to balance competing SEO forces

All of us want to show strong results to our clients or stakeholders. Sometimes, however, pushing too hard can backfire. It is more evident between departments and disciplines.

Designers (or UX/CRO specialists) might think that they can increase the conversion rate of a website by 10% by reducing content and creating a streamlined appearance. If that 10% increase in the conversion rate is at the expense of 20% organic traffic, it may not be a wise trade.

Conflicts are not uncommon, particularly between disciplines or roles. Similar conflicts can occur even within a single discipline like SEO.

This article examines some of the competing forces in SEO, and how they can be approached.

Volume of URLs – Ranking footprint vs. crawling efficiency

Are you working on a site that has many pages? Some SEOs may think that more pages or content items are equivalent to a larger indexing footprint (and, therefore, ranking).

More URLs do not always translate to higher ranking or more organic traffic. This is particularly applicable to sites with poor architecture.

As an example, there are e-commerce sites which include a category of products within the URL for a specific product and allow those categories to be nestled within other categories. You can end up in a situation where:

There are three URLs (duplicate contents) for the same product (product-1).

Google will crawl the same product (eventually and over time) three times. Two of the three crawls may have been for different products or contents. The content of the crawl could have then been ranked.

In this case, the inefficient use the crawl budget has actually harmed the speed at which new content can be ranked.

Google may crawl the content, but it could take longer. It will take longer as new content is released.

This same phenomenon can be caused by several other scenarios.

As an example, different combinations of filtering on a site that has faceted navigation can result in a massive increase in the number of URLs for parameter values on a web page.

Filtering can result in ten, or even hundred parameter variations on a non-filtered page.

Canonical tags will solve the duplication issue, right?

Google must crawl and visit non-canonical URLs to determine if they are noncanonical.

Canonical tags are only useful for reducing content duplication. They don’t help with crawling efficiency or content discovery.

This is the place where you could deploy complex robots.txt wildcard rules. You must still be cautious in this area as you could unintentionally block off large chunks of organic traffic.

Implementing correct URL architecture with supporting redirects is the best practice. You can’t go wrong if you implement these.

Canonical tags can be used as a temporary fix after problems have already occurred. They’re a messy solution to a fundamental problem.

Quality and quantity of links

This seems obvious at first glance. Google has consistently stated that spam and mass-produced content are not as important to them as quality content.

SEOs and digital public relations specialists can spend weeks trying to create high-quality content and secure a single placement that will knock their competition off the top of the rankings.

No SEO is worth his salt if he believes that spammy links and mass-produced content are effective tools. These tactics will not help you build a lasting online brand.

Is there a place on a web that prioritizes quality, where signals of higher quality matter more, for quantity?

Yes. You’ll find that if you have worked with large websites for enterprise clients, they already have quality links and content.

Quantity is still important, but quality will never be forgotten.

It is important to deliver quality and quantity for such clients. Both dimensions (quantity as well as quality) are important in these situations.

Every minute that you don’t deliver new content that targets new keywords is a loss of time and traffic.

Each time you receive three links of high value, while your competitor gets 10, it can be considered a failure.

The goalposts are completely different for such high-caliber clients and sites. You can only earn high-quality links by doing things that are very visible in the real world.

Start thinking “How can we do something newsworthy” instead of building links or individual placements.

Quantity is also important in the most competitive markets.

A quantity of high-quality links can be generated by engaging in quality real-world activities. You want to be there.

Learn how to leverage digital PR for business growth and backlinks

Keyword optimization: sparse vs. Spam

Two primary findings can be derived from a content gap analysis.

You’ll likely open an existing webpage and see where you can deploy the keyword that isn’t performing well.

You could also go further to determine if an additional section of content is needed.

You’re either browsing through a page of content or looking for keyword placement opportunities. What’s the problem? We’re paid for tweaking content to get it performing at its best standard.

We are looking for content that is thin, sparse and underperforming.

It’s hard to tell the difference between spam, which is just keyword injections, and sparsely referenced content.

Before Google’s Panda update there were attempts to curb “keyword zeal” among SEOs.

The weight of content that is not atopically relevant will not allow it to reach the SERPs on Google. Content that is overly optimized sinks.

When optimizing your content or reducing its optimization intensity, keep these competing forces at the forefront of your mind. Your content should be heavy enough to penetrate, but not so heavy as to sink.

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User experience: Speed vs. functionality

WordPress is a content management system that is SEO friendly. Some site owners want more features than the CMS default, so they install many plugins.

As pages load slower, the site performance will deteriorate fairly quickly.

The shortcodes must be queried, and then transmuted into HTML/CS. This involves multiple calls to the database.

Additional scripts are piled up in the main thread of the browser, creating bottlenecks.

In the past, it was relatively easy to find a balance between page loading speed and functionality.

You were ready to go as long as you compressed your images, minified your sheets and scripts, and installed the caching plugin.

These days are gone.

Google wants us today to start interpreting what is happening on the main processing thread of the browser used by clients (end users). It’s not efficient to send 5-10 scripts if the JavaScript is waiting to be executed in the main processing thread of the user’s browser.

We must now consider:

It is possible to achieve both high performance and high functionality. Just as before, it takes more effort (and intelligence).

It is not easy to create a critical JavaScript/CSS render path.

You can run a feature-rich, fast website on mediocre web hosting if you are willing to spare some senior developer time.

Be prepared. It will take longer than ever.

Regional deployment: Local focus vs. global reach

This trap can be set in both directions.

You can still aim for global impact without enough content, architecture or authority. You may regret not choosing a localized domain.

It may have been better to target your local area using NAP signals. It’s sometimes better to take your time before you run. Extending yourself too far can be a mistake.

A local approach can be a real trap if you are aiming for global success. It’s unlikely, for example, that a domain ending in.co.uk would rank highly in France or Germany.

You should be aware that none of these choices are final. You can still buy new domains or migrate your site if you decide to lock yourself in locally.

You’ll lose some ranking power if you do this, so only switch domains once you have reached critical mass.

It’s not the right time to switch yet if you only see a few hundred sessions organically each month.

A local or global strategy may be more appropriate depending on your goals.

No one will be interested in your vacuum repair business if you are a local shop. It might not be the best idea to aim for global SEO.

A locally targeted SEO campaign will almost certainly guarantee that you are at the top of search results when it comes to local, relevant terms. This is much easier than trying to reach out to consumers on the other side of the world.

You can expect to get some business from abroad if you are a fashion brand that is well known and you expand your product line from clothing into other products like scents.

Use the actions that bring you the most revenue in the shortest time with the least amount of effort.

If you are a small company without the ranking power needed to rank globally, start local and then come back later. Aim high and keep working.

Internal linking: connected vs. cumbersome

It’s great to add a few links in your content, maybe to help orphaned or high-performing pages. There is such a thing, however, as too many internal hyperlinks.

Imagine a web page that linked every word or phrase to an URL. How would you decide where to go?

You would think that every text fragment was fighting for your attention.

It would cause problems for your site’s users. Search engines are no different.

How can a search tool determine which pages on your website are more valuable or not?

Even the contextual analysis of a page and its categorization by theme becomes more difficult.

SEO: Navigating the competing forces

A strategic approach is needed to balance competing forces within SEO.

You can make SEO easier to manage by adopting a strategy that is holistic and flexible, while also respecting the subtleties of each force.

The first time Search Engine Land published the article How can you balance competing forces within SEO?

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