User intent and ranking

[seoanalytics]

Hello,

I was doing search to see who ranks on the keyword "bike tours" i noticed a lot of website rank without content "text". Is it because they fulfil the user intent with a search box where you can search by date and destination, trip type and price that google ranks those webpages ?

It is the same for the keyword Paris bike tours https://www.fattiretours.com/paris

How do they rank with so little content (once again is it because the fulfil the user intent )

Thank you,

[Nigel_Carr]

Hi

Satisfying user intent really is the new buzz phrase in SEO and it's true that one of the first things a user is going to do on that page is to run a search for tours. That being only one of the possible user intents for that search terms. It also helps that Biketours.com, for example, has a PA of 50 and a DA of 40, so looking at OSE (Open Site Explorer) they have nearly 5000 backlinks from 142 domain. This is no doubt helping enormously.

Couple this with a low bounce rate and high engagement and it's easy to see why they are number one.

However, searching for a bike tour isn't the only reason searchers would type in that phrase. Other intents may include reading stories about successful bike tours, equipment used, sights seen and route difficulty. It seems that the top positions are all concerned with selling particular tours so in order to compete you are going to either go head to head with them, offering headline-grabbing tours that generate many backlinks or produce a ton of sharable written content around the subject.

I hope that helps

Regards

Nigel

[seoanalytics]

Hi,

Do you mean that I can't compete if I got a DA of 36, a PA 46 and 500 links coming from almost 80 different domains ?

In order to compete with the others is it better to create multiple page and answer other intents such as equipment used, sights seen and route difficulty as you mentioned so that it gets shared and then my domain authority increases.

By the way what do you mean by sharable content ? do you mean mean about all on the same page or on different pages ?

Regards,

[Nigel_Carr]

Hi

I think you can compete with those numbers, I don't think you'll capture the No. 1 spot straight away but I think you have a chance of getting on the front page. But you will need to add some very tight contextual content if you want to rank for Bike Tours.

You could create other pages with Bike Tours/City

And try and rank in different niches but you have to be really careful not to cannibalize your home page. Making the page specifically about the city your choose with photos with appropriate ALT text and even videos of the tour. In that way, you can create really useful sharable content. If you have a page with a 5-minute video of a speeded up tour around say, London. imagine how long people will stay on the page. Especially if you host the video with Wistia or a similar CDN (ie don't use Youtube as that age will rank higher than you)?

Make the page interesting, sticky and 'shareable' that's what I mean.

You could make the support pages with how to guides, Q&A and Advice centres surrounding each subject but again be careful not to cannibalise. they may have their homepage No.1 for Bike Tours but you could rank high for lots of associated cities, how to, advice, equipment etc. Do you see?

Regards

Nigel

[seoanalytics]

Hi,

What do you mean by the need to add very tight contextual content to compete ?

What about cannibalise, do you mean that I have to be careful not to create page that are very similar to my homepage ?

Regards,

[Nigel_Carr]

Hi

Exactly. When I say 'tight contextual content' don't use keywords you want to rank for on other pages. Don't mention them even once.

Cannibalise - exactly that - spewing keywords all over the site instead of focusing on a tight contextual group for each page.

If you are disciplined you will be amazed at the results.

Regards

Nigel

[seoanalytics]

Thank you,