Critical Mass | The SEO Pyramid

Forethought
When it comes to SEO lingo I can tell you that critical mass is not "9kg of plutonium". Rather it is the accumulated amount of rankings necessary to rank for the targeted keyword. It is our belief that keyword phrases are structured much like a pyramid. To rank for words at the highest levels of the pyramid you must rank for a certain amount of foundation words.
(see illustration below)

For a site to do well for a targeted keyword a site must have a keyword foundation to stand on before it reaches its state of glory. To help people understand the process of SEO and site ranking one must come to know this information.

Explanation
A single Keyword is not just a stand alone word that can be targeted anymore. Keywords are now grouped together in phrases that fall under a hierarchal order of importance. Words can be given importance from most searched to least searched. The most common of these is what is called a Keyword theme. Keyword themes are general words that can be added upon to make common phrases.

Example: "Pepperoni" would be the keyword theme and "Pepperoni Pizza" and "Pepperoni Pizza Recipes" would be keywords in the "Pepperoni" Theme.

This means that there are literally 100's and even 1000's of keywords that can fall into a keyword theme. In order to rank for the main keyword which is the actual name of the theme. You need to be able to rank for a significant amount of the words in the theme itself. This is what we call critical mass which is nothing more than an organized structure. Let's break it down using a very tough term for which millions of people would like to rank. The term "Real Estate" is about as hard as you'll get.

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Note: We have used area location as keywords you could substitute Adjectives like Luxury, Premium, New etc etc. To make keywords like Luxury Real Estate or Luxury Florida Real Estate. What ever the combination the more broad the easier it is to get ranked for.

Real Estate<< Years
Florida Real Estate << at least a Year
Tampa Florida Real Estate << Months
Hillsborough County Tampa Florida Real Estate << Weeks
33611 Hillsborough County Tampa Florida Real Estate << Days
Bayshore Boulevard 33611 Hillsborough County Tampa Florida Real Estate << Days

If you notice that the more descriptive the keyword is, the easier it will be to rank. The more general a keyword, is the harder it is to rank. There are also other factors involved. Competition, Site Relevance, Page Score, Link Popularity and Site Structure to name a few. There are methods that can speed up the process that can help push a site to the top. To say the least real estate is an extreme example and would probably take a team of designers, content writers and SEO Technicians months to concept and build to be ready to rank for real estate.

Afterthought
This article is to help clear up questions and of course get your curiosity going. There are a few points that should be mentioned. If you want to just rank for the Keyword "Real Estate" you simply just can't. You have to rank for a majority of keywords that fall under it's theme. Once your reach that majority, or "Critical Mass" you still have to rub elbows with the sites that are already sitting on page 1 in the search results.

The process of getting to the top is not an overnight job or a campaign of a month or two of optimization and site-sitting. Do not expect an SEO to do this then in that time period. It is a long road of patients, endurance and updates, updates and more updates. In the end it will be worth it.





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