Loading ...Better spend more time on keyword research
A great peice of info over at grokdotcom made me start thinking. Simply in 2005 you can rank any where on the page in Google and get traffic, in 2008 you need to be at the top. As can be seen on the graph below:
Now the chances of ranking for cheap flights :) are probably not going to happen, however hard we try. So people need to do better keyword research and rank at the top for the terms that they stand a chance of ranking for. It’s a game of using your resources where they will most effective. No point in getting links for terms you aren’t going to be very near the top for.
So great times for individual seo’s and bad for large brands. Large brands have to satisfy their shareholders and rank for the big vanity terms, hence competing more and more against each other. So they have larger seo teams, bigger seo consultancy bills and they are all going after the same terms and so leaving it wideopen for everyone else to pickup the rest.
We also would love to be number 1 for car hire but alas our resources are better used elsewhere.
Doug enjoying playing where no one else palys:)
shame for the smaller affiliates who show up on terms which are quite competitive so are doing well but get low traffic !
Suprising how much its changed tho
This just doesn’t seem right at all. Some level of difference is expected, yes. But to this extent? Nah. I am seriously sceptical about the real value of this study.
But I do agree with what you’re saying about the time spent chasing vanity keywords.
The difference in hotspots is so extreme its hard to belive that the same paremeters and conditions were used - just how scientific was the study?
Read Bryans post here:
http://www.grokdotcom.com/2008/09/05/why-rank-1-in-google/
Are those images for the same kind of people doing the same kind of search, or just carefully chosen to show a dramatic change? From anecdotal experience most people I know still go through 2-3 pages of results.
I think it probably reflects my own behaviour changes a bit.
Originally I used to be distracted and excited by all the different results on the page and used to look down in interest at the sheer variety of things that could be on offer under the search term.
Nowadays, I tend to use the top three or four only and if that fails I’ll glance down but more likely rewrite my search query.
It may also be due to the fact that googles results have become more similar so the first page tends to show pretty similar results. So a) the first three are more likely to match your query, and b) if they don’t, then you know nor will the next 7.