It looks like we got an early Holiday gift from Google. DineSXM ranks #6 for Restaurant Reservations again...
As I was glossing over our semi-weekly keyword position report last night, I noticed that one of the "trophy terms" that we monitor had jumped back into view. Trophy terms consist of keyword combinations that are on-topic (e.g. variations of Restaurants, Booking, Reservation, St. Maarten, etc), but miss the specificity required to have any practical value.
Since DineSXM has a limited local and topical focus: we profile only restaurants that are located on the Dutch and French side of St. Maarten, there's little use in ranking well for terms that don't include both types of qualifiers / criteria.
Imagine a potential visitor who wishes to explore what our island has to offer. He or she types in "st martin" in their favorite search engine and receives results that might include St. Martin's Press, Saint Martin's College of Art and Design, St. Martin in the Fields, St. Martin Parish, etc...
Drat, those are not the results they were looking for, so here goes the next query: "st martins island." Lo and behold, the search engine returns webpages with information about the island of St. Maarten / St. Martin in the Caribbean, but among the results there's also St. Martins Island - a coral island located off the coast of Bangladesh. The searcher might find a news article, a page discussing the weather, flight information, a resort or marina, a school, a festival, and so on... Still quite random, really.
In a way, the search engine is still "guessing" what the person behind the keyboard is looking for... Much like in this video, the search engine is "cheap and keen to learn" - but in order for it to do what you want it to, you must speak to it in a "strange dialect" rather than natural language and give it very clear and specific directions:
As stated before, the "money" keywords for DineSXM must be on-topic and will most often also include a location criterion. Some time ago, one of our colleagues (whose keywords we also monitor to some extent) dropped out of the results for the term SXM. He maintains a more generic website about the island than us and, like a good neighbor, I decided to give him a heads-up about the loss. He replied with something along the lines of "thanks for the warning, but it's not a big deal: people who search for that term often don't know what they want yet."
In his situation I would probably have built a general island introduction page as soon as I noticed that the term was providing a source of traffic. Visitors who come in through a generic keyword could still be funneled through to any of the individual topics that are covered on the site (or even elsewhere). Unfortunately we're normally not ranking for St. Maarten, St. Martin, SXM or similar terms unless they're accompanied by an extra qualifier. Maybe it's a blessing in disguise :)
However, DineSXM ranks extremely well (especially considering its narrow local focus) for terms like Dining Reservations and Restaurant Reservations. Huh, say whaaat? No, seriously, here's the graph for Restaurant Reservations:
"Please smack me, to make sure I'm not dreaming!" Realistically, I don't think DineSXM ought to belong in the top 10 for this term. Top 50 perhaps... For starters, I'd expect this query to yield localized results. But apparently, Google thinks otherwise - or guesses correctly that the search was not made by a 'real' user... In our case, the queries have initially been made from DigitalPoint's server, and from our own box ever since the SOAP API was discontinued.
Since about a week ago, there's also the possibility that results are being "personalized" - enough discussion about this elsewhere. Maybe, just maybe, the case is that once Google receives a number of related queries, it includes prior searches in the way it determines the order of results...
In plain English: if our server (fixed ip address) first fires off a bunch of queries about St Maarten Restaurants, St Martin Dining and SXM Reservations, and then continues to query Google about Dining Reservations and Restaurant Reservations, is there a chance that the latter results have now become affected by the searches made just before? My guess, for now, is that the chance exists. Its implication in that situation, is that I should be on the lookout for a reporting tool that makes its queries through a distributed network of clients.
"Switch and spurs, switch and spurs; or I'll cry a match." Hmm, let's conveniently disregard the picture painted in the previous two paragraphs and pretend that we receive clean results. Who am I to question the omniscient Google? Follow me instead on what might either become a wild goose chase, or end up in a scrumptious meal of delicious foie gras ;) Thus, onwards and forward it goes in our quest to find a way to utilize this early holiday present.
In the 20 or so months that I've been tracking this term, it has appeared on the first page of results on 3 relatively brief occasions before. Notice though, how it is prone to make quick jumps up and then slowly receive slightly better positions over time.
Rather than waiting for it to slip away again, I have come to the conclusion that this keyword combination could help DineSXM in achieving some well deserved exposure elsewhere. If Google regards our website as a valuable resource, a place that people might want to visit when they perform a search for Restaurant Reservations, then why not capitalize on it by adding more useful information on:
- how restaurant reservations are made,
- where (other than with us) visitors can go to make their restaurant reservations,
- what the benefits are for restaurant owners and guests to make reservations online,
- the ability to run a DineMonkey powered restaurant reservation site in new locations,
- etc, etc...
So long, and thanks for all the fish! - Norbert
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