CQSEO Tactics - The Art of SERP War

Ok, as HQ seem to have dropped any semblance of sanity and broken every military convention in the book by openly announcing our military SEO Demonstration objectives, thereby giving the enemy (opposition) every chance to dig in and fortify their positions, and / or ambush us on the way ap we thought we'd join in the fun by explaining a little more about our Close Quarter SEO Tactics and some of the less well known weaponry we use..

SEO SERP Reconaissance - SEO Spec Ops primary task is Recon.

You have to know your enemy, from upclose and dirty. They will often be very strong and able to easily repel simple frontal attacks.

But we usually have in our favour the sheer complacence that often comes with a stable #1 for a while, people get used to it, and think it is rightfully theirs, which allows for well planned undercover spec ops & teams to open the doors and walk right in.

So we firstly study their keyword / SERP performance, identify their strongholds (dont attack there) and all their areas of weakness (keyword coverage, content / site structure and inbound linkpower)

This is basic SOPs, using the Google search operators, allintitle: , allinurl: and allinanchor: will give you a very good idea exactly how strong they are, and where.

That site strongly dug in at #1 could be there for a variety of reasons, including superpowerful links, age & trust, or more and better content, or often justbecause they're just better organised (optimised) than the rest. It's important to know exactly why that is as best you can why that is before mounting your assault, so you can aim at their blind side/s.

Then you look at their logistics and backup organisation, keyword research-wise. This is where we mount open OPs (Observation Posts) and also use the embedded undercover operators.

Open OPs include - Google's updated keyword research tool & any of the proprietary backlink checkers, we have classified weaponry we cannot discuss that we use for this, however Yahoo's sitesearch link: command in combination with Joost de Valk's SEO firefox plugin will give adequate information for SEO Civilians to get the picture.

Then we radio into our embedded (spy) operators who have been working in an amongst the enemy for a while gathering intel into their operations for the latest update.

Whilst we obviously cannot divulge everything about them we are safe to say that some of our operators use this kind of technology to gather as much information about enemy movements and positions as possible..

• GoogSpy

• SpyFu

..which combined with our knowledge of their general organisation should start to show where they may be vulnerable to attack.

Probe their defences

..at which point we call in the (keyword) sniper team with orders to engage if the opportunity presents itself and take a long range pot shot or two at them to see how they react..

This is usually in the form of a carefully structured blog post or two from an established blog with sufficient strength to take shots from the halfway line and punch in close, and really see how strong and well defended they are, Sometimes we even get lucky, and maybe even take out any sentries caught napping or with their pants down..

The recon team then start sending out constant fighting patrols from the OP to probe the enemy perimeters and really see how well guarded they are, and RV (rendezvous) with the embedded troops inside who will let us know exactly where to punch through, and lately have often unlocked the gates Trojan Horse style for the Fighting Patrol to walk right in, (at which point it is all over for their ladies, they are coming with us.. ;) )

For the SEO Civilians amongst you this military jargon probably doesnt mean much so I'll try to use simple examples in civvy language you may understand.

Say we were talking about the keyphrase " Ibiza widgets" as the primary objective, but the enemy are heavily dug in and defended there, and it could maybe take more manpower and resources that we are prepared to commit, and probably a long drawn out an bloody battle that we have no guarantee of even winning ultimately to take the position..

But research shows possibly that "Ibiza widget" is not as heavily searched, (hence optimised for) and sometimes shows different results from the plural, - which is always good as it indicates a lack of total dominance by the enemy) nor are "widgets Ibiza", "widgets in Ibiza" "red widgets Ibiza" blue widgets Ibiza" etc..

You get the idea..? So some of those are targeted by the keyword sniper teams initially, and any success obtained is first fortified and backed up, and then we build from it.

Conquer / Consolidate

Once we own "red widget Ibiza" and "Ibiza widget in blue" the crossover effect starts to give strength to the central theme of "Ibiza widget" and extra reinforcements turning up from "Ibiza green widget" will only strengthen the cause, until we have basically surrounded and infiltrated the enemy position. Structure and write your site and content to target the long tail and related terms, and the easier terms first, letting it build naturally until you can look the dug-in forces right in the eyes and mount the final push for "Ibiza widgets"

Regroup, reinforce further, and then go again..

..At which point (only then) do they usually notice that they are surrounded, outnumbered, out-manoeuvred, out flanked, and will quite often just surrender without the final battle even being fought.



We've done this in Malta, Gozo & Mallorca recently, all of which have folded very quickly under the combined stealth and strength of the Ibicenc SEO Warriors, and we currently have campaigns underway in various stages of progress in Spain, India, SEO for Flash, simple / easy SEO, that kind of thing.



The CQSEO Strategy & tactics can be hence summarised as:

Reconaissance, Intel gathering & analysis, sniper teams, probing fighting patrols, infiltration, consolidation of victories, regroup, and do it all over again, or..

Divide, Probe, Conquer, Consolidate, Regroup.. and on ad infinitum until the whole Widget world is under (y)our control... ;P

It's beachtime for SEO Ibiza again, hasta luego amigos.. over and out.