While digging through our analytics for question keywords (as outlined in “
3 Ways to Find Questions to Answer in Your Content”), 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
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 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 the added 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.
