Google is the largest service provider in its field today. One can even say that when Google catches a cold, thousands, or even millions of dependent entities will feel the effects as well. Thousands and thousands of people depend on Google for their daily bread, which means people have to be competitive to survive in a massive sandbox like the World Wide Web.
Understanding keywords
How does Google group and rank websites? How does Google find websites of similar interests and how does this search engine match people with possible markets? All these depend largely on keywords. Keywords are like little flags that signal the coming of cars, trains, motorcycles and buses. Google reads the flags and points at possible venues.
Core keywords: trickier to get
Look at any online forum or “chat” and you’ll see that websites that don’t even exist yet are being planned for “keyword optimization.” These folks are aiming to get hits from longtail keywords.
You see, core keywords are a trickier business than longtail keywords. To make things simple, let’s try to illustrate the percentage at which competitive or core keywords are weighed by Google, and how Google finds the websites it lists on page 1 of any Google search.
20% of the time, link anchor texts is responsible for reeling in a rank 1 or even page 1 listing. 25% of the time, it is the domain authority that makes a website number 1. Communities are also valued highly- 20%. The age of the website, as well as the diversity of links on a website, are given equally 15%. What about on-page optimization? A meager 5%.
Anyone can see the problem straightaway. On-page optimization is just one small slice of the bigger pie. You have to have “online clout” as well as a good, useful website to drawn in those number ones, and to reel in the right kinds of customers. Which leads us to the longtail keyword category.
Longtail keywords: a different matter
Longtail keywords might not offer the same kind of compensation as the core ones, but for younger websites, or for those websites that want to earn income by “selling” ads, longtail keywords give a glimmer of hope.
Longtail keywords, which, according to the team at Google AdWords, is responsible for a third of the conversions, operate differently from core keywords.
For example, community links are not valued at all for longtail keywords. Domain authority, the site’s general age since it was put up, and the anchor texts all get 15%. Link diversity gets a meager 5%. But what about the rest? A staggering 50% is dependent on on-page optimization. Do you see the glimmer of hope now?
If younger websites cannot compete with the older, more established ones, you don’t have to settle for a page four listing on Google search. You simply have to take note of both ends and focus on being number 1 for longtail keyword searches. This way, you would not be losing potential customers- sometimes; it is all a matter of figuring out how things are going to be phrased in Google searches.
