How to approach SEO for a large site that doesn't have specific keyword goals?
-
So, I have a project that has 10,000+ page of unique editorial content in a specific industry. They currently get about 500,000 pageviews a month and average just under 2 pages per visit. It has a 66 domain authority and has been doing "the basics" for SEO for about 7 years (headline is an H1, URL is custom while the headline is more "reader friendly", description is a snippet of the body copy a little into the first paragraph, nofollow in the comments).
The crux is that it's an editorial publication so they're not targeting specific keywords, but a wide swath of keywords.
Would it be best to just dive in and figure out some of the less competitive keywords for some of the articles that they could tailor some content to rank better for, then just move onto more and more? What are some ways to approach this if they just want to raise their general traffic and relevancy to the next level?
-
Thanks Theo!
I'll try to go in order here:
1 - Not selling anything, but serving ads. It has a small affiliate shopping functionality that is hard coded into the HTML, but with a max of 3 links on a page for those.
2 - Search=43%, Direct=25%, Referral=32%
3 - Visitor interaction are comments or social shares.
4 - I'm somewhat of a noob, so I don't really know what to call a conversion here?
5 - The IA seems to be pretty good overall. There are categories in the top nav, the content is easily readable and at a good text size, a fairly common site overall structure and aesethic-wise. Is it appropriate to mention the site in question here? It's not a traditional "client" of mine so they're open to any help. -
Search=43%, Direct=25%, Referral=32%
This site has a tribe of people.
So, it must have some content that is highly appealing to some people. I would break out the analytics to see what type of content is being referred and direct... and what is from search.
I would be sure that I made this content very easy to share.
Does this site have a feed that people can subscribe to? I use feedburner on one of my sites and have about 20,000 subscribers. When I post something new it gets immediate action. This site could do the same thing.
-
Wow, thanks for the thorough replies!
EGOL:
They're definitely open to content direction. I'm wondering if the tweaking of existing low-ranking content would be worth it (will it get indexed again even? will raising the ranking of low-competition and low-traffic content help as much as new content with new direction in mind?) -
Right.... I have a site that gets low monthly traffic per page. The way for me to get more traffic is to get more pages up. Since it is in a low competition niche the new pages immediately rank really well - so I don't have to worry much about increasing my power. Instead I focus on getting keyword reach with more pages.
-
"If I was the owner of that site I would want information on what type of content is bringing in the visitors and what kind of content isn't. Then, using the successful content as a guide I would try to produce more of that kind of stuff."
Completely agree. On any site the content is the most important but on a website like this it is almost everything.
-
This site seems to be successful if it is generating 500,000 pageviews per month.... however, that really boils down to an average of just 50 pageviews per month for the average page.
So, in my mind, some of their content is successful and some of it isn't.
If I was the owner of that site I would want information on what type of content is bringing in the visitors and what kind of content isn't. Then, using the successful content as a guide I would try to produce more of that kind of stuff.
Also, where is this content coming from. Search? Return visitors? Does this site have a feed that has a big tribe of subscribers who account for most of the pageviews. If most of the pageviews are coming from the tribe then a plan to enlarge the tribe or get then to evangelize might yield great results.
I would also look at the content that is not bringing in much traffic from search. Why not? Are the title tags clever instead of keyword targeted? What can be done about that?
There are lots of questions when you have a site like this. Some of the answers will yield payback and some will not.
-
That will mainly depend on their goals. Are they trying to sell anything (services, products?) or perhaps show ads? Depending on these goals you for example could try to find ways to increase pages/visit or the number of visits. If they are scoring well on the long tail (which it seems they are) you might want to increase the visits from short tail keywords. How is the split between search/direct/referral, and if skewed, what can you do to change this? Is there any visitor interaction, and if not, is this desired? How are the conversions on the website? Is there any related content that draws visitors deeper into the website? Is the information architecture set up in a way to maximize the (apparently valuable) content to visitors?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How & What is the best advice on Keyword Cannibalization & get onpage optimized perfectly?
Hi all mozzers, I am having confusion to understand the fact and importance to target a single or related grouped keywords which is quite broader in terms of relevancy being found within our business. Let's explain more in detail:
Search Behavior | | KammySEO
Suppose we have a website: abc.com deal businesses in "Party Supplies, Party Decorations" Where the term "Party Supplies" being used exact or randomly many places, please see below finalized Titles respective to each landing page: abc.com/birthday/
title - Birthday Party Supplies - Kids Birthday Party Decorations Ideas abc.com/wedding/
title - Wedding Favors - Wedding Party Decorations & Centerpieces abc.com/baking/
title - Buy Baking Supplies - Cupcake & Cake Decorating Supplies abc.com/occasions/
title - Special Occasions Parties Supplies & Events - Party Time My main concern is, do our keyword party supplies gets stuck with "Keyword Cannibalization" ? If yes then what is the best advice you folks like to input here in order to safeguard and optimize best our landing pages for the such broader related search terms within the businesses. I am looking for best answer here0 -
Google keyword planner shows low search volumes
Hello, There are some terms that you'd expect to see a lot of results. In fact, in the old days of Keyword Tool, I recall seeing thousands of results for a keyword like "anderson cooper". Today, I see a small amount as a monthly average. Am I doing something wrong? All I really want to do is find search volumes on particular keywords either globally or local to a country. And it's proving soo hard! 😞 Screen_Shot_2013_11_26_at_11_13_20_PM.png
Search Behavior | | mhamilton0 -
Google site: search showing twice amount of indexed pages. why?
I have around 50k pages indexed on my site but when I do a google site: of my site it shows around 100k pages indexed. Why is it showing so much more? It is also only showing around 700 pages indexed in my web masters account for the site. Background: We have a custom site map being generated automatically. Let me know if you would like more info, Thanks.
Search Behavior | | Nicktaylor10 -
My satellite website is ranking better than my actual site. Why and what to do?
This is our website: www.sauspiel.de and this is the satellite website. As the satellite site has a better ranking for the keyword "schafkopf" since two or three weeks we wonder how this could happen and what would be best to change it or improve the situation. Shall we take down the satellite site, redirect to the "real" site or try to downgrade? And what would you consider to be the (strongest) reason? Any suggestions? Thanks a lot for your help and assessment!
Search Behavior | | sauspiel0 -
Google ranks our competitor above us on 1000's of branded queires!!!
Hi all, I have noticed a very bizarre phenomenon in Google SERPs. When I search for a branded keyworks [Product + our brand].
Search Behavior | | ref.price
Amazon.fr appear above us on thousands of results. Google even ranks Amazon above us for queries like [ PriceMinister google plus]. I have tried to ask Google about it but I can’t seem to get an answer. Here is the topic I posted on Google’s forum: http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/webmasters/crawling-indexing--ranking/DFvTPr14o_o This seems like a mistake on Google’s side, some kind of semantic association with our two brands! Basically they are sending our customers to our main competitor even though they specifically searched for our brand (PriceMinister). I find the phenomenon quite interesting for the SEO community and frustrating for our company. Does anyone have ideas on this one? Do you think it's a bug from Google? Cheers Oliver0 -
What is SEO to you
We define SEO, as search engine optimization. Though it is more of an art. A web developer is not necessarily a SEO and vice versa. In my job as a web developer I wear many hats, and often asked what exactly SEO is. Before panda the seo industry seemed to follow "tricks" to get sites ranked. This practice lead to many seo company's thinking that spamming links, using link exchanges, link rings etc.. was actually the way to "SEO". So now it seams SEO is simply a short word as to how to get your site in top results, thusly ignoring the actual definition. As a web developer I always viewed SEO as a way to help the search engines understand what my web page is about. What do you think SEO means to you and your company?
Search Behavior | | donford0 -
Googles 'freshness' update and how it may affect Estate Agents.
We have some clients who have raised concerns over how this new update will affect them. They are an Estate Agents who regularly update their property portfolio, blogs and news section etc. Can you advise how they may or may not be directly affected? Thank you.
Search Behavior | | SoundinTheory0