I just was reading an email newsletter from Yahoo Search Marketing. In that letter they remarked about the use of colors at the WD-40 website. I like the use of color there but I saw something that was almost a great SEO idea as well. Check out this page.... 300 Uses for WD-40...
What change could be done to the content of this page that might significantly increase the traffic that it pulls?
I am not posting MY answer right now. I am curious to see how fast one of our readers will spot it and post it below. Actually, I will probably learn something because we have some really sharp readers and will get a dozen great ideas for kicking up the traffic - some might be a lot better than mine.
By: EGOL
Tweaking a Page at the WD-40 Website
Keyword Research
The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.
My approach would be...
1) As RyanBlank suggests, do research to find out how the uses of WD-40 are searched for. I think that we would find lots of query strings with action verbs such as: clean / cleaning remove / removing lubricate / lubricating
2) I would then, as Rand suggests, make separate pages for each verb (plus stemmings) and build them into the content as...
100 Things you Can Clean With WD-40 How to Lubricate With WD-40
3) In writing content for the verb pages we would associate them with nouns such as... lubricate hinges lubricating hinges
and adjectives such as...
lubricating door hinges lubricating squeaky hinges
4) I would then determine which query strings (uses) have the highest search volume. If my verb pages are not ranking high in the SERPs for those terms I would create a special page for these high volume queries. These pages would have detail write-ups for that use and a couple of "how to do it" photos.
5) These "Most Popular Uses" would be featured on a separate page with appropriate anchor text hitting the specific use pages. A menu for these most popular uses and the Verb pages would appear many times on the site to pump anchor text into those pages.
I like Rand's ideas for Web2.0 and a gag... My spin there would have been to include a Blog... I would encourage visitors to submit their best ideas - then I would post those occasionally to the blog - giving the writer credit, being sure the content was to my standard, and getting the blog page with good SEO for traffic grabbing. The visitor submitted uses would be added to the verb pages and linked to for proper anchor text passing. The gag would probably be much better linkbait and might even get dugg.
I'd just kill the page and ask SEOmoz.org community to build an open-project "tweakthispage.org".
The funny thing is we are actually doing the seo/sem for the company who design and added the plastic cap on top of the bottle, which keeps you from losing your straw! YES! that's a Montreal company who got that idea :D
Also, WD-10 is the 10th most known brand in the world :)
i'd find every possible synonym for all the repeated adjectives and nouns on the page.
I might create a small description of how you could use wd-40 in each instance. Nothing too wordy, but a good 200-250 word description that could be linked to from each usage listed.
Wa-la! you now have 300 pages targeting each usage.
"Wa-la"? Hahah!
lala
i think randfish just answered that question nicely...
except my boss gets those consulting fees =|
I would would break down the type of usage into seperate pages and use a big h1 to describe it -
h1 - Workshop Lubrication
Then break them down further as h2
h2 - Car Lubrication h2 - Engine Lubrication h2 - Machinery Lubrication
With keyword phrases listed (using an unordered list) below.
Oh yeah, do it all in XHTML and CSS to make it nice and SEO happy!
The user features are a good one although they would have to be vetted for keyword phrasiness (made up word alert!)
This page needs some definite keyword diversity...both in choice of words as well as in the tenses of the words present. For example, they use "car" a lot and "auto" once, but not "automobile".
Proofreading is also a problem in a couple of places.
I've never seen an asterisk in a title tag...is that a problem?
I would also slip in names of competitors somehow...I would think that any page on the WD-40 website would rank well for "Liquid Wrench".
I wouldn't display text as graphics.
My first step would be to target user intent - do the search research for wd-40 and lubrication (and all the secondary and associated terms), generate a list of ten-twelve and change the page to be a Top 300 Uses by Category, then narrow down each by category on its own page - each would receive tons of links, as would the top level page.
From there, I'd illustrate, preferrably with somme sort of humorous gag - I might even make one page that's purely humor; similar to that Red Green show on late night TV in Canada.
By creating multiple pages, you target multiple searchers and you segment by user group, intent and demographics. From there, it's easier to make the pitch, get the links, etc. because you're focused on the exact need. However, this goes against my usual linkbaiting prinicipal of keeping link-worthy content all together in a big linkable document.
I'd also "Web 2.0" the formatting, allow users to contribute their own suggestions and uses (maybe even submit them with photos and highlight the best each month). Honestly, the list goes on and on, and these guys aren't paying the consulting fee so I think I'd better stop there :)
Rand - The only problem with using the Red Green show as an example is that the guy lives by the power of duct tape and WD-40 is an adhesive remover. (Grin)
i would try to write each bullet point from the point of view of someone searching instead of how they are currently written..
for instance the bullet point: Lubricates locks on vehicle bike racks
this page ranks well for that phrase and some others as you remove words from the phrase, however.. this is probably not what people would be typing in when searching for a solution to the problem..
if you removes the 's' from each term that is plural in the list, you'll get a phrase that is more likely to be searched by someone experiencing the problem..
example: lubricate lock on vehicle bike rack
unfortunately, the page in question does not rank nearly as high for this phrase as a result and as other words are removed (like 'vehicle'), the rankings get worse.
so to sum up.. i would alter the bulleted list to represent keyphrases that are more likely to be searched for.
//edit edited because i accidentally made everything bold =[ //end edit
BINGO.... I like this idea RyanBlank! That's what I would do... Well.... I would do a bit more.... one or two steps more... Any ideas how to expand this for more focused power?
(If you are thinking on a totally different track, don't let my comment here discourage you from posting alternative ideas. There's more than one way to skin a cat - and yours might be better! And attacking something this big from two directions would probably have a greater yield. We are out to mine the long tail - actually several long tails.)
Create a mini site for the 300 uses of WD-40 with videos showing each one. Then have users submit their own videos showing how they use wd-40 in cool ways. Spam digg/youtube/google video.
Get linked by boingboing.
Well Let's See. I would Add a better Title Tag. RSS Feed AND Social Bookmark Links
Some quick web dev suggestions:
- Better title - Add meta tags - Move JavaScript to external js file - Recode markup - remove tables, image headlines, image bullets - 'Uses Lists' should be produced as coded lists (definition lists maybe) - Headlines should use h tags with image replacement - Individual Use definitions added and could have show/hide functionality - If 300, should the list items be ordered? - the page could be recoded to highlight 1 of 300 randomly - the hightlighted use could link to a new page
chad some real good ideas, sounds like you've been doing this a while. I was wondering if you could take a look at my site for me and give me any advice, any and all advice is appreciated. thanks.
roger https://www.shopadf.co
At first glance I didn't even see the list. All I saw was a PDF download of the list which I wouldn't click personally. I would put the list as the first item on the page and place and download links at the bottom where they belong. I would add social bookmark links at the bottom as well.
Looking at the source code they have the list in a big html table. A list should be in ul or ol tags though I'm not sure that would drive more traffic.
A 300-line long list is a bit of a drag to scroll through. Some sort of hierarchical categorization at the top (i.e. links to the different sub-categories) would make it better navigatable. I also agree with Rebecca that they seriously need to re-format those sentences so they don't look like the same thing over and over and over again.
Maybe make those boring keywords the categories: LUBRICATES!: REMOVES!: QUIETS!: CLEANS!:
(etc etc)
... and take them off the front of each of the 300 one-liners.
All I saw were the words "Lubricates" and "Removes" about five hundred times.
Make a page about each one of those things? *doh*