Why It's So Hard To Rank Keyword In the First Page of Google?
Google rolled out the Panda update. Up to 12 percent of
search results got affected. Google went against content farm sites. As a
result, some business came to a standstill.
Then came the Penguin update in April 2012. This time, Google
penalized the websites that incorporated webspam techniques.
And after that, SEO was never the same again. Many SEO
professionals are now following the Google guidelines for SEO. Google tells us
quality content and trustworthy backlinks are enough to climb the rankings.
But is it as easy as it sounds? Probably not.
Creating content is no easy
Usually, content creation is missing in the executives'
top priority list. Instead, it should be the topmost agenda after the sales
and customer service. The lack of understanding of the content role in search
engine optimization makes even harder for marketing head convincing top
management to hire content writers.
The challenge does not just lie within the organization. Human
resource team finding equally hard recruiting industry expert content writers.
Unlike coders, writers need more help from organizations
to create quality content. Writers are
made to work in silos. The lack of reasonable efforts connecting between
writers and sales, customer service, the delivery team is glaringly visible in many
companies. Besides, few companies are creating researched content. The polls,
surveys and collaboration with external agencies to create the thought
leadership whitepaper content are missing.
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| Why It's So Hard To Rank Keyword In the First Page of Google? |
The old ways of link building are not working
When I was working in the first agency, the strategy was
simple. Go and get as much as directory links. The submission based link
building was a widely used tactic in 2005 to achieve rankings. Post-Penguin
update, Google penalized sites that had classified, blog commenting, article
directory social bookmarking links.
Now link building program centered around content
marketing. Implementing a white hat link building strategy is more difficult
because there are so many resources involved.
We spend hours outreaching through emails requesting to
guest post on high-quality sites. Popular websites like Entrepreneur, Inc,
Forbes and Huffington Post receive hundred of article requests daily. So a
high-quality article is most likely to get chosen.
Recently we spent more than 30 hours just to get one
backlink. Our content writer rewrote the entire content upon request. If we go
by these standards, we can get 10 or 15 backlinks in a month.
Another safe bet is to create eye catchy informative
infographics. Outreach via emails and at
the same time roll out paid social media campaigns. Outsourcing design costs
anywhere around 500 to 1000 dollars.
SEO is Time Consuming
The client often asks one common question: "Why it
takes so much time to rank on the first page of Google?"
SEO is not just fixing the problems of the website. It
requires research and analysis. It takes a month to create a couple of
landing pages. Convincing the webmasters for a strategic backlink may take more
than two months. A day goes off analyzing one of the competitor's backlinks.
Imagine your top 10 competitors are having more than 100 pages of quality
content and 10,000 high authority backlinks. Are 6 months enough in this
scenario? Perhaps we need more time.
Ranking keywords is a part of the SEO KPIs. Increasing
referral traffic, reducing bounce rate and improving conversion rates are some
of the other key SEO KPIs. More time is needed to achieve the above KPIs.
Google has set the standards pretty high
Google has more than 200 ranking signals. Some of the
ranking signals change every month. The ranking factors are centered around
links, content, user experience and rank brain. In addition, Google comes up
with one or two big algorithm update every year. The recent updates include the
mobile-friendly website, hummingbird and interstitial ad penalty.
Competition is so high
There is a cut-throat competition in local SEO. Google has
trimmed down to three listings from seven. Recently, Google is showing the four
text ads in the search results page above organic listings removing the right
ads. This has created more fierce competition.
For small-medium business, it 's hard to compete with
Fortune 500 companies. As large size companies have a bigger team and better
resources. It is like fighting in the war field with the bigger army and better
weapons.
If you are a new kid in a town, let us say a start-up, you
will have a slew of online competitors.
You can't game Google
Google is now smarter than spammers. The keyword stuffing
no longer works in SEO. Google penalizes the over-optimization tactics: keyword
stuffing in title tags, junk backlinks, optimizing exact match domains and
shallow content promotion. With Google Panda and Penguin updates, low-quality
content and cheap backlinks fail to achieve higher rankings in Google.
SEO is a lot like a war: need regular content ammunition and
backlinks support. Without that, you can't outsmart your competitors. Time,
money and resource are involved in optimizing the site for better rankings.
Happy optimization.
Why Are Popular Keywords So Hard to Rank for with a New
Website?
While digging through our analytics for question keywords,
I found the following question: Why are popular keywords so hard to rank for
with a new website? It’s a good question, although the longer you work in
search marketing, the more obvious the answer becomes.
New websites have difficulty ranking for popular,
high-volume keywords for two primary reasons:
New websites don’t have much site authority yet. The
amount of on-page optimization you do when targeting a specific keyword is only
half the battle. The Google algorithm takes site or domain authority into
account when assigning rankings. Your site’s authority depends on factors like
age of the domain (hence, new websites necessarily have less authority) as well as
the number of inbound links your site has accrued and the authority, in turn,
of the sites that link to you (aka PageRank).
The competition for “popular keywords” is that much stiffer.
By definition, more sites are competing to rank for more popular keywords, so
your site authority is even more important if you want to rank on the first
page or anywhere near it. Think about it: There are sites that have been around
for a decade or more, working to rank for valuable popular keywords (like, say,
“car insurance” or “local weather”). It’s unlikely that some newbie is going to
be able to stroll in and take one of the top spots just because they want it.
The web is growing all the time, and the huge increase in
the number of unique domains each year – in 2011, over 50 million new domains
were created! – means that popular, high-volume search terms (i.e. terms with
high keyword difficulty) get exponentially more competitive over time. So yes,
it’s true that it’s very difficult for new sites to rank for these keywords –
unfortunately for you and your site, but perhaps fortunately for users. Search
engine users want the best information first and fastest, so Google ranks sites
that are already vetted through the
“votes” of links.
If you have a new website and you want to rank for a
popular keyword, you’ll have to prove your site’s worth to Google first. Here
are some tips for getting there:
Target Long-Tail Keywords First
Longer, more specific keywords – known as long-tail
keywords – have lower search volume than head terms, but they’re much less
competitive to rank for. For example, a new website has next to no chance of
ranking for the head term “insurance,” but would have much better luck with a
niche keyword like “business overhead expense disability insurance,” because
fewer websites are competing to rank. Long-tail keywords also have added the benefit of revealing more intent, making it easier for you to create content
that meets the user’s implied needs.
Develop Real Content
SEO “content” is whatever it is on your site that might
rank for a relevant keyword – whether it’s a blog post that answers a question
(like this one), a video that shows viewers how to do something, or
user-generated reviews of the products you sell. By “real content,” I mean
content that is genuinely useful to people. Your content marketing strategy
should follow naturally from the type of business you run, the types of
keywords that your prospects use, and where your expertise lies.
Practice safe, honest link building
Google is in full-on battle mode against SEO spammers, so
be safe when building links (and I don’t mean giving your in-house SEOs
condoms!). Don’t purchase links in bulk and don’t waste your time with
low-quality websites that are irrelevant to your niche. Spammy link tactics are
unlikely to work in the long term, but you do still need links to show Google
your site is rank-worthy. So leverage that great content you’re creating and do
smart link outreach to bring attention to your site.
Stick with it
As mentioned above, part of what matters to Google is the
age of your site. So there’s no fast track to great SEO rankings – to some
extent it’s just a waiting game. But domain age alone isn’t worth very much –
your site should be growing and improving all the time.
Try PPC
While you’re working to improve your site’s authority and
organic rankings, consider leveraging paid search marketing, or PPC, to drive
traffic. It’s generally faster and easier to place ads on the results pages for
your target keywords than it is to rank for them organically, so you can use it
as a stop-gap measure while your site is new and as a supplement to organic
traffic later. Your PPC account will also provide invaluable data to help you
better execute organic SEO.
Welcome to our blog “CYBER SUGGEST“. Debmalya Datta is a professional Blogger, Developer, Social Media Influencer, Digital Marketer and Entrepreneur. He loves doing work which makes him happy, that’s why he choose Blogging and Educate people. You will love exploring educational stuff on our blog. Live your dreams as much as you can. Be a SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTER
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