OK, yes, I am making this up as I go along. Some time ago I read that most businesses (see how vague this is already) follow a 10% rule, which means that they generate most of their revenue from just 10% of their products. I have in the past focused on this (I use the word focus very loosely here).
What this has meant in the past is that I have taken my 10 most important products, in SEO terms this is generally 10 most popular pages on a website, and pushed these harder. That has involved improving the content with regular updates, placing the articles in key navigation areas throughout a website and referring to them more often in articles.
I think that this has generally worked OK. However, since the Google Panda algo update I have noticed a more even spread of traffic. This is a good thing, as one bug bear I have always had with my own sites is that too much of the traffic goes to too few pages. Maybe a sign of my SEO being too focused? Maybe I just take the easy picking and leave the rest to fend for itself?
Anyway, my new approach, which is probably something every other SEO and webmaster worth his salt has been doing for about 10 years, is to now largely ignore the top 10 articles. The idea is that these are doing OK at the moment, they are fending for themselves and bringing in some revenue. Rather than push them harder like an overbearing parent who wants his son to be captain of the football team and the next Jane Austin (poor boy!) I will let these little kids get on with looking after themselves. Instead, it is time to see that pages 11-20 are getting up to.
The idea is simple. The 11-20th most popular pages on a website must be pretty good already (on a site with over 500 pages, this rule does not apply to sites with 20 pages!), so with a little gentle nudging, some careful edits, updates to content, improvements in site navigation and a little marketing, maybe these pages can start to bring in more traffic.
For example, so far today the top landing pages on my main site have created 4,724 visits. The top 10 sites account for 2759 visits, which is 58% of total traffic. The second 10 sites brought in 638 visits, just 13.5% of total traffic.
If I can boost these second 10 sites then maybe in time they will match the top 10. This will result in a an extra 4000 visits a day.
Maybe that is optimistic. Maybe I am already ranking well for the keyword searches associated with those pages and that the pages are simply not such popular subjects. But then, if they are less popular subjects, that means less competition, so maybe there are easier gains to be had there?
Worth a punt at least. I’ll call it my 10-20 Rule. Well, it’s a test really, not a rule until is show to work.
Now I just need to decide how to do this without treading on the navigational toes of the top 10.
