With Search Engines Less is More!

I have discussions on the topic of keyword phrases every day. And, if I have just one dollar for every time I had to make a strong point that with search engine rankings less is more — yours truly would be on an island with a satellite dish posting to my various Blogs!

Relevancy is defined as “the relation of something to the matter at hand.” Now, how relevant you are is what those little search engine algorithms will decide based on the content, code and other factors related to your site and on a page by page basis. So let’s make it easy for them! Instead of trying to cram the top 10, 20 or 30 things you are about into every page — think less is more!

Using Realtors and Real Estate Web sites which I have worked on for over a decade, it is not uncommon for real estate clients to want to stuff every possible city and/or county they cover into their sites when we discuss SEO and SEO strategies. I’ve always advised the less is more approach and to only concentrate on your top 3 phrases for your top page and then we can cover city, by city and county by county on internal pages that are only about that one city or county. Less is more! Let your pages be about only one thing so they can be most relevant for that one thing.

If you insist on the stuffing approach, any real estate web site that is all about one city, or one county will always rank higher than the site about 10, 20 or 30 cities. It is common sense that other sites will be more relevant for that one city or county being searched for than another site trying to cover all the bases with 10, 20 or 30 city listed on every page. More dilutes your relevancy. Get it?

Imagine my delight to read a post today about Forgotten Fundamentals of SEO - One Page Per Keyword. This article mirrors the recommendations I’ve provided before their were even the acronyms SEO or SEM being tossed around! (See my related articles noted below this post for more on this very important topic.)

Less is more makes sense. The more you are about, the less you are about any one thing! Keep that in mind when creating your list of targeted phrases. You can also check out my Bullseye Marketing article and free worksheet to get you off to a running start!

At your service,
Judith