A search for the hypercompetitive, single-word term ‘Yoga’ on Google will yield about 68-million results. One of my clients is there (If you can guess who it is, give them a link 
) and something I have noticed while doing the competitive research necessary to compete at that level is how varied the approaches to SEO are for keywords like that. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of right answers - just people who THINK they have the right answers. I know because I’m often one of them until a do a bit of competitive analysis and am put in my proper place by the great Googalizer.
Of course, you can bet that every site on the first page for the word yoga is going to be optimized these days, but are they paying more attention to the old favorites like keywords in the title and meta? What are the keyword densities on the page? Is the word “yoga” in the domain name or URL? How many links does it take to get to the center of a… I mean the first page of Google for a keyword like “yoga”? What are the page ranks; when was the page put up; when was it last crawled/cached, and is anyone using any apparently nefarious SEO tactics?
These are ALL questions you have to ask yourself when setting out to rank a site for hypercompetitive terms. And here are the answers I came up with, which helped me get this client from page 63 to page 1 in a matter of months:
(Keep in mind rankings change all the time, especially for hypercompetitive terms, and some of these sites - including my clients’ - may or may not be in the same positions as you read this.)
Title Tag:
All ten of the sites had the word Yoga in the title tag. The first site repeats the word FIVE times. If you ask me, that’s spamming but hey - it’s www.yoga.com so ‘whatayagonnado’? Most of the other sites only have the word once, but two other sites have it appear twice in the title.
URL:
Although ALL ten of the sites have the word yoga in the URL, only six of them have the word in the root domain - unless you count the biggest spammers on the web - about.com - which have the word in a subdomain (has anyone EVER actually found useful content on that site?).
Description:
Surprisingly enough, there IS a site that does not have the word yoga in their meta description. It is a .org site and ‘yoga’ happens to be the only word in the title. The top three sites have the word once in their description and a few others have the word two or three times in the description.
Meta Keywords:
You may not believe this, but the #1 and #3 sites on Google for the word ‘yoga’ do not even HAVE a keyword meta tag. But then again, it’s yoga.com and The Yoga Journal, so whadayagonnado? In contrast, the second site (Wiki) has the yoga in the keyword tag five times. After you sort through the miles of css calls on the Answers.com page you will see that yoga appears in the keyword meta, as it does for the rest of the listings on the page.
PAGE RANK:
Yoga dot com Page Rank:5
Wiki Page Rank: 7
Yoga Journal Page Rank: 6
Answers - can it be… Page Rank: 0?
ABC of Yoga - Page Rank: 3
Kids Health - Page Rank: 4
About - Page Rank: 6
Yoga Basics - Page Rank: 5
Yoga Postures - Page Rank: 5
Yoga by Gaiam - Page Rank:6
As you can see, there is no rule that says the highest page rank wins. However, most of the sites on the first page here have either a 5 or a 6.
LINKS Into Page
Yoga dot com: 5,043
Wiki Page Rank: 3,528
Yoga Journal Page: 24,212
Answers: 63
ABC of Yoga: 59
Kids Health: 131
About: 1,947
Yoga Basics: 4,749
Yoga Postures: 1,163
Yoga by Gaiam: 503
You can be on the first page of Google for a hypercompetitive term with only 59 Links. Really? The site with almost 5,000 ranks below the site with 59. But I wander what the anchor text is of the lniks, and what kind of quality those links are? The point being, some people play the quality game, while others place the numbers game. And some choose to play both games and diversify.
Last Cached:
Yoga dot com - 6 days prior
Wiki - 5 days prior
Yoga Journal - 1 day prior
Answers - 6 days prior
ABC of Yoga - 4 days prior
Kids Health - 13 days prior
About - 2 days prior
Yoga Basics - 4 days prior
Yoga Postures - 3 days prior
Yoga by Gaiam - 6 days prior
As you can see, Google will usually come check out an important page before the week is out. This is not true of most other pages, where we can wait weeks. Does the frequency of the cache play a role? Well if you think about it, the more often a random surfer (googlebot) lands on your page through a link, the more often it gets cached. Frequent caching isn’t so much of a ’cause’ it is is a symptom of the fact that you have more links. And even then, there are often exceptions to the rules.
Keyword Density and Frequency
Yoga dot com: Out of 90 words, Yoga was the most frequent word (11 times) for a KWD of 12.22%
Wiki: Out of 2,310 words, Yoga was by far the most frequent word (176 times!) for a KWD of 7.62%
Yoga Journal: Out of 761 words, Yoga was the most frequent word (23 times) with a KWD of 3.02%, although the words ‘document’ and ‘write’ show up 22 times at 2.89%
Answers: Out of 17,398 words, yoga was the most frequent word (806 times) witha KWD of 4.63%
ABC of Yoga: Out of 1,649 words, yoga was the most frequent (164 times) at a KWD of 9.94%.
Gaiam Yoga: Out of 1,302 words, yoga was the most frequent (103 times) with a KWD of 7.91%
WOW! Anywhere from 11 repetitions to 164 repetitions of the world Yoga. Anywhere from 3% to over 12%. Still think there there is a magic number out there somewhere? You’d be wrong. You WILL, however, notice that in ALL cases the most frequently used word on the page is ‘yoga’. As I have been saying for years, it isn’t density that matters so much as frequency. If you have ten words on a page and yoga shows up twice - that’s 20% KWD - way too high by most standards - but then again, it’s only twice! The important thing is that your keyword for the page shows up at least once more than any other keyword on that page. And that’s just good copywriting anyhow.
Examples of first Words in the first textual paragraph:
” Yoga cultivates a focused awareness…”
“Yoga is a group of…”
“In a culture that promotes dissatisfaction with our bodies and alienation from them, yoga teaches”
“The term yoga comes from a Sanskrit word which means yoke or union.”
“What comes into your mind when you hear the word Yoga?”
*** “Are you looking for a workout program that’s easy to learn, requires little or no equipment, and soothes your soul while toning your body?”
*** “I love practicing Shitali Pranayama during hot weather. ”
“Swami Radha’s classic book on the symbols and metaphors of the yoga Asanas…”
“Be kind to yourself when you practice yoga.”
“When you practice yoga, you understand more than ever why your well-being and the planet’s are so closely interconnected.”
8 out of 10 first page sites use the word Yoga in the first sentence in the first paragraph on the page. I’d go with the majority on this one.
I could go on and on with more examples. Some have alt tags; some don’t. Some use H1 tags; some don’t. There are various anchor text issues, both in external and internal links. But the ponit is, that there is more than one way to skin a keyword. There is no RIGHT answer when it comes to SEO, but there certainly are a lot of WRONG answers. Sometimes it’s not all about doing the right thing (having the perfect keyword density, having your keyword the first word in the first paragraph and title, etc.). Sometimes it is just a mix of different factors - some you get right and some you don’t. But in the end, if you have a good SEO working for you, it will vastly increase the chance that you are doing the right thing. Until Google opens their books and let’s us stare into the algo (and then has someone translate it for most of us) we just aren’t going to know for sure.
But here’s what I do know: By creating a landing page dedicated to this one very important term, writing fresh product descriptions, carefully selecting our best products, optimizing the page in all of the usual ways, sending out press releases, article distributions, etc… With a lot of hard work, you can take a PR 0 page from oblivion to a PR 6 and hit the first page of Google all in about 4-6 months.
It’s late an my ambien is starting to make the screen move around. I’m debating on reliving my old days with mushrooms, or going to bed so I can function in meetings tomorrow.
…bed wins.
