The SEO Halo Effect
The halo effect is a cognitive bias that occurs when a person’s positive or negative traits seem to “spill over” from one area of their personality to another in others’ perceptions of them. (As defined by Wikipedia).
How is the halo effect applied to SEO?
Everyone who cares about SEO should know that it takes more time to get a top ten ranking with Google, compared to MSN and Yahoo. Yahoo and MSN allow newer sites to rank highly within weeks of creation, yet Google makes a new site wait. Google does this so spammers can’t grab the top spots through massive illegal link campaigns (like link farms).
The halo effect occurs when your site ranks first for a chosen keyword. After your site starts appearing as the first site for your chosen keyword, you can use the halo effect to your advantage and try to get search engines to rank your site in the top ten or even number one for multiple keywords. surrounding.
Now that the SEO work has been done, your main keyword has already gotten its top ranking. Therefore, search engines will also start to rank your site highly for other relevant keywords that surround it, thus creating the halo effect.
Since your keyword ranks highly, you don’t need to put in the same amount of effort for the other keywords. This might not make sense right away, but it’s essentially easier for you to rank your sites for similar and surrounding keywords after you’ve reached the top ranking position for your main keyword.
It is imperative that you first choose your primary keyword so that you can rank for it before attempting to rank for the surrounding (secondary) keywords. Since the main keyword should be the most relevant to your site, you should start with that one and keep in mind that SEO is an ongoing task, not a monthly task.
So take advantage of the trust you’ve built with search engines for your keywords, and make sure you’re always on the lookout for similar keywords, which could help you boost your SEO.
