Errr, how the hell did that happen?

The fact that a content noob like me can make page 1 of Google so QUICKLY for a keyphrase as (presumably) competitive as 'best uk pr agencies' offers a powerful insight (I believe) into the way the world's biggest engine works.

Or has started to work.

It's this: Google has an anarchical streak. Either that or it'sbored out of its mind.




To get to page 1 of Google (see below) for a 358-word blog post targeting 'best uk pr agencies', and to do so the first time I targeted that keyphrase, is pretty eye-opening I'd say.

[caption id="attachment_1658" align="alignnone" width="481"]

Here you go: this search was carried out in Incognito mode on Google chrome. Note the slightly contrarian page title: always helps.[/caption]

So WTF is going on?

Be different or be damned

When I've blogged, I've always found it fairly easy to get to page 1 for my targeted keyphrases, however competitive.

I'm not blowing my own trumpet here, because frankly I couldn't give a damn, but why the hell is this?

I think there are a number of reasons (which I'll expand on in the tips section, below) but probably the most important one is that the content I chuck out there tends to be different and to
.

By different, I mean verbally and tonally different, not different, as in, "I'm cleverer than you".

Cat among the pigeons

The blog post that got me to page 1 got me there, I reck', because Google is bored shitless and wants to chuck something into the mix that is plain different.

To put it another way, it wants to throw a cat among the pigeons.

My view, and it's based on nothing more than intuition, or gut instinct, is that an increasingly world-weary Google is making contrarianism a more important ranking factor.

The page title of my blog post was quite contrarian, as was the meta description.

The content was also atypical given the keyphrase being targeted.

Anyway, despite the fact that the post was as short as you like (and a lame PR tip),Google manhugged the SOAB.

Latent semantic what?

This makes me think that latent semantic indexing is probably garbage.

In fact, maybe Google has turned the whole damn thing on its head and isfavouring content where the latent text is, errr, non-latent?

Whatever anyway. I'm out of my depth here.

Tips from a twerp

I'll wrap up with a few tips for anyone wanting to rank well for their keyphrase... although bear in mind that I'm not an SEO or CMO guru and really don't know my arse from my elbow.

And my biggest tip of all?




Because she's bored.