The halo effect is a cognitive bias that occurs when positive or negative traits of a person seems to “spill over” from one area of your personality to another in others’ perceptions of them. (As defined by Wikipedia)
So how does this apply to the world of Search Engine Marketing?
It is no secret that it takes more time to get a top ranking on Google than MSN and Yahoo. Yahoo and MSN tend to allow new sites top rankings within weeks, while Google will wait for a new site – this is to prevent spammers from hogging the top through massive link campaigns.
Thus, the SEO halo effect occurs when your site gets top ranking is the first. It seems that when your site gets the much coveted # 1 ranking for a popular keyword or phrase, for the following are easier.
Case and point:
For my website, SEO for Google, which was the exact phrase that has been optimized for when the site was first launched in January 2005. I spent four months for submission of directories, writing and publishing articles every two weeks, and I made sure I posted in my blog at least 5 times a week.
I knew I had to do all this to overcome the “sandbox” that Google would place on the site. And in April 2005, the last place “outside the box” and the phrase “SEO for Google” was the site somewhere around the 30s. Value took a month of concentrated effort to obtain sentence for first place.
Finally! after five months of sustained effort, over 1,200 phone presentations and published articles, all based on the key phrase “SEO for Google”, the effort was worth it.
But now the challenge was to expand other phrases people enter to find out information on search engine optimization for Google. So, after using Wordtracker, I found nine sentences to follow:
- Google SEO
- Google Search Engine Optimization
- Search Engine Optimization for Google
- Google Search Marketing
- SEO Techniques
- SEO and Google
- Google Search Optimization
- Google Search Engine Marketing
- Google SEO Optimization
Now, to put things in perspective, the competition for the phrase “SEO for Google” was not much, when I started – about 5 million results. The new sentences, an average of about 30 million results to compete against. So my effort to get these new phrase should be even more?
N – thanks to the Halo Effect SEO.
Because Google and other search engines had already recognized the place as the most relevant to the phrase “SEO for Google,” similar phrases could benefit from the relationship to the original sentence. Indeed, it could take first place in the original sentence to remove the phrases back through the classification without the need to urge the same amount of effort.
Today, those nine words in the top 15 in Google, and escalation. I can continue to receive communications from the guidance of the new phrases, while each listing tenth still use the original sentence.
So, take advantage of the trust was created with the search engines of your sentences above, and be sure to always look for similar keywords that can help you choose.
