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Pro bono optimization and query competitiveness

Posted by Michael Martinez on March 13, 2007 in Competitive Analysis

Every now and then an SEO discussion turns into a contest of wills resulting in a pointless game of oneupmanship, where at least one person tries to discredit the other person’s point of view by suggesting or claiming the other person is not working with competitive queries. The rule of thumb is, if you don’t agree with the other guy’s ideas, you must not be working with competitive queries.

What makes a query competitive? Is it the number of raw hits you see in the search results page header? Is it the number of sites you see above your own? Is it the number of backlinks that people can find for the top-ranking sites? Is it the low number of terms in the query?

The Rules of Query Competitiveness change every time there is a shift in either search engine technology or SEO methodologies. SEOs are a generally moribund community, however. Rigor mortis almost has to set in before they change their tried-and-true methods. That is why you generally see a lot of complaining in forums whenever Google rolls out a new set of filters.

SEO methodologies usually shift only when so many people can no longer make the old tricks work that they collectively force themselves to try something new. You have to wade through several dozen, sometimes hundreds, of SEO guru articles that continue to advocate the Old Guard way of doing things, usually for a period of four to six months, before you begin to see a few cutting edge people take a chance and suggest that maybe it’s time to do something different.

These periods of transition become windows of change in competitiveness. The SEOs who cling to the old ways continue to measure competitiveness by how difficult it is for them to manipulate search results in their own (or clients’) favor. But despite numerous shifts in technology and methodology over the years, difficulty in placement has never been a measure of query competitiveness. That is more a measure of SEO capability, although it must be taken in context.

Most people would agree that it will be difficult for anyone to knock Pizza Hut out of 1st position for the word “pizza”. If you take the job of changing that SERP, you’d better be more than just a good SEO. You’ll need patience, persistence, and determination. Some good resources wouldn’t hurt, either.

If a query is hard for everyone, then it’s a competitive query. But there is no way to know what is hard for everyone until everyone tries to compete for the query. In which case, is “pizza” really a competitve query? When was the last time you tried to compete for it? If you’ve never tried (and I’ll admit I never have), then why do you believe it’s a highly competitive expression? The stock answer is usually something along the lines of “because Papa John’s is not number 1″.

A query is competitive when at least the front page of results consists primarily of sites that have a vested interest in being there. A vested interest boils down to bread and butter: it makes or breaks a site to be competing for the query. A majority of the sites should be dependent upon the keyword.

In which case, is “click here” a competitive query? Can anyone hope to optimize for it now that Adobe has tied up the first position? That question really has to be predicated on the question of whether Adobe, Apple, Microsoft, et. al. have a vested interest in the expression “click here”. Can Real Networks succeed without relying upon the words “click here” in millions of download links across the Web?

When evaluating how competitive a query may truly be, I look at several factors, only one of which is concerned with links. Having successfully outranked many pages with higher backlink counts for years, I know well enough that links don’t matter nearly as much as people who rely upon them think they do. So part of what makes a query competitive is how realistic the competitors are in their approach to optimizing for the query. If all they have going for them is links, they are vulnerable to displacement.

Adobe, of course, doesn’t use the words “click here” on the page that ranks first for that query, but they do use ‘click here’ on more than 1,000 other pages. Does that matter to the search engine? Most likely not. The “click here” query is anomalous for several reasons. Most sites just don’t depend on that terminology being used on other sites.

That is, in order to displace Adobe at number 1 for “click here”, about all you need to do is permeate the Web with more links that tell people to “click here” for your site than for Adobe’s. And to do that you really don’t need search engine optimization you just need something that is more useful and valuable than Adobe’s Acrobat Reader. “Click here” is a high value query only to third parties. Adobe never really branded for it, and they can get along just fine without.

In other words, the secret is not in the links but in the legitimate value guiding those links. Most links really do not convey any value. They are simple references, citations, or advertisements not really intended to help people in any particular way. Links tend to be courtesies more than useful tools in most people’s hands. Ask yourself why you would want to put a link to Adobe’s reader page on your own site, unless you have a .PDF file you want people to read. Your link to Adobe helps you more than it does any of your readers.

Call this pro bono optimization. You provide a value to your visitors but require a third party tool to enable your visitors to appreciate the value. Hence, you have to promote someone else’s site in order to create value in your own site. Web directories may practice pro bono optimization but the benefit for a Web directory is diminished because it offers a large quantity of links (or has the capacity to do so). That is, the Web directory is not really placing particular value in any one link, whereas the site with the “click here to download Acrobat Reader” link has a vested interest in promoting Adobe’s Web site.

In other words, there is indeed a vested interest factor at work in queries like “click here” — but the vested interest comes not from the sites that are prominently featured in the search results. Rather, the vested interest comes from the sites that benefit from promoting the products and services that dominate the “click here”-quality queries. They are a class of queries unto themselves, and their level of competition is very high only because of the value their products and services create for third parties, and not because of the number of links they attract. That is, in order to compete with Adobe for “click here”, you have to provide the Web community with a tool or service that is of comparable value.

Competing on value is actually rare on the Web, and it’s certainly not a standard search engine optimization tactic. Most companies just do not offer that kind of value. Hence, the queries most companies compete for cannot be measured in the same way as “click here”. A small company can certainly compete for moissanite jewelry alongside the large companies and do so on the basis of both links and content.

How much value does any moissanite jewelry Web site create for other Web sites? That is, if you don’t get a commission on the sales, why should you link to any particular site using the words “moissanite jewelry” as anchor text? “Moissanite jewelry” is just not a value-competitive query.

Nor, for that matter, is ‘water beds’. But whereas you don’t see Wikipedia in the top results for “moissanite jewelry” you do see it show up for “water bed”. So the difference between a query like “moissanite jewelry” and a query like “water bed” is that there is some value associated with “water bed” that you don’t find with “moissanite jewelry”.

In fact, it can be reasonably argued there is value accruing for both queries, but neither of them are competitive in the same way that “click here” is competitive. Instead, the value driving those queries is more about information than about self-serving interest. That is, there is less pro bono optimization involved with these queries. Many people may link to moissanitejewelry.com but why do they link to it? Is there some financial incentive involved or are they seeking to build credibility by linking to an authoritative source of information?

The Wikipedia article on “water beds” is not very popular. Hardly anyone links to it but the content is very well organized. The references do tend to convey a sense of authority, or rather promise the value of authority. The value of authority drives a great deal of pro bono optimization, in that linking to authoritative resources is believed to make a site look credible and useful. It’s not quite the same as choosing to link to “good neighborhoods” versus “bad neighborhoods”, but the effect is the same with respect to search engines.

Pro bono optimization is the desired result for link baiting. You want everyone else to go to the trouble of optimizing your query results for you on the basis of linkage. The problem with link baiting, however, is that its results are seldom sustainable and an increasing number of SEOs haev claimed that conversions are not very good. So while final judgement has not yet been rendered on the true value of link baiting, early indications are that it provides less intrinsic value to the query competitors than other types of pro bono optimization.

But like any other form of pro bono optimization, link baiting will work best when you offer something that creates value for other people. Value represents the vested interest of the third party. For example, I provide links on my personal network to an organization that helps seriously wounded soldiers adjust to life at home. The value I derive from those links is knowing that I am giving something back to the people who serve my country. I want to help those who need my help. It means something to me that they have risked all and lost much while serving to protect me and our country.

Overt pro bono optimizaion tends to be more charitable in purpose. Maybe I’m promoting a cause, maybe I’m just sharing a news story I like, or maybe I’m trying to create a resource to help inform people about a particular topic. Unethical SEOs have abused pro bono optimization wherever possible. Resource sites in particular get bombarded with irrelevant links if only because they make it possible to submit links for inclusion.

Conversational pro bono optimization has almost died out, as far as its usefulness to search goes. But you can optimize for visibility and traffic as well as for search, so link droppers continue to inundate blogs, guestbooks, and forums with unwanted links.

There is much more to be said about both pro bono optimization and query competitiveness. I’ll come back to these topics in the future.