Response to Jonathan Leger’s recent e-mail on ‘themes’ – Theme Zoom Newsletter

The latest ‘Theme Zoom’ newsletter includes a response to “Jonathan Leger’s recent e-mail on themes“. [Newsletter]

ThemeZoom newsletter is reprinted here.

Jonathan Leger’s recent e-mail on “themes”

I got a call from an extremely well known marketing and SEO mentor today about an e-mail put out by Jonathan Leger. It was all about websites that are ranked highly for keywords yet do not have inbound links from websites within the same Market Category or “theme”.

The mentor who brought this to my attention many of you consider the “top of the food chain” when it comes to direct response testing and technical SEO. (I know I do).

I will not mention his name here because he plans on addressing the Leger case studies himself.

After I read Ledger’s e-mail that was forwarded me, I felt it was hardly worth addressing because it wasn’t really saying anything we haven’t covered before. (I have pasted the e-mail below for your convenience).

Everybody already knows that that you can get high rankings by acquiring high PR back links with (or without) your themed keywords. Yes can get ranked for non-themed keywords as well by acquiring back links from high PR sites. (Those are keywords that don’t have anything to do with the overall theme strategy of your website or the site you are acquiring them from for that matter).

All of this misses the point of the accumulative “theme affect” that accrues over time when you target qualified and germane themes both on-page and off-page.

And I hope everyone in Theme Zoom knows by now that the overall “theme” of the inbound website is not as important as its “authority” when it comes to getting your high rankings for your term. This is especially true for inbound links from page rank 3 sites or higher.

But Jonathan’s idea that Google may not be able to distinguish the “theme” of a website from which you have acquired an inbound link is . . . debatable. There is much evidence that topic sensitive page rank is not only alive and kicking, but will increase in efficacy as time moves on. There are several papers written on this topic, and these arguments requires better evidence than “wikipedia.com” and a “submitexpress.com” to prove it.

Early arguments about this topic were http://www2002.org/CDROM/refereed/127/ and the Hill Top theory debate have kept hundreds of geeks up in the forums until the wee hours of the night. (Yawn).

I can appreciate the point that Jonathan is trying to make. He is trying to say that you can write about any topic you want on your website without fear of theme bleed. He was also saying that you don’t have to “freak out” about the Market Category of a website you receive an inbound link from, provided it has good authority.

I don’t have a problem with any of that, although I am not sure the purpose of restating the obvious.

However, if he was trying to prove his theory, his case study choices were bad . . . especially using websites like wikipedia.com and submitexpress.com as “reasons why” Google does not appreciate well themed inbound links and associated theme content. These will be addressed shortly in another paper.

Through the years, I have discovered that it is seldom wise to use the term “search engine optimization” as a poster child for algorithms and high rankings because the community of folks who target that theme are . . . unique? (Trying to think of the right word, but couldn’t).

After tracking Bruce Clay’s ranking for the keyword “search engine optimization” for several years, I discovered that this keyword phrase can be anomalous. There are other issues around the high rankings for the site “submitexpress.com” that I would rather not discuss here. Suffice it to say that this site was the topic of conversation at the SEO Toolset Course I took awhile back.

The Real Purpose of Theme Strategies:

The real purpose of a themed website planning and themed back linking is to enhance your overall “direct response marketing” agenda, while at the same time helping Google (and other engines) understand what your site is about. Jonathan seems to understand this when he states:

“One thing that does seem to hold true, though, is that if you are going to have diverse themes on your site, you need to separate them into their own subdomains or subfolders. That seems to help Google know that the “theme” of that folder or subdomain is different, and to treat it independently.”

Bingo.

This is getting closer to the truth about why themes, effective back linking, and silo architecture works together to help you SWALLOW YOUR MARKET WHOLE.

Yes:

1. You do not have to acquire themed links from authority sites within the same theme.

2. You do not have to have all of the content on your site revolve around the same theme.

3. You do not have to have all of your silos be within the same Market Category.

4. You do not have to research the different keyword synonyms that both your prospects and the search engines will love.

You don’t HAVE to do any of these things of course, which is Jonathan’s point.

What he does NOT explain is that when you DO perform all of the above in combination you will SWALLOW YOUR MARKET WHOLE and attract more qualified prospects for less money over time. I cannot emphasize that enough.

This is because high rankings and technical SEO is only a single factor when it comes to making money with your website. (Please watch my video about the High Five Keyword Chart):

http://tinyurl.com/2n3dq7

No, you do not have to swallow your market whole. You can hunt and peck your way to random rankings with keywords that may or may not attract highly qualified prospects within your Market Category.

By “Swallow you market whole” I mean: “Whoever says the most important thing to a market in the most number of ways . . . wins”.

In other words, websites that say important and relevant things to a market better and in more ways than competitors will simultaneously rank higher in these markets for more themes AND capture and convert more prospects than competitors.

This is the inevitable result of casting a wider semantic net than you competitor. When fishing within a market for hungry prospects, if you say an “important thing” using a wider array of keywords, you are more likely to capture additional prospects who are using slightly different language to research your market.

This is true during ANY phase of the buying cycle.

My philosophy is that, if you are not performing a pay per click campaign that reveals keywords that are converting, (called “money” keywords) then your best bet is to carefully research your market synonyms and top level market themes. Knowing these can help you OWN your Market Category over time . . . and with certainty.

If you ARE performing pay per click, then you need to CRACK OPEN the “money” keywords and find additional “unknown” related themes and synonyms that may create a flood of additional qualified traffic.

Either way, you need to research your top level Market Categories and themes.

Begin with the end in mind. Assume market dominance.

Once you have accomplished this, you can build a website blue print and coordinate an offsite promotional plan that helps you own your market. (i.e. Swallow your market whole). With this sort of strategy it is not difficult to dominate competitors who are hunting and pecking and buying links from websites that do not drive qualified prospects.

By dominate I mean “convert more sales” so that you will have more money to spend acquiring customers than they do.

The whole affect is cumulative.

This is not to say that you shouldn’t get links from websites that are Tangent Markets, or Latent Tangent Themes, or Micro-Niches within your overall Market Category.

It simply means that it makes more sense to target websites both for the Page Rank as well as for the qualified prospects these sites will bring you.

If I have a website on “Mayo Alternative Health Care”, it probably does not make sense to have inbound links from a completely different market category, like “Monster Trucks”. The conversion may not be so hot, even if the technical SEO (Page Rank) has a ranking benefit. I certainly would not PAY for such a link, which is the real point.

Performing market research on your themes within a Market Category is a powerful exercise. Even Matt Cutts agrees with me on something for once:

http://tinyurl.com/2mlrbn

As I look up at the clock I can see that I have spent too much time on this already, but I hope I was able to help the folks who e-mailed me about this subject.

I will forward the case study letter when it has been completed.

If you have further questions, don’t hesitate to call.

Russell Wright

608-432-1387

_______________________________________________________________________

Hi XXXX,

When it comes to search engine optimization, there are a lot of myths and rumors floating around about what does and does not work. A lot of this “knowledge” appears valid, because it sounds like it should be true, but beware!

Much of the information floating around about the right way to optimize for the search engines (especially Google) is very, very wrong. A lot of it is based on assumptions:

“Google must be smart enough to consider [erroneous conclusion here]” or “I BELIEVE Google [additional erroneous information here]”

Some of it is based on old truths. For example, search engines used to have a harder time indexing script-based sites (i.e. PHP instead of plain HTML), and so those sites didn’t do as well in the index. But that was a long, long time ago (in web years anyway).

The engines have long since been ranking script-based sites in among plain HTML with no problems – but the rumor is still heard even today.

Be careful what you believe about SEO. If you’re reading an article or forum post about a particular method or technique, make sure it’s backed up with actual data, evidence, and examples before running out and starting to apply it to your site.

What you’ll find in most cases is that the supposed “facts” aren’t actually being demonstrated or backed up with proof and examples.

Let me give you two BIG myths as examples, and show you actual proof that they are, in fact, bogus (at least right now).

1. The Themed-Link Myth

This is one of my favorite myths. Everyone assumes that Google simply MUST be smart enough to know whether your links are coming from sites that have the same (or related) theme, and therefore links from sites with the same theme are the only way to rank for your keywords.

Pure myth.

Google may, in fact, know whether or not the links are coming from websites of a similar theme. It may, in fact, add more weight to these links. But to claim that you MUST get links from similarly-themed sites in order to rank is pure mythology.

Here are some examples that disprove the claim:

Site: submitexpress.com

Keywords: search engine optimization

Rank: #3 in Google

The phrase “search engine optimization” is probably one of the most difficult phrases to rank for. After all, all of the best search engine marketers want to hold the top positions for those keywords in order to sell their services.

Submitexpress.com is doing very well in this regard, ranking #3 for the phrase (as of this writing). Number one is held by Wikipedia, and number two by Google itself.

If you go to Google and take a look at the backlinks pointing to submitexpress.com (using the link: command), you’ll notice that very, very few of those links have anything to do with search engine optimization or marketing at all. The exception are internal links from the domain itself, and that’s about it.

So if it’s such a fact that you have to have links from similarly-themed sites in order to rank for your keywords, how does this site manage to pull off such a huge feat?

Simple: you don’t have to have links from sites of the same theme â?” you just need a lot of links with your keywords in them!

Site: www.younevercall.com

Keywords: free cell phone

Rank: #1 in Google

Yes, this site ranks #1 in Google for the very competitive phrase “free cell phone”. But almost none of its backlinks come from sites or pages having anything to do with cell phones, or phones, or communications in general (go to Google and see for yourselfâ?”but be warned, some of the links are from adult sites).

So again, another site ranking for a competitive set of keywords that somehow manages to do it without “themed links”. How is this possible if you can only rank well with themed links?

And again, it’s simple: you don’t have to have links from sites of the same theme â?” you just need a lot of links with your keywords in them!

Here are a couple more examples that rank very well for difficult keywords despite almost all of their links coming from off-theme sites, in case you want to explore further (but I won’t go into detail about these):

Site: www.hoodia-dietpills.com

Keywords: hoodia

Rank: #3 in Google

Site: www.affiliatescout.com

Keywords: affiliate programs

Rank: #1 in Google

Does this mean that Google won’t put more emphasis on theme-related links in the future? No, it doesn’t. They might, they might not. But whether they aren’t quite as “smart” as people think they are, or they’ve just chosen not to do it (for whatever reason), it is still quite possible to rank for very difficult keywords with all of your links coming from off-theme sites.

One point that has proven to make a real difference: Google is discounting reciprocal links more than it used to. They still matter, just not nearly as much. One-way links appear to be the way to go.

2. The Themed-Content Myth

Another “common sense” notion about Google is that all of the content on your site should revolve around the same theme, otherwise it won’t rank well for the keywords you want to because your theme will get “too diluted”.

Pure mythology.

The number one biggest proof against this notion is Wikipedia.org. Wikipedia.org covers almost 2 million very diverse topics (as of this writing), and yet ranks incredibly well for a huge array of keywords.

In fact, there are few informational searches you can do on Google these days that Wikipedia DOESN’T rank well for.

As one example, take “internet marketing”, for which Wikipedia ranks #1 in Google. There are a few related pages around the subject (about 426 as of now), but Google has 3,220,000 pages indexed for Wikipedia â?” of which the vast majority have nothing to do with internet marketing.

How is this possible if everything on the site has to be theme-related in order to rank well for the keywords?

Simple: the notion that all content on a site must be of the same theme is a myth.

But Wikipedia is seen as a kind of deity among websites. Are there any “lesser” examples? Yes. Here are a few of them:

Site: www.bandddesigns.com/energy/

Keywords: energy drinks

Rank: #2 in Google

The “energy” subfolder of bandddesigns.com has a few hundred pages devoted to energy drinks, for sure, but if you do a site:bandddesigns.com command at Google, you’ll see that the site has 4,320 pages indexed on a very diverse set of subject matter that has nothing to do with energy drinks (or health in general).

Despite this, it ranks #2 in Google (just under Wikipedia, which again, is not all about energy drinks or health).

So do you have to have 100% related content on a site? The facts say no.

Well, then, how is this site ranking for “energy drinks”? Check its backlinks (especially at Yahoo) and you’ll see that the site has a lot of backlinks. That’s what’s getting it the ranking â?” not how “on theme” it is.

Even now, with all of Google’s “smarts”, it’s all about the links.

Site: www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/

Keywords: baby names

Rank: #3 in Google

Do you find it hard to believe that a government site ranks #3 in Google for such a competitive term like “baby names”? It sure does, though, despite the fact that Google says that only 33 pages of the 24,900 page site are related to the topic “baby names”.

Can sites rank well even with diverse themes existing on the same domain? The facts say yes. How do you do it? You need links.

Site: creativebits.org/cool_business_card_designs

Keywords: business cards

Rank: #8 in Google

According to Google, creativebits.org has 3,460 pages related to “business cards”. That’s about 20% of its 16,300 indexed pages. So, is this site about business? Or maybe finance or investment or small businesses or something that’s related to “business cards” in some way? Nope.

What is the main site about? The site’s title tag says of itself:

“creativebits | Apple oriented design community”

It’s a blog about Mac-based graphics design software. So how does a site about Mac-oriented graphics software rank for the phrase “business cards”?

Links, of course! Take a look at the backlinks in Yahoo and you’ll see it has thousands of them. And, incidentally, if you do take a look at those backlinks â?” they come from pages having nothing to do with business cards (or business in general).

So if a page of content devoted to a highly competitive phrase on a site whose theme is completely unrelated to the phrase itself ranks for that very competitive phrase, can it really be said that Google requires a site to be all about one theme?

Nope.

One thing that does seem to hold true, though, is that if you’re going to have diverse themes on your site, you need to separate them into their own subdomains or subfolders. That seems to help Google know that the “theme” of that folder or subdomain is different, and to treat it independently.

Myths are Dangerous

All of these myths are dangerous, because they get people focusing on techniques and methods that simply aren’t really effective.

That said, is it a bad thing to make sure that all of your links come from sites with similar themes? Or is it a bad thing to make sure the content on your site stays on theme?

No, it’s not bad. Going forward, Google may in fact take those things into account more.

But don’t be surprised when you are out-ranked by sites whose content is not devoted to the theme, and whose links come from all over the map!

I’ve found that most of these kinds of SEO myths are propagated by people who are failing in their optimization attempts. They make blanket statements, backed up by vapor, out of frustration for their own failed attempts.

“Google must require themed-backlinks because my sites isn’t ranking well and I have a lot of links!” That kind of logic is faulty.

It makes much more sense to listen to the facts, facts like the ones I’ve presented here. Which sites are actually ranking well now, and what are they doing to achieve those rankings? Focus on what’s working, not on the myths spread by people who can’t seem to make it work.

So what’s working? Getting a lot of one-way links pointed at your site containing your keywords. That’s the short of it. There are some other things to keep in mind, like making sure the links grow slowly over time and don’t all just suddenly appear on hundreds of sites, and making sure that you vary your link text so that it looks “natural”.

But the bottom line is, at least for the present, you need a lot of links.

Share your thoughts at:

Here’s to your success XXXX

Jonathan Leger

About ThemeZoom

ThemeZoom ThemeZoom is a powerful leading-edge product harnessing the strength of some of the newest most profound developments in Search Technology, E-commerce and Online Communication. It is a first of its kind. ThemeZoom integrates Market Intelligence, Keyword Research, Pay-Per-Click Research, Content Decision Making Processes, SEO (search engine optimization), and Website Architecture tools into a single control panel interface.

ThemeZoom comes with a library of professional training resources that help users understand and implement the broad, powerful features of the tool. Users are educated and guided through the intricacies of Search Engine Marketing and how to best utilize the wealth of data provided by ThemeZoom.

ThemeZoom is revolutionary and unique because it generates massive targeted keyword lists based on Search Engine Proven Synonyms (SEPS), which are not derived from the Thesaurus but through Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI), an newly emerging technology that allows for an unprecedented depth of market research.

Russell Wright

ThemeZoom team includes Russell Wright, Sue Bell, Mr. Mishler and Raphael John Oldham. Russell Wright (aka “the keyword guy”), Theme Zoom LLC, Marketing, Co-owner, is a search engine optimization auditor and co-inventor of the ThemeZoom keyword research tool.

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