"Thin Slicing", a Powerful SEO Tactic
In my Search Engine Land column last week, I describe a powerful SEO tactic that we at Netconcepts call "thin slicing". The term originally comes from Malcolm Gladwell (as used in his best seller Blink) and has no origins in the online world.
Gladwell uses the term in the context of "rapid cognition"; where one makes snap judgments in their field of expertise. Surprisingly, those snap judgments are often times more accurate than considered opinion, i.e. assessments that have been labored over. The important caveat: it only holds true for experts, not for amateurs.
We've co-opted the term and applied it to SEO. In that context, thin slicing is a tactic referring to mass optimization across a large number of pages, done quickly, and confined to just one or more high value elements (such as title tags). It relies on the gut-level instinct of the search engine marketer. Spare the in-depth keyword research and analysis and just take a guess, then move on. When you have a daunting number of pages to get through, deciding on synonyms, verb tenses and word order should rely on your intuition. Trying to optimize every element on every page perfectly is not scalable and will only sap your energy. "Thin slicing" could be done on title tags, keyword URLs, H1 headings, or meta descriptions. You'd monitor for impact, and then refine based on those results.
There are two approaches to thin slicing, and which one you use depends very much on your web site's infrastructure and what it supports.
One is through your a forms-based web interface in your admin. We refer to this as "mass edit" capability. WordPress supports mass editing of title tags and URLs ("post slugs", more accurately) - IF you have our free SEO Title Tag plugin installed. Through its mass edit screen, you can optimize all title tags across your blog - all your posts, category pages, tag pages etc., without having to go to each post's Edit screen individually.
One feature we found invaluable when using web forms for thin slicing was to make the number of rows displayed per page user-configurable. Some users will want to display hundreds of records per screen, others will want much fewer, as too big of a web page will cause their web browser to crash or time out.
The other approach is "bulk uploading", where you import an updated list of title tags (or H1s or whatever) into your website's underlying database. You start with a database export in CSV (comma separated values) format of your current title tags -- along with the corresponding item ID numbers for each record, of course. Load the CSV file into Microsoft Excel and do your title tag optimization in the spreadsheet. Then upload the optimized title tags back into the database.
Note that if your database does not have a field for the title tag, you'll have to create it and re-code your site to override the programmatic title with the contents of this new field when it is populated with data.
Rather than having to maneuver through phpMyAdmin or rely on your database administrator, have a CSV file upload function built into the admin interface of your content management system (CMS).
When we added the "bulk upload" capability to our GravityStream proxy admin, our optimizers and those at our clients and partner resellers experienced a nice boost in productivity. So we can attest to the fact that "thin slicing" works.
Whether you prefer working in Excel or within a "mass edit" view in your CMS' admin interface, "thin slicing" is a great tactic to add to your SEO toolchest.
16 comments
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And I thought I was just getting lazy... but come to find out I've just been Thin Slicing!
Comment by Everett [Visitor] · http://www.firstpagefitness.com — 02/02/09 @ 13:34
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Smart tip here Stephan, and that was my experience as well with Ice.com this past summer.
One thing that may be even more effective is self-optimizing title tags (hattip to Eli of Blue Hat SEO). You adjust the order/synonyms etc according to what gets you more traffic/conversions/insert-metric-here. Requires a tie in to your analytics, but it seems worth it imho.
The catch with that is that ranking fluctuations (and other site changes) may make the data unreliable, so it needs to be tested in isolation from other improvements to the site. That time could go to backend development/preparations I guess that you store until the data is in and the tags are self-optimized.Comment by Gab Goldenberg [Visitor] · http://seoroi.com/about-seo-roi/ — 02/02/09 @ 23:13
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A friend who commented to my blog post here:
http://blog.cantbarsed.com/2009/02/how-to-break-research-then-failure.html
suggested I take a look at thin SEO slicing and there are some interesting similarities to the way I work.
Good to read I'm not alone in taking a different approach to in-depth research.Comment by Joe Connor [Visitor]
· http://blog.cantbarsed.com —
02/03/09 @ 05:54
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Do you think title is such an important thing for SEO?
What procentage of importance you'd give to title optimization?
Comment by Victor Antofica [Visitor] · http://victorantos.com — 02/10/09 @ 17:07
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This is a very interested technique. I'd love to see more about how to select those title tags.
Are they just based on keyword resourch?Comment by Jeff [Visitor] · http://www.holidayblooms.com — 02/10/09 @ 18:07
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Stephan, do you agree that your posting examples are rather about 'tooling' than about 'thin slicing definition'? I never heard of this term before actually, but I suppose someone needs to be first, that's how in-crowd terminology emerges, and you're probably the first in this case, so cheers on that! ;-).
Comment by Day Two Webdesign [Visitor] · http://www.day-two.nl/ — 02/12/09 @ 18:38
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Have you witnessed any unsavory side effects from constant manipulation of your title tags? I'd love to experiment with this - but....
The search engines don't see this as trying to game the system?
very interesting approach, regardless.Comment by Pavlicko [Visitor] · http://twitter.com/pavlicko — 02/16/09 @ 09:24
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I took a look at thin SEO slicing and there are some interesting similarities to the way I work.
Good to read I'm not alone in taking a different approach to in-depth research.Comment by Search Engine Optimization Service [Visitor] · http://www.extreme-seo.net — 02/22/09 @ 12:18
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i agree with you completely!, "thin slicing" has worked for us more than 'considered research' on many occasions..
stephan thanks for the clarification (http://www.semkraft.com/blog/2009/03/searchcampin-india-day-2/)about the screencast and the title of your forthcoming book. very kind of you..
i wish you all the best for the book
Comment by Siby Kuriakose [Visitor]
· http://www.semkraft.com —
03/13/09 @ 02:58
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Good post.Wordpress makes SEO extremely easy.I´m using the all-in-one-seo plugin and I´m all ready seeing better results.
Comment by Tom Lindstrom [Visitor] · http://tlmarketing.net — 03/23/09 @ 09:35
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Hmmmm... Sounds a bit like you are just adding an overcomplicated name and definition to an old practice. Not to be critical, while agree with your methods, I don't like jargon. As well, I would also like to know how you are choosing these page titles.
Comment by Kate [Visitor] · http://www.vickersmedia.com — 03/23/09 @ 13:41
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Right on Stephen! This is a fundamental approach to SEO we use all the time, especially for big sites that have a long tail. Thin slicing lets you focus on the most important aspects and avoid wasting time on 'boiling the ocean."
Comment by Arthur Coleman [Visitor] · http://www.rethought.net — 03/24/09 @ 08:54
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Well said, Stephan! We definitely encounter websites well-suited to this approach -- sites with a ton of content or products in the same niche or category. A site with thousands of shoes, each with their own manufacturer and product name, yields pretty well to systematic title tags like "[manufacturer] [product name] Sneakers: "[manufacturer] [product name] Running Shoes"
Comment by tom funk [Visitor]
· http://www.amazon.com/Web-2-0-Beyond-Understanding-Technologies/dp/0313351872 —
04/07/09 @ 21:46
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Thin slicing could be a really useful tool. I agree it would work best for niche sites or content specific ones. It would be an interesting to try this and see the results. Thanks!
Comment by Print Envelopes [Visitor] · http://www.uprinting.com/envelope-printing.html — 04/23/09 @ 01:12
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I also use this technique, when launching a new site. It's helpful to quickly order the page with content, H1's, Title tags, etc.
One could spend ages messing around with keywords, when it's best to try something out first, then see how the pages get indexed, & ranked; at this point, one could use tagging scripts to alter the page Titles, or other content, in line with analytics results.
I agree with a previous poster, [13], that individual Title tags on product pages work very well. Having combinations of [manufacturer][product name], etc, throughout an e-commerce site works too.
@Pavlicko: I would warn you not to mess with the tags too much over a short period of time. It would be best to make changes slowly, or experiment on a test site you may have, to see if it has the effectiveness you need. It may be seen as 'gaming' the SE's if you are constantly changing tags to attract higher SERPS.Comment by Dave Allen [Visitor] · http://www.jjstoragesystems.co.uk/recycling-business-solutions — 04/29/09 @ 20:12
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I think the world is googleized, no more globalized.
That´s the answer, no the question
BYE!Comment by Virtual Estudio [Visitor] · http://www.virtualestudio.com — 06/06/09 @ 21:47
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