Last night, I discovered an interesting development in my intermediate SEO experiment (experiment #2 for those following along). My post page has overtaken my index in ranking for the long tail keyword that I am targeting. This is good news - or at least I hope it is. If my noob senses are tingling a’right, then I am sensing that it means that in the long term I will make more money online.
The reasons for this are simple: if I rank better for this long tail keyword than maybe I will rank better with the money keyword. I will do this by increasing the overall authority of the site by increasing the number of keywords that I rank for. I assumed that this would work just by getting my index page to rank for lots of keywords (the index page is yourblogurl.com) - but if I can get my deep pages ranking well too (this would be my post pages like yourblogurl.com/post-about-pack-gangster-switches-net/) I think that this will be better for the longevity of my rankings.
Why I Think This Change Is Good
It is my understanding that having good, authority posts makes the site more better* in the eyes of search engines the world over. So in getting my post page to begin ranking for these terms I am increasing my overall authority on the site.
* Notice the use of the double comparative. This means that it definitely better than a simple comparative but not quiet as good as a superlative. For more information on this read a dictionary or linguistics book. I ramble.
This increase in overall authority is going to be exactly what I need if I am to rank for the more competitive, money keyword in my particular niche.
What Did It Take To Affect This Change?
I didn’t have to do much to affect this change. All it took was sending two well optimized links from two different hubpages and one keyword optimized comment signature to the post that I was trying to use to create the keyword authority on my site. I used three unique anchor texts that fit well into the hubpages and comment content and I sent the links a few days apart (2 days to be exact).
Since both these articles are 100% original content and provide information of good quality I am expecting them to stick around for a while and to pass any inspection that a person could make of them.
Will These Changes Last?
I haven’t the foggiest idea. I am hoping that they do, but I think that will have to do more with how many links my site gets and where I gets the links to than anything else. If my post continues to get the lion’s share of the links the post will continue to advance in the SERPs. If my index gets more links (or high authority links) than it will reappear as my sites representative in the high school popularity contest of the search engines.
In fact, I hope that these changes don’t last because they have actually hurt me in the SERPs for the most part. Here is a list of how I ranked for each related keyword for the long tail I targeted and my rankings prepublish, one hour after publish, and right now:
| Keyword | Adwords Search Volume | Prepublish Rank | 1 hour rank | Right Now |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pack Gangster Switches Net 1 | 140 | 24 | 11 | 28 |
| Pack Gangster Switches Net 2 | 260 | 62 | 20 | 14 |
| Pack Gangster Switches Net 3 | n/a | 56 | 19 | 17 |
| Pack Gangster Switches Net 4 | 210 | - | 37 | 64 |
| Pack Gangster Switches Net 5 | 140 | 36 | 13 | 14 |
| Pack Gangster Switches Net 6 | 480 | - | 60 | 74 |
| Pack Gangster Switches Net 7 | 320 | - | 139 | - |
| Packing Gangster | 201000 | 42 | 37 | 37 |
| Gangster With Packing | 54000 | 36 | 34 | 32 |
(If this graphic is a little confusing to you, check out my initial post on the topic at Make Money Online Experiment #2 - hopefully that will clear up any confusion created by my use of the fake keyword names.)
As you can clearly see, I saw an almost immediate boost to the money keywords that has been sustained over the past 5 days even with the change from ranking my index to ranking my post page for the long tail I am trying to target. However, my rankings for the keyword terms directly related to my long tail have dropped in rankings with the change in what page is being ranked.
This experiment is only 5 days old, so I can expect things to continue to change - but I thought that this was an interesting enough development to record here.
Make Money Online Experiment #1
I have also seen a similar change in my beginners experiment as well. A search in the Big G in the computer no longer points to by index page but now points to my post page. And, like in my make money online experiment #2 I have seen my site drop in the rankings - this time from 6 to 58. This is a much more competitive niche than my PGS site and this could be the explanation for such a large drop in rankings.
Definitely interesting stuff going on in my make money online experiments!