Recently, a client came to us, asking for help with SEO. Specifically, she needed to rank for very large battery-powered products in the 100,000-1,000,000 Volts range, instead of having people come to her needing cell phone battery products (5-12 Volts)! 

There are over 100 trillion Google searches each month. That’s a lot of searches. Some topics, like “battery,” get a search volume of over 1,000,000 per month. But some, like “100,000 Volt battery,” get less than 500 hits per month.

Keep in mind that, for every 10,000 hits/month a given search term gets, the #1 page for that search is likely to get about 3,000 hits/month. That means that, if you’re ranking #1 for “restaurants near me,” you’re competing in a space with 1,000,000 hits/month and could be missing 300,000 hits/month — talk about a full restaurant!

However, let’s get back to the issue of ranking of specific numerical ranges. Even if only 500 people/month are searching for keywords in that specific numerical range, that means you’re likely to get 150 hits/month to your site for ranking #1 for that specific numerical range. So there is still a necessity in ranking for obscure keywords. In our client’s case, ranking highly for these keywords means people specifically searching for these highly obscure keywords will land on their site, and can generate a substantial number of leads each month. 

The Nature of the Problem

The difficulty with this is that wide ranges of numbers are not easy to rank for. It requires making multiple numbers into keywords in a way that ultimately makes the site less “readable”, which in turn negates the SEO efforts.

There is a Google search shortcut that allows for people to search for a range of numbers (putting two periods in between two numbers i.e: 5 Volts..15 Megavolts), however, this shortcut only applies to searching, it does not apply to keyword placement on the website. If PCTI were to make 5 Volts..15 Megavolts keyword on its site, it would not rank for every number within that range, it would only potentially rank for the terms: “5KW”, “15MW”, and “5KW..15MW”.

So there are a few keys to solving this problem.

1.) Build content with depth.

First, the basics. As we’ll cover a lot on the AEK Solutions blog, you’ll want to make sure that your keywords are covering the technical bases. That is:

1. Create a title page with the name of the product. In this case, “Battery products.”
2. Create sub-pages, linked to the title page, with the names of ranges. The smaller and more specific the ranges, the better. In general, 5-8 pages is a good rule of thumb, but more is ultimately, well, more. In order to appropriately boost SEO for the high power ranges that our client offered, it is necessary to make keywords out of as many power ratings as possible. Specifically, we plan to create sub-pages within the battery voltage page that list multiple, smaller power ranges, as well as what they could be used for. Here, as a point of example, we are creating 5 pages:
   1. 100,000-200,000 Volts
   2. 200,001-400,000 Volts
   3. 400,001-600,000 Volts
   4. 600,001-800,000 Volts
   5. 800,001-1,000,000 Volts
3. Make sure the target keyword is mentioned in the following places to increase your pages’ relevance for Google, Bing, Yahoo!, and other search engines:
   1. Title tag
   2. URL
   3. Headline
   4. In the first sentence of content (first sentence of first paragraph)

However, while the vast majority of digital marketers will do that first step, it’s the next part of building content with depth that will take your content to the top of search results.

Keep in mind that Google and other search engines may be powered by bots, but they are bots programmed by humans, who are consistently trying to find content that is relevant and valuable to those who are searching. Every algorithm change within Google will reflect those goals. That means that the quality of your content ultimately means more than all of the other strategies we will teach on this digital marketing blog and otherwise.

To do that in this case, I bring you to the second step: Analyze what your competitors are writing about in terms of the numerical range you’re trying to rank for. In this case, search for each of the numerical ranges you’re looking to rank highly for, plus the name of the product. In this case, “100,000-200,000 Volts battery products”, as well as similar terms like “100,000-200,000 Volts battery,” “100,000-200,000 Volts batteries,” etc., and repeat for each range.

Within each numerical range, it’s up to you (and your goals) to determine what content to include on the page. In this case, we are including the following:

1. Case studies — examples of work in each numerical range
2. Detailed story of work in each numerical range (at least 1000 words/page)
3. Look at the content written by your competitors. What other information do they have? Create your own version (do not copy, as that is not only unethical, but grounds to downgrade your own site in search rankings for not only the page in question, but others as well).
4. Again, look at the content written by your competitors. What would make their pages that much better? Add it to yours.
5. Ensuring each of the 5 numerical range pages links back to the parent title page, “Battery products”
6. Ensuring each has the target keyword mentioned in title tag, URL, headline, first sentence of the first paragraph, etc.  

Each time products in the given numerical range are mentioned throughout your site in the future, it is also vital that they link back to these respective numerical range pages.

2.) Build content with authority.

Let’s say it is the early 1990’s, and you, instead of Sergey Brin and Larry Page, are building Google. If your algorithm for “Battery products” in a specific numerical range is going to decide between an article written by the CEO of Energizer, or an article written by a random electronics expert no one has ever heard of, which would you rank more highly?

Put differently, websites with “high authority” are essentially just companies that people know and trust, and therefore click. For example, if you search for news, then you’re likely to click results from The Atlantic or The New York Times over a random blog. If you search for SEO, then you’re likely to click results from HubSpot, Neil Patel, Moz, etc. Google knows this, and is ranking what you are more likely to click.

Search engines are therefore designed to rank content with high-quality/valuable content, authority, and trustworthiness/relevance. In order to establish authority, it is important to get persons, companies, and media sites who are proven authorities on the subject to do the following:

1. Write guest posts that are posted on your site. 
2. Link to your content on their own sites and social media channels.

With the first point, having guest posts that are authored by an authority serves several purposes. First, it makes it more likely your audience stays on the page, which is believed to be an ever-increasingly more important factor in how highly your page ranks in Google searches. Secondly, it is vital to place your content on as many channels as possible to develop recognition as an authority on the topic, and having an article written by a proven authority in a given industry, and then shared broadly by that expert, is a great way to establish more relevance. That simple.

3.) Build content with trustworthiness. (In Google bot speak, that means backlinks referring back to your article.) 

Ranking for a specific numerical rankings, whether you’re dealing with huge batteries or specific amounts of anything, is a unique challenge. Keep in mind, again, the main goal of search is to help users find what they are looking for. Search breaks down into two crucial steps: returning accurate results and ranking these results.

Trustworthiness essentially comes down to a few things: First, backlinks to your article, which also overlaps somewhat with authority. To build backlinks, I recommend this post on backlinking from the AEK Solutions blog.

Secondly, I recommend checking your page stats often. While there are over 200 factors Google uses for search, and no one is exactly sure how they all line up, things like pogo-sticking, dwell time, and bounce rate seem to be a part of the equation.

I recommend checking your page stats monthly. If your dwell time is down and bounce rate is up, I recommend the following:

1. Update your site content. Longer posts with better organized information, as well as more hard-to-find, yet valuable, information seems to be a key to getting your posts bookmarked and shared by others. 
2. Install widgets to encourage people to “read more” and hence stay on your site longer. Popular posts can be linked to a “Part II,” “Part III,” or a place on your site to download an e-guide or sign up for a demo — anything to engage with your content more.
3. Answer comments. Sometimes, the most valuable content contributions are ideas that stem from genuine back-and-forth conversations with readers and fans.

Furthermore, don’t try to measure the trustworthiness of your page with any kind of “score”— whether it’s Domain Authority or Alexa rank, whatever it is that you’re using for that, Google almost certainly isn’t using it.

Bottom Line

If you want to rank highly for a given set of numerical ranges in SEO, you need to treat it like any other keyword. First, build content with more depth and quality than your competitors, and make sure that it is organized on the site and structured according to best SEO practices. Secondly, build content with authority, generating backlinks and/or guest authorships and/or arranged post sharing whenever possible. And, lastly, build trustworthiness by focusing on metrics that capture how much your content is engaging your audience; namely, pogo-sticking, time on site, and bounce rate. Keep a finger on the pulse that is these metrics, and you can ultimately win the SEO game.

If you want top-notch digital marketing strategy, or have questions about your own keyword ranking strategy, reach out to us at AEK Solutions for a free, no-obligation Q&A session. AEK Solutions is dedicated to creating new sources of repeatable growth online by embracing a rapid-experimentation, funnel-based approach. We also utilize creative and technology, such as geotargeting, customer experience management, and moments of influence testing to develop solutions to specific digital marketing issues.

Recently, a client came to us, asking for help with SEO. Specifically, she needed to rank for very large battery-powered products in the 100,000-1,000,000 Volts range, instead of having people come to her needing cell phone battery products (5-12 Volts)! 

There are over 100 trillion Google searches each month. That’s a lot of searches. Some topics, like “battery,” get a search volume of over 1,000,000 per month. But some, like “100,000 Volt battery,” get less than 500 hits per month.

Keep in mind that, for every 10,000 hits/month a given search term gets, the #1 page for that search is likely to get about 3,000 hits/month. That means that, if you’re ranking #1 for “restaurants near me,” you’re competing in a space with 1,000,000 hits/month and could be missing 300,000 hits/month — talk about a full restaurant!

However, let’s get back to the issue of ranking of specific numerical ranges. Even if only 500 people/month are searching for keywords in that specific numerical range, that means you’re likely to get 150 hits/month to your site for ranking #1 for that specific numerical range. So there is still a necessity in ranking for obscure keywords. In our client’s case, ranking highly for these keywords means people specifically searching for these highly obscure keywords will land on their site, and can generate a substantial number of leads each month. 

The Nature of the Problem

The difficulty with this is that wide ranges of numbers are not easy to rank for. It requires making multiple numbers into keywords in a way that ultimately makes the site less “readable”, which in turn negates the SEO efforts.

There is a Google search shortcut that allows for people to search for a range of numbers (putting two periods in between two numbers i.e: 5 Volts..15 Megavolts), however, this shortcut only applies to searching, it does not apply to keyword placement on the website. If PCTI were to make 5 Volts..15 Megavolts keyword on its site, it would not rank for every number within that range, it would only potentially rank for the terms: “5KW”, “15MW”, and “5KW..15MW”.

So there are a few keys to solving this problem.

1.) Build content with depth.

First, the basics. As we’ll cover a lot on the AEK Solutions blog, you’ll want to make sure that your keywords are covering the technical bases. That is:

1. Create a title page with the name of the product. In this case, “Battery products.”
2. Create sub-pages, linked to the title page, with the names of ranges. The smaller and more specific the ranges, the better. In general, 5-8 pages is a good rule of thumb, but more is ultimately, well, more. In order to appropriately boost SEO for the high power ranges that our client offered, it is necessary to make keywords out of as many power ratings as possible. Specifically, we plan to create sub-pages within the battery voltage page that list multiple, smaller power ranges, as well as what they could be used for. Here, as a point of example, we are creating 5 pages:
   1. 100,000-200,000 Volts
   2. 200,001-400,000 Volts
   3. 400,001-600,000 Volts
   4. 600,001-800,000 Volts
   5. 800,001-1,000,000 Volts
3. Make sure the target keyword is mentioned in the following places to increase your pages’ relevance for Google, Bing, Yahoo!, and other search engines:
   1. Title tag
   2. URL
   3. Headline
   4. In the first sentence of content (first sentence of first paragraph)

However, while the vast majority of digital marketers will do that first step, it’s the next part of building content with depth that will take your content to the top of search results.

Keep in mind that Google and other search engines may be powered by bots, but they are bots programmed by humans, who are consistently trying to find content that is relevant and valuable to those who are searching. Every algorithm change within Google will reflect those goals. That means that the quality of your content ultimately means more than all of the other strategies we will teach on this digital marketing blog and otherwise.

To do that in this case, I bring you to the second step: Analyze what your competitors are writing about in terms of the numerical range you’re trying to rank for. In this case, search for each of the numerical ranges you’re looking to rank highly for, plus the name of the product. In this case, “100,000-200,000 Volts battery products”, as well as similar terms like “100,000-200,000 Volts battery,” “100,000-200,000 Volts batteries,” etc., and repeat for each range.

Within each numerical range, it’s up to you (and your goals) to determine what content to include on the page. In this case, we are including the following:

1. Case studies — examples of work in each numerical range
2. Detailed story of work in each numerical range (at least 1000 words/page)
3. Look at the content written by your competitors. What other information do they have? Create your own version (do not copy, as that is not only unethical, but grounds to downgrade your own site in search rankings for not only the page in question, but others as well).
4. Again, look at the content written by your competitors. What would make their pages that much better? Add it to yours.
5. Ensuring each of the 5 numerical range pages links back to the parent title page, “Battery products”
6. Ensuring each has the target keyword mentioned in title tag, URL, headline, first sentence of the first paragraph, etc.  

Each time products in the given numerical range are mentioned throughout your site in the future, it is also vital that they link back to these respective numerical range pages.

2.) Build content with authority.

Let’s say it is the early 1990’s, and you, instead of Sergey Brin and Larry Page, are building Google. If your algorithm for “Battery products” in a specific numerical range is going to decide between an article written by the CEO of Energizer, or an article written by a random electronics expert no one has ever heard of, which would you rank more highly?

Put differently, websites with “high authority” are essentially just companies that people know and trust, and therefore click. For example, if you search for news, then you’re likely to click results from The Atlantic or The New York Times over a random blog. If you search for SEO, then you’re likely to click results from HubSpot, Neil Patel, Moz, etc. Google knows this, and is ranking what you are more likely to click.

Search engines are therefore designed to rank content with high-quality/valuable content, authority, and trustworthiness/relevance. In order to establish authority, it is important to get persons, companies, and media sites who are proven authorities on the subject to do the following:

1. Write guest posts that are posted on your site. 
2. Link to your content on their own sites and social media channels.

With the first point, having guest posts that are authored by an authority serves several purposes. First, it makes it more likely your audience stays on the page, which is believed to be an ever-increasingly more important factor in how highly your page ranks in Google searches. Secondly, it is vital to place your content on as many channels as possible to develop recognition as an authority on the topic, and having an article written by a proven authority in a given industry, and then shared broadly by that expert, is a great way to establish more relevance. That simple.

3.) Build content with trustworthiness. (In Google bot speak, that means backlinks referring back to your article.) 

Ranking for a specific numerical rankings, whether you’re dealing with huge batteries or specific amounts of anything, is a unique challenge. Keep in mind, again, the main goal of search is to help users find what they are looking for. Search breaks down into two crucial steps: returning accurate results and ranking these results.

Trustworthiness essentially comes down to a few things: First, backlinks to your article, which also overlaps somewhat with authority. To build backlinks, I recommend this post on backlinking from the AEK Solutions blog.

Secondly, I recommend checking your page stats often. While there are over 200 factors Google uses for search, and no one is exactly sure how they all line up, things like pogo-sticking, dwell time, and bounce rate seem to be a part of the equation.

I recommend checking your page stats monthly. If your dwell time is down and bounce rate is up, I recommend the following:

1. Update your site content. Longer posts with better organized information, as well as more hard-to-find, yet valuable, information seems to be a key to getting your posts bookmarked and shared by others. 
2. Install widgets to encourage people to “read more” and hence stay on your site longer. Popular posts can be linked to a “Part II,” “Part III,” or a place on your site to download an e-guide or sign up for a demo — anything to engage with your content more.
3. Answer comments. Sometimes, the most valuable content contributions are ideas that stem from genuine back-and-forth conversations with readers and fans.

Furthermore, don’t try to measure the trustworthiness of your page with any kind of “score”— whether it’s Domain Authority or Alexa rank, whatever it is that you’re using for that, Google almost certainly isn’t using it.

Bottom Line

If you want to rank highly for a given set of numerical ranges in SEO, you need to treat it like any other keyword. First, build content with more depth and quality than your competitors, and make sure that it is organized on the site and structured according to best SEO practices. Secondly, build content with authority, generating backlinks and/or guest authorships and/or arranged post sharing whenever possible. And, lastly, build trustworthiness by focusing on metrics that capture how much your content is engaging your audience; namely, pogo-sticking, time on site, and bounce rate. Keep a finger on the pulse that is these metrics, and you can ultimately win the SEO game.

If you want top-notch digital marketing strategy, or have questions about your own keyword ranking strategy, reach out to us at AEK Solutions for a free, no-obligation Q&A session. AEK Solutions is dedicated to creating new sources of repeatable growth online by embracing a rapid-experimentation, funnel-based approach. We also utilize creative and technology, such as geotargeting, customer experience management, and moments of influence testing to develop solutions to specific digital marketing issues.