's not gonna be enough.


Bompa

 

[Brad101]

So I'm trying to figure out why one of our sites (at the law firm I'm working at) ranks for particular search terms, and what kind of content to add to get it to rank for others.

For example. One of our blogs is about cerebral palsy, but 60% of our traffic comes from people googling the term "spastic diplegia" Why this is, I have no idea. We don't have very much content devoted to this phrase. Logic is telling me it's because that's the least competitive keyword that we are optimized to rank for.

This is probably because Google’s algo has identified these terms as related (or interchangeable to some degree). So, even though a site/page is not deliberately optimized for a specific keyword/phrase it may still rank for it because of related keywords/phrases.

For example, PUA is a common acronym for pick-up artist. If you Google ‘PUA’ and ‘pick-up artist’, you’ll find some sites ranking for both terms.

 

[Bofu2U]

This is probably because Google’s algo has identified these terms as related (or interchangeable to some degree). So, even though a site/page is not deliberately optimized for a specific keyword/phrase it may still rank for it because of related keywords/phrases.

For example, PUA is a common acronym for pick-up artist. If you Google ‘PUA’ and ‘pick-up artist’, you’ll find some sites ranking for both terms.

Now I could be wrong, however, could this be along the same lines as LSI?

 

[Brad101]

Absolutely!

Synonymy and polysemy:

Synonymy is the phenomenon where different words describe the same idea. Thus, a query in a search engine may fail to retrieve a relevant document that does not contain the words which appeared in the query. For example, a search for "doctors" may not return a document containing the word "physicians", even though the words have the same meaning.

Polysemy is the phenomenon where the same word has multiple meanings. So a search may retrieve irrelevant documents containing the desired words in the wrong meaning. For example, a botanist and a computer scientist looking for the word "tree" probably desire different sets of documents.

Source: Latent semantic analysis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Google is clearly employing these concepts to improve the effectiveness of their search algorithm. And, to a degree, it can be taken advantaged of by simply using on-site SEO.

 

[_Sub_]

Couldn't this simply be that his on page keyword density for spastic diplegia accidently meets Googles criteria stronger than cerebral palsy. Also Cerebral palsy could be mentioned too much or the term has been over SEO'ed and has caused negative effects.

 

[Brad101]

If the post had been penalized for keyword stuffing, I doubt it would rank for any term.

Couldn't this simply be that his on page keyword density for spastic diplegia accidently meets Googles criteria stronger than cerebral palsy. Also Cerebral palsy could be mentioned too much or the term has been over SEO'ed and has caused negative effects.