A couple weeks ago, I cited an example of how to use off-site linking strategies paired with long-tail phrases to get big (and near instant) movements of the dial in terms of better ranking on the search engines. The example I cited was a friend - Jim Duncan in Charlottesville -- whose blog post went from #7 to #1 solely because of a link to that post from my article. I then followed that post up with another post showing the results. I checked again this morning, and he's still #1 for that phrase, and I'm sure it will stay there for a long time to come.
Why didn't other links I gave out see the same jump in ranks for the phrases I used to link to them? The point here isn't to demonstrate the power of links as much as demonstrating the power of choosing the right phrases (and right pages to link to) in order to get significant movement of the needle.
- Jim's neighborhood post went from #7 to #1 in a little over a week, and not only will it very likely stay there with no further effort, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that he will own the #1 and #2 spots for that neighborhood within a couple weeks. (This is called a "Double Indented listing" and because double indented listings control two of the top 3 spots, they get EVEN MORE traffic than just having a #1 ranking.) Click here to keep an eye on "Fifeville Charlottesville real estate" on Google.
- Because I used more competitive phrases for all of the other sites I linked to, I didn't see nearly as impressive of an improvement in terms of rank for those specific phrases.
Disclaimer: Is this a scientific study? Absolutely not, but it's close enough for government work. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
[Edit] Please note that all of the examples and "before" and "after" rankings are for the phrase I highlited. ie: Teresa Boardman's rankings are for "St. Paul MN real estate agent" -- not St. Paul real estate. I chose this method because it's hard to improve upon #1, but I still wanted to send links to my friends for other phrases where they weren't ranking #1 - albeit less trafficked.[/edit]
Case Study #1: Jim Duncan -- Fifeville Charlottesville real estate - 85% improvement in rank which should yield a 10-15X improvement in traffic for that phrase.
Going from #7 to #1 will likely generate 5 to 10 times as many clicks for him for that phrase. (Granted, it's not searched for often, but:
- Those visitors are probably 10x times more likely to buy than someone searching for "Charlottesville real estate".
- It takes little to no effort to make it to #1 for long-tail phrases, and results can be seen as early as a few hours after the link-building process begins. If someone had 10 Charlotte neighborhoods ranking #1, they'd probably get as much business as someone ranking #5 or #10 for Charlottesville real estate, and they'd likely be dealing with less "tire kickers".
Case Study #2: Jay Thompson - "Phoenix real estate" - 39% improvement in rank.
By no means am I trying to say that my piddly little link is the reason Jay went from #13 to #7 for "Phoenix real estate", but I'm sure it helped. Going from #13 to #7 is fantastic because it puts you on the first page, but with a phrase as competitive as "INSERT-BIG-CITY real estate", seeing improvements in ranking for that phrase is going to get exponentially harder once you're on the first page.
Case Study #3: Kristal Kraft - "Denver Colorado Real Estate Agent" - 50% improvement in rank.
Moving from #6 to #3 is fantastic, because a site in the top 3 will get a lot more traffic than anyone in #4 through #10. Still, in terms of percentage increase in traffic from that exact phrase - it's nowhere near as good an improvement as going from #7 to #1.
Case Study #4: Teresa Boardman - "St Paul MN real estate" - 40% improvement in rank.
Same observations as Kristal's change in rank/traffic.
Case Study #5: Jason Crouch - "Austin TX Realtor" - 30% improvement in rank.
Although Jason's site bumped from #10 to #7, this won't see much of a change in visitors because sites ranking #5 through #10 tend to see about the same clickthrough rate, regardless of position.
Case Study #6: Marc Rasmussen - "Sarasota FL Realtor" - 0% change in rank.
No change in ranking. I'm guessing that this is because Marc is such a prolific linker that my piddly link didn't even make a dent, but again - this goes to demonstrate the difference in results between long tail phrases and more competitive phrases. ;-)
Case Study #7: Ines Hegdus-Garcia - "Miami Beach real estate agent" - 9% loss in rank.
Ines' example stumped me at first. Then I realized there were TWO reasons for this:
- That the post that was being displayed was getting a LOT of "link love" from Ines' home page when I first made note of her #22 position for that phrase. Once that post dropped off of her home page, the number of authoritative links to that post also dropped. (This is why a lot of blogs see a quick 1st page ranking with new posts, but see that post fall off the first page all together after a few weeks.) It'll be interesting to see how her post ranks after Google crawls this page and finds another link to her site
- I had a typo in the link I sent her way in that initial post. OOPS! Sorry Ines! I've corrected that now & bet she'll make it to the first page for that phrase after Google finds this page, and re-crawls the old post with the invalid link.
The moral(s) of the story:
- I don't care how much content you write for your blog/website -- that's just a small part of the equation. The more important part is the links that point at the posts you want to get found. 6 out of 7 of my case studies were examples of that (and I bet #7 will be a good example in a week or two.)
- It's not just links that are important - it's the competitiveness of the phrase, AND the actual anchor text of those links that make a real difference. (In other words, call me lazy, but I'd take 10 or 20 #1 rankings for neighborhoods in any given city over a first page ranking for that city -- anyday. )
Brought to you by your (inserting gratuitous link) Boulder Real Estate guy.
Happy Linking!
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thanks for the link love but I don't understand the post. if you type in "st. paul real estate" I come up 1 on page 1 of google and have since January 2007. My page rank has been a 5 for a couple of years. I come up one on several search terms but you can also find several that I don't come up number 1. i guess I decided on my onw which terms I wanted to work on. . . and I think I made the right choices . . interestingly it isn't the keywords that people are selling. :) It is the only secret I really have when it comes to how the blog works.