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Content Theory: The Hail Mary Pass of SEO

Posted by Michael Martinez on July 23, 2007 in Content Theory

Have you ever had a page that you feel like should rank but it just sort of sits there in a mid-range search results page? A lot of link builders end up that way because they don’t pay enough attention to on-page optimization but even on-page optimization can end up in a mediocre position. It just happens.

If you control the page you should change it. Although I have often pointed out that repetition is crucial to search engine optimization (either through links or through on-page content), it’s pointless to keep doing more of the same thing when the same thing doesn’t work.

The SEO Method tells us to experiment (try something), evaluate (see if it ranks), and adjust (if we aren’t ranking). The adjust part is where most people fail. The last thing you want to do is have to adjust your rankings through links. It’s like trying to catch a small ball floating in a pool of water with a very long-handled net that has a small head. That’s just inefficient.

Adjusting your rankings through links is also inefficient, especially if you’re trying to point links from other Web sites to your content.

It’s better to expand the content that won’t rank. If the page just doesn’t cut the mustard then rewrite the content, spread it across several pages, increase the amount of text you’re using. Add a featurette in the margins of each page. Do something that not only makes the pages more interesting than the original, but that also increases their relevance to your targeted keywords.

And make sure the new pages link to each other with appropriate anchor text.

You need to preserve the original URL to ensure that the new page locations are found by the search engines. But you also want to add more links throughout your Web site: on your home page, in your HTML sitemap, in your XML sitemap, and on related pages where you should be cross-promoting. Then think about non-value passing links you can toss in to help people find your new content.

Search engine optimization isn’t just about getting content to rank. It’s about getting converting content to rank. So the sooner you get some feedback on those new pages, the better. Don’t wait for the search engines to send you unconverting traffic if you can get that traffic sooner and evaluate your new copy.

Replacing 1 page with many pages increases your chances of bringing in Long Tail search traffic but it also gives you a new shot at ranking for the keywords where you’ve stalled out. You may write better, more relevant copy the next time through. Maybe the anchor text from those links you give yourself helps puts you over the top. Maybe increasing your PageRank by adding pages to your site (where did you think PageRank came from in the first place, the PageRank Fairy?) is all you need to do.

You can only be sure of one thing when you’ve tried everything you know and nothing works: that is that everything you know doesn’t work. You have to try something else, and that is what we call the ‘Haily Mary’ Pass of SEO. You’re sending every eligible receiver downfield and throwing the ball toward the goal line, hoping one of your people is there to catch it and stumble into the End Zone.

A Hail Mary Pass doesn’t have to be elegant. You can clean up the mess after you improve your rankings.

Nor does a Hail Mary Pass have to be formulaic. In fact, it should not be (because, by definition, you’ve already tried everything you know including all your formulas for success).

You may devise a page that ranks better because it has less content. You may devise a page that ranks better because it has more content. Maybe you find a way to use more bold and italics. Maybe you back off on the bold and italics. It’s not so much that you need a specific change as that you need to change something, so changing as many things as possible helps give you new perspective.

And the funny thing is that your rankings may change for an unrelated reason. One of your competitors may see you change your content and decide it’s time to react, so he changes his content and screw up his position. That might be just enough to give you the opening your content needs.

Many SEO campaigns actually succeed because other people make mistakes. Not to take anything away from dutiful SEOs who follow the Method, but sometimes whatever you do just doesn’t matter. It may take someone else changing stuff on their site to open up the query results to changes.

You cannot force other people to change their sites, but you can change your own. And that is one area of the four primary factors that determine search results where you have some options. You cannot do anything about other people’s pages or what the search engines do with their data, but you can change your own pages.

And if all else fails, you can start branding for a new query. But that’s really a new game plan, rather than a simple ‘Hail Mary’ Pass. The ‘Hail Mary’ Pass may put you into the End Zone at the end of the game. It’s rare when people shake up their content so much that the search engine has to change its relevance scoring, but when someone plucks up the courage to do that the results usually change for at least one site.

And if your SEO campaign has stalled out on the third page, what do you have to lose by trying something different?