Richard Koch's "The 80/20 Principle," also known as the Pareto Principle, reveals a powerful truth: in many situations, 80% of the results come from just 20% of the causes. This seemingly simple, and well-understood, concept hold some strong relevance to SEO, offering a framework for maximising effectiveness and minimizing wasted effort (which no-one should like).
The Basics of the Pareto Principle:
Before diving into SEO specifics, let's solidify our understanding of the core tenets of the 80/20 Principle:
The Vital Few: 20% of something (keywords, backlinks, pages) usually contributes to 80% of the results (traffic, conversions, rankings). Identifying and focusing on these "vital few" becomes your key to success.
The Trivial Many: The remaining 80% of elements contribute to just 20% of the results. These elements aren't irrelevant, but their impact pales in comparison to the "vital few." If you're brain's not flashing "crawl efficiency" or "crawl budget" here then you may not have read this guide from Google.
Unequal Distribution: The 80/20 ratio is a general guideline, not a rigid rule - if you break down you ranking pages it won't be exactly fall into this distribution but should provide a guide. If you have 5% then you should be comparing that to a 20% "natural" level and come to the conclusion that you've got too much risk. If only 10% of your search terms are non-branded then you may come to the same conclusion. For any large-scale, ecommerce site you should (I know it depends) be looking at 70% to 80% unbranded if you were looking to be an exemplar.
The Pareto Perspective for SEO Prioritisation:
But looking at this simple Pareto concept in a bit more detail now we've got a grasp on the core principles.
1. Prioritising Rankings:
Identifying the Power 20%: Use keyword research tools to identify the 20% of keywords driving the most relevant top-10 rankings, traffic or conversions. Prioritise creating content and optimising the associated pages around these high-value keywords to build your blue ocean. (I read to write my review of this book for you)
Conquering the Long Tail: Don't neglect the long-tail keywords, which may comprise the "trivial many" individually but collectively contribute valuable niche traffic. Optimize for a mix of high-volume head terms and relevant long-tail phrases. There has been some great work on search terms with no monthly search volumes associated, aka "zero search terms". I certainly wouldn't swallow this from Google if you happen upon the page: "Keywords marked as 'Low search volume' are associated with very little search traffic on Google, an indication that they're not very relevant to most customers' searches." - I know it's from Google Ads, but ust don't accept the concept that if something has low search volume that it's irrelevant. The opposite is likely to be true.
Intent Matters: If a handful of people are looking to buy a specific product and have high intent, therefore, then the search time may be long and relatively unique. Don't dismiss either zero, or low search volumes.
2. Backlink Building with Focus:
Quality over Quantity: The 80/20 principle applies to link acquisition too. Focus on acquiring high-quality backlinks from relevant and authoritative websites instead of chasing a high number of low-quality links. I shouldn't really need to be writing this.
Guest Post Powerhouse: Identify the top 20% of publications in your niche and prioritise digital PR opportunities there. A single well-placed link on a high-authority or high-relevance site can outweigh dozens of links from lesser-known sources.
Strategic Partnerships: Explore partnerships with complementary businesses for mutually beneficial link exchanges. This allows you to tap into each other's audiences and leverage the "vital few" backlinks within relevant ecosystems. Think supplier links here.
3. Content Creation Efficiency:
Identifying High-Impact Topics: Analyse your existing content and traffic data to identify the topics driving the most engagement and conversions. Focus on creating more content around these high-performing themes - but only where it offers significant value, the content meets or exceeds user expectations and would sit well in common user journeys.
Evergreen Relevance: Prioritise evergreen content that remains valuable over time, reducing the need for constant content creation. Regularly update and optimize existing content to maintain its relevance and search engine authority.
Repurposing and Repackaging: Don't reinvent the wheel. Repurpose existing content into different formats like infographics, videos, or podcasts (if you have the resource) to maximize reach and engagement without creating entirely new content from scratch.
4. Importance of Crawl-Efficiency
Prioritise the "Vital Few": Take a view of which pages will form the "vital few".
De-prioritize the "Trivial Many": Don't waste crawl budget on pages with minimal value or relevance. Create technical controls and processes to prevent, for example, irrelevant facet combinations that would produce pages dynamically without any relevance. I'm not talking "zero searches" because they make sense and just missed off some tooling, but absolute nonsense. It's better to not create these pages in the first place than trying to noindex or hack out with robots.txt.
Content Pruning: Regularly audit your website and remove outdated, irrelevant, or thin content that adds no value and consumes crawl budget. Prioritise fresh, high-quality content that aligns with user intent.
Focus on Strategic Links: Leverage the 80/20 principle within your internal linking structure. Connect your "vital few" pages with relevant and high-quality internal links, guiding search engine bots and users to your most valuable content. Avoid excessive linking or irrelevant anchor text that dilutes the power of your internal linking strategy.
Prioritise Link Depth: Ensure your most important pages are accessible within a few clicks from your homepage. Deeply nested pages may struggle to get crawled effectively. Consider restructuring your website navigation and internal linking to reduce page depth and improve accessibility for both search engines and users.
Crawl Budget Analysis: Utilise SEO tools like Google Search Console to analyze your crawl budget and identify pages that consume the most crawl resources. Apply the 80/20 principle to address crawl budget issues, prioritizing efficient crawling of your most valuable content.
Sitemap Optimization: Create a clean and optimized sitemap that clearly communicates your website structure and prioritizes the indexing of your "vital few" pages. This guides search engine bots efficiently through your website, ensuring smooth discovery and indexing of your most important content.
Track Crawl Stats: Monitor your crawl stats regularly to identify any crawl errors or inefficiencies. Analyze which pages are not getting crawled and troubleshoot any technical issues hindering crawl efficiency.
Continuous Improvement: Apply the 80/20 principle to your crawl efficiency optimization efforts. Test different strategies, analyse results, and adapt your approach to ensure your crawl budget is utilized effectively over time.
5. On-Page Optimisation Power Play:
Title Tags: Optimise your title tags for 20% of the most important pages - and don't try and force a page to rank for hundreds of terms with ever-decreasing relevance. Craft compelling titles that accurately reflect the content and entice users to click.
Meta Descriptions: Don't neglect your meta descriptions (I often do, but shouldn't - often because Meta D's fall into the 20% that wouldn't deliver the top 80% of traffic). Consider this for testing CTRs and building strong programmatic rules to build the best formats automatically.
Internal Linking Alchemy: Strategically link your internal pages using the most relevant keywords to improve user navigation and distribute SEO power within your website. Work with your UX colleaugues to understand customer needs and use your own data to analyse your internal linking structure and prioritise linking to the "vital few" pages that deserve the most prominence.
6. Time Management Mastery:
Identify Time Drains: Track your time usage and identify activities that consume your time but offer minimal SEO impact - there are various tools you can use here but something like JIRA can allow you to assign 'story points' and let you track the size and progression through epics (collection of related asks/deliverables). Delegate or eliminate these tasks to free up time for focusing on the "vital few" activities that move the needle. This could involve outsourcing repetitive tasks like keyword research or scheduling social media automation tools to handle routine promotion.
Batching and Automate for Efficiency: Group similar SEO tasks together for increased efficiency. For example, schedule bulk keyword research sessions or dedicate specific time blocks for content creation and give yourself or your team the space to do this activity. This reduces context switching and allows you to stay focused on the task at hand, maximizing your productivity.
The Pareto Calendar: Plan your SEO calendar with the 80/20 principle in mind. Allocate 80% of your time to the most impactful activities driving the bulk of your results, like optimising high-value pages, building strategic links, and creating exceptional content. The remaining 20% can be dedicated to ongoing monitoring, reporting, and exploring new SEO opportunities.
The Power of Saying No: Don't be afraid to decline tasks or projects that distract you from your core SEO priorities. Remember, focusing on the "vital few" often requires saying no to the "trivial many" requests that may deplete your resources and hinder your progress.
Measuring and Adapting: Continuously monitor your SEO performance and use data to refine your time management strategies. Analyze what's working and what's not, and adjust your schedule accordingly. The 80/20 principle isn't static; be prepared to adapt your approach based on evolving results and emerging trends.
This book has so much relevance to SEO when you align it to concepts of crawl efficiency, creating high value & relevant content, trying to acquire high value links etc. If you think this book is of relevance you can get it from Amazon (aff).