pugdog
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Jul 6, 2004, 5:05 PM
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2004-07-06: Keywords and Rankings and CONTENT: Part 1
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I have been researching google in my off time -- time I can't just get my brain to do anything I want it to. Often, I'll follow links, the way I used to wander through encyclopedeas (remember those things?) seeing where it will lead me. When I have a goal, or a quest, one without a time limit, it's a lot more fun. If I'm too tired to think, i create a lot of bookmarks to go back to. But, eventually, I'll find some interesting tidbits, or come to some unexpected conclusions.
Like now. More than anything else, I find that common sense is not all that common. Hmmm..... I think that has been said before! There are people making a lot of money -- being called gurus -- for expousing ideas and disseminating information that was so painfully obvious on my first few uses of Google Adwords / Adsense that it never occured to me it would be "valuable" to others.
For instance, if you are using google, and you want to know what a keyword is "worth" set up an Adwords account for your site. It's relatively inexpensive, and for $1 a day, (not all spent, either) and $0.05 per click, you can not only generate Very, VERY targeted traffic to your site, but you can see how the "other half" lives.
I say -- using google, since if you do keyword searches on other engines, or keyword analysis on other engines, the data will be skewed to what THEIR SURFERS are looking for. Each engine has a different user group or target group. That too is PAINFULLY obvious looking at the "keyword ranks" some search engines list as their most popular keywords. Use common sense! If your site is about birds and aviary interests, a search engine targeted to geeks and computer issues is not going to yield a valid statistical pool. On the other hand, if you use a search engine targeted to hobbies, pets, general home based surfing, etc, you'll see a much different breakdown.
One search engine that my travels directed me to, posted it's top keywords, and they were *ALL* about gambling, casinos and games. Without even bothering to investigate the search engine, I *KNEW* it was *NOT* my target audience! Their top 100 keywords were all "scam" type words.
Why do I say that? Casinos/Gambling are get-rich-quick or entertainment spending type ventures. They are often MLM's, or pyramid schemes, and very few search engine entries are actually "end sites" but are sell-through sites for other sites. They are not CONTENT sites, and google is not going to like them very much. Other search engines have developed to deal with that -- but then you are preaching to the choir. You are not hitting a NEW group of surfers, but often the same old webmasters checking competition, or surfers sekeing another free deal.
But I digress.
In these discussions, you have to realize that we are talking CONTENT. So is Google, and so are all the other major players. They award sites with content, and penalize sites without it. But, the pitchmen keep trying to make web pages, and sites, that have no content -- only keywords -- like gambling, casinos, debt consolidation, mortgages, etc -- appear to have content.
In your own web wanderings, how many times have you clicked through a reasonable search engine entry, only to find the _SAME_ regurgitated junk that you had seen on a dozen other pages? That is *NOT* content, and it's not what the search engines are about.
The search engines are NOT about get-rich-quick schemers and suckers putting up their pages and trying to get their piece of spam ranked higher than another suckers page. Yes, I do have a negative and complete disdain for this.
So many of the SEO boards, and sites, are about promoting this sort of junk. 99% of the adult boards and sites are about it. (99% of the adult sites have the same crap -- it's a competition to see who can take a marks money first). That is NOT CONTENT.
Before going any further with this forum, I really needed to say that :)
What you are reading about on these other sites are a mix of the following, in various proportions:
1) Intentionally misleading posts
2) Newbies who are clueless, asking the same questions over and over, and getting zapped by #1
3) Totally clueless posts, that on the surface may seem to make sense, but if analyzed carefully by a reasonable mind, or in light of the next googlization changes, makes no sense at all.
4) endless chatter over the same topics, with the same generic advice to get your generic site listed on the search engines above the other generic sites
5) Sour grapes
6) 1 in 100 has something useful or interesting -- purely by accident.
So back to the keywords.
If you are using Adsense to try to make money with your site, take a look at Adwords to see where the money is being spent. Makes sense? Duh!
Google provides a LOT of tools for the advertisers to evaluate their campaigns. part of that is estimated click-throughs based on certain keywords, and how much the top spot will cost to get.
So, develop a campaign to promote your own website. Don't do it with the INTENT TO DEFRAUD mentality of a spammer/scammer/sucker/mark But with a mind to LEARNING what is going on. Invest in yourself, and take a major step towards understanding how the whole system works.
So, you set up a campaign, create an ad or two, now go search for keywords for your ads. WOW! A learning experience like no other! You can literally spend days playing with the system, trying to get a feel for it -- and no one can shorten that process for YOU!! You have to actually do it, and learn it. Watch how keywords change costs, change locations, and see if anyone is actually clicking on your ads. If so, where are your ads appearing.
But, once you set up a good campaign for your own site, you can start experimenting for what ads will show best on it. You can see what keywords are encouraging advertisers to pay more per click, *BUT* be careful. Just because that keyword has a high cost, doesn't mean it has a high click! Sometimes getting 100 $0.50 clicks can be better than getting 5 $3.00 clicks. Balance cost per click, over the INTEREST of your surfers and how likely they are to click or be interested in that keyword.
In doing this, I not only got very angry with google for killing off some of my keywords, I did learn the quirks of their system, and how it's not perfect, but it's really trying. It's not mindless, or random. Any one action may appear to be random, but as a whole, there is a purpose -- CONTENT and CONTENT TARGETING *NOT* KEYWORD TARGETING.
Spammers/scammers/ etc only have KEYWORD TARGETING.
If you want your site to do well, evaluate your CONTENT and maybe enhance it to allow better keyword targeting of what is REALLY THERE.
Remember, in my initial thoughts, I pointed out that the search engines are for the SURFERS not the WEBMASTERS. If a surfer can't find what they are looking for, they will get frustrated and try other search engines til they do. Google became what it is by providing the best results, based on what the surfer was looking for -- and it was -- I'm pretty sure -- not a long list of contentless spam sites regurgitating the same junk.
If you follow their changes, the changes are to enhance the quality of the returned results from a SURFER point of view, *not* a web developer. That is a *BIG* change of perspective, if you want to succeed.
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