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Coat-tail SEO Strategies

Posted by Michael Martinez on February 26, 2008 in Advanced SEO

Because of the potential traffic it may send to Web sites, a search engine creates an incentive for Web site operators to manipulate the search results. This incentive exists across all social media sites, linking resources, and the Web in general. The more helpful a Web site is in directing traffic to other Web sites the more desirable the temptation to manipulate the Web site’s function becomes.

It might seem like a hopeless situation on first glance because no successful Web site will be safe from attempted intrusions. However, there are counter-incentives that help slow down the superheated manipulation process. One incentive is Web site operators’ desire to attract only the most suitable visitors to their sites. For example, if you operate a forum about golf you don’t want people coming there to discuss anime projects (although many forums usually have an off-topic discussion section for regular posters).

Another counter-incentive is the cost of hosting traffic. The burden you create for yourself tends to temper your aggressive marketing tactics. If you’re bringing in more money with your growing traffic you can expand your resources but eventually you’ll hit a plateau where either you cannot bring in more traffic or you cannot support any more traffic. There are only so many people out there who want to buy moissanite jewelry at any time, and boundary creates a virtually finite number of visitors to be allocated across the Web.

Measuring traffic is a pretty complex process because people will visit more than one Web site, they’ll visit one Web site more than once, they’ll use feed readers to scan Web site contents, they’ll use search engines and social media indexing sites to scan Web site contents, and they’ll pre-fetch pages that they never look at. Nonetheless, with all that activity happening simultaneously every vertical has a virtually finite limit to the number of people who are actively searching for or using content in that vertical.

The virtually finite limit of traffic for a vertical creates a counter-incentive for developing content in that vertical. That is, there is a virtually finite number of Web sites for any given vertical. The more converting traffic a query space contains, the more relevant content will appear in the query space. The key is “converting traffic”. As soon as someone figures out a way to make money — by offering sufficient value that at least some people are willing to pay for it — other people begin to evaluate the query space for economic potential.

Every query space can support 2 or more competitors as long as none of the competitors has to make a consistent profit. As soon as 1 competitor has to make a consistent profit in order to stay in the query space at least 1 competitor has to drop out of the query space because it can no longer support all the competitors. When search engine optimization enters a new query space its least advantageous approach is to follow a “loss leader” strategy.

That is, if you enter the query space willing to lose money in order to build market share, you make your eventual failure in the query space more likely (although not completely certain). If you enter the query space intending only to make a profit (that is, you have put everything in place that is required for generating sales and turning a profit) you make your eventual success more likely (although not completely certain).

The distinction is drawn by how much you invest in developing the query space’s potential from the beginning. The fewer resources you use in the launch of your campaign, the longer and more difficult your struggle will be to achieve success (which in this model is only defined as making a consistent profit — you don’t have to be ranked first in any particular queries).

You have limited resources to work with: content (your Web site), links (sites where you can quickly and easily obtain links), and linking strategies (means and methods of obtaining links you cannot take for granted). If you enter the query space with poor content you’ll make yourself more dependent upon obtaining links. If you have a lot of linking resources at your disposal you may be sitting pretty well but the average newcomer lacks linking resources.

That forces most people to develop their linking strategies and linking strategies are expensive in terms of time, effort, and lost opportunity. The opportunity cost of a linking strategy is determined primarily by the time devoted to executing the strategy. If you spend your days asking other Web sites for links you cannot create new content, you cannot give yourself links.

Linking strategies manipulate Web services and tools. You create links for personal interests, personal gain, or to disrupt someone else’s personal interests or gain. Linking strategies are time-consuming because you have to operate within boundaries set up by other people. You don’t control the environment. This is why spammers write scripts that join forums and blogs, post comments with links, and randomize text. They have created agents to do their dirty work for them.

By reducing the timeframe in which you exercise your linking strategy you increase the efficiency of your linking strategy. So-called “White Hat” SEOs, however, refuse to use posting scripts. Hence, their linking strategies are inefficient because they do everything themselves. The spammers will always have the advantage in linking strategies.

Spammers rarely care about the quality of the traffic they draw as long as they make a profit. After all, they’re not usually seeking direct conversions; rather, they want to send converting traffic to other sites. Spammers thus operate a system that directs qualified traffic to other sites and accordingly people see value in that system. But because the spam system is quantifiable it is subject to manipulation. That is, the more value people see in the spam industry the more they are tempted to manipulate that industry for personal gain.

The value-drives-manipulation model applies universally across the Webverse. Wherever we create value, there someone comes to make money off that value. Advertisers seek out high profile sites, researchers seek out comprehensive resources, people seek out active communities to join, etc. The more value you accrue, the more people will come to you, and the more people that you attract the more likely that someone will try to make money off your resources.

This Coat-tail Effect gave rise to one of the fundamental principles of search engine optimization: keyword research. If you don’t know what people are searching for, you’re not going to have much SEO success. You may get lucky but in order to fully participate in the query space you need to know which queries define the query space.

The sooner you identify an emerging query space, the sooner you can become involved in that query space. The more resources you devote to your initial entry in that space, the more likely you’ll establish a lasting presence there. This approach to search engine optimization leverages the Coat-tail Effect to your advantage by making you the only wolf among the sheep because the other wolves have not yet turned their attention to this particular flock.