Proof that you can rank with content alone...

[stackcash]

This is a first for us for sure, but our new site has been bouncing around the top 50 spots for a handful of money-keywords for a few weeks now. At first, I thought it was just the new site bump that we sometimes see in the first month or so after a site is launched, before it settles in to it's true rankings. But...this site sat live for a month or two before establishing these rankings...and has been consistent for the past few weeks. It currently has ZERO links.

Check it out:

Sure, these rankings aren't going to make us money yet... but it's a fantastic sign.

Here's what we did:

• Launched the site with 30+ pages. It's up to about 50 pages now.
• Each money page has 2000+ words of content, some are at 5000+ words. Blog posts are 1000-1500 words.
• We took the time to hire writers that 1) understood the niche, and 2) followed our instructions closely. As I've told my clients many, many times - there's no better way to get GREAT content than providing instructions that make content creation almost mindless to complete. As a business owner, YOU are the strategist...the writer is only the tool to that follows your lead. It worked out fantastic in this case.
• We included a TON of screenshots, video, and images that we used to illustrate things we were talking about in the content.
• The content is very easily scanned. Clear subheadings, bullet lists, and paragraphs no longer than 2-3 sentences each that focus on a single thought.
• Lots of OBLs to .gov, .edu, and primary sources of data. We made a point to tell our writers that links to other blogs, news sites, editorial sites, about.com (and similar), were NOT allowed. We made sure that the only links in the content were to pages that had the source of the data that we were using to craft our content.

Can't wait to see how this site responds to links once we get started with that soon.

 

[Ryuzaki]

For sure. On-page is at least half of the battle. ^ That's what happens on a brand new domain. Imagine publishing content like a domain that's already sitting on 1000 referring domains linking in that's aged by one year, two years, 10 years even.

Content is king, without a doubt. All else is derived from content. You can fake the rest and the queen, jack, and even silly jesters can overthrow the king through sheer force or trickery, but how much easier life is when the content is top-tier. It's how you get the social signals and links that matter, and Google is learning to how to correlate what's worth getting those signals and links, even if it doesn't have them yet. The on-page game has matured tremendously.

 

[Philip J. Fry]

Lots of OBLs to .gov, .edu, and primary sources of data. We made a point to tell our writers that links to other blogs, news sites, editorial sites, about.com (and similar), were NOT allowed. We made sure that the only links in the content were to pages that had the source of the data that we were using to craft our content.

Using primary sources makes for a better article too. If you rely on secondary sources (news articles, etc), your site will be a tertiary source and how useful is that? Not very.

 

[chanilla]

So what do you guys think about over-optimization, how detection/natural flow is becoming more sophisticated, and how much you personally believe you can get away with on low auth domains these days?

For instance, all these damn SEO plugins (let's take yoast for example) I think sometimes lead people down the wrong path, and often even have to catch myself right before publishing... "like wtf do you mean I don't have all green lights bitch!?!? My shit is good"

Normally I like to vary the target keyword in title, description, and h1's/2's, especially when doing review style posts or comparison content... Particularly because if you're comparing different brands of the same product, said product type keyword density skyrockets like a mofo if you're not paying attention.

 

[Ryuzaki]

Yeah, those green lights drive me nuts, especially with custom fields and other things Yoast doesn't detect.

I think over-optimization thresholds are only detecting keyword density style over-optimization, which you can easily dodge using synonyms, abbreviations, nicknames, etc. I'm actually running a mini-test for a post I wrote that's ranking for all of the long-tails surrounding a single-word term but nowhere in the top 100 for that single word although it should be.

So for instance, if I wrote a monster post about Synthesizers, I ended up using that word about 80x or more in 3000 words, but the long-tails only once or twice each. The problem was when naturally speaking about this topic, you have to keep using the single word.

So I went back in and changed out instances of synthesizer to... (again, this is an example):

• synthesizer
• synth
• electronic keyboard
• keyboard
• the keys
• synthetic waveform

Whatever I could come up with that still made sense in the flow of the sentences. I changed as many as I could to just "it" and got rid of any nouns I could, removed the word from any brand names where I could without changing the recognition.

Yeah it's a pain, because it doesn't really seem to be based on density so much as usage numbers now, which makes it hard for long articles. Definitely save them for the title, URL, headers, alt tag, etc. when possible, I say.

 

[Tucky]

Perfect example of great semantics there Ryuzaki, that's what makes great content that search engines love and doesn't look spammy.

 

[stackcash]

So what do you guys think about over-optimization, how detection/natural flow is becoming more sophisticated, and how much you personally believe you can get away with on low auth domains these days?

For instance, all these damn SEO plugins (let's take yoast for example) I think sometimes lead people down the wrong path, and often even have to catch myself right before publishing... "like wtf do you mean I don't have all green lights bitch!?!? My shit is good"

Normally I like to vary the target keyword in title, description, and h1's/2's, especially when doing review style posts or comparison content... Particularly because if you're comparing different brands of the same product, said product type keyword density skyrockets like a mofo if you're not paying attention.

Notice how I didn't mention anything about typical on-site optimization? It's because it was a secondary focus to GREAT content that was very easily absorbed by the reader. To tell you the truth, I don't even look at Yoast metrics. The only reason I really have it there is to easily separate my H1 and title tags into two separate entities, and to add a meta description.

We do try to included 5 - 10 phrases that are semantically relevant to our main keyword. We do try to include the main keyword in title, h1, and url slug. But, that's about it.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Google is smart. Let it determine where you're going to rank best by providing 1) fantastic content, and 2) a gentle push in the right direction. There is absolutely no reason to slam it over the head with a page that is super-optimized for a specific keyword - and I'm not talking about keyword density.

 

[Philip J. Fry]

Notice how I didn't mention anything about typical on-site optimization? It's because it was a secondary focus to GREAT content that was very easily absorbed by the reader. To tell you the truth, I don't even look at Yoast metrics. The only reason I really have it there is to easily separate my H1 and title tags into two separate entities, and to add a meta description.

We do try to included 5 - 10 phrases that are semantically relevant to our main keyword. We do try to include the main keyword in title, h1, and url slug. But, that's about it.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Google is smart. Let it determine where you're going to rank best by providing 1) fantastic content, and 2) a gentle push in the right direction. There is absolutely no reason to slam it over the head with a page that is super-optimized for a specific keyword - and I'm not talking about keyword density.

You'd still want to add LSI to the page. Having the keyword on the page does give it a boost in rankings.

What I do is look at queries Google is ranking me for on WMT and then add those keywords on appropriate pages. Some of these keywords are LSI keywords that I never found or considered and, in addition to that, they get like 10-50 hits/month.

So you get more semantic relevancy in your main keyword PLUS higher ranking for long tail keywords.