| Target
the wrong keywords and all your efforts will be in vain.
Choose the right keywords, and you'll see your traffic skyrocket.
Therefore,
think long and hard on what keywords people are likely to
use to find you.
Have
you ever heard from someone who attained a top 10 position
in a major search engine and the person was elated at how
much new traffic flooded into his or her Web site. You'd
expect them to be happy with such an outcome, right? But
sometimes you hear from someone else who also achieved a
top 10 ranking but they become disappointed when just a
handful of visitors show up. How can two people achieve
high rankings and have such markedly different outcomes?
Simple. The person in the first example selected a keyword
or phrase that many people are searching on, and the second
did not!
The question to ask yourself is how do you really know if
you're optimizing your pages for keywords that Web surfers
are looking for? There are several good techniques you can
apply to determine what people might be searching for:
a) Put yourself in their shoes and brainstorm.
b) See what keywords your competitors are targeting to spur
new ideas.
c) Organize and focus your keywords into short phrases,
etc.
However, the best way is to stop guessing and actually SEE
what people are searching for.
There are literally 1000's of opportunities available
for any business. Find YOUR niche, make sure it's one that
people are looking for, then pursue it!
Bonus Tip: Some of the keywords are going to be much
more competitive than others.
Example
1
Ranking well on the single word "travel" will be much more
difficult than ranking in the top 10 for "Caribbean cruises."
Remember that single keywords usually return the least targeted
leads. If someone is searching on just plain old "travel"
are they:
a. Helping their child with a paper on some aspect of "travel"
b. Looking for the "travel channel"
c. Looking to plan a vacation cruise?
d. Day dreaming about time travel?
e. Looking for driving directions for their travel across
the country?
f. Looking for a travel club such as AAA?
g. Looking for the perfect backpack or hiking supplies for
a travel expedition?
If you own a travel agency that specialized in vacation
cruises and optimized your site for the single keyword "travel,"
only a limited number of the people identified in the example
above would be qualified prospects. You'd find a great number
of search engine referrals to your site if you attained
a good ranking on the keyword, but many of them would select
the "back" button in their browsers, turn around and effectively
walk out of your store! That's not the outcome you'd be
looking for. When you target longer keyword phrases there
is a much higher likelihood that you have focused in on
exactly the right prospects. It's the difference between
attracting actual buyers versus tire kickers.
Example
2
Rranking well on the single word "real estate"
will be much more difficult than ranking in the top 10 for
"houses for sale Atlanta." Remember that single keywords
usually return the least targeted leads. If someone is searching
on just plain old "real estate" are they:
a. Looking for a real estate broker
b. Looking for a real estate agent"
c. Looking to buy a house in New YorK?
d. Looking to buy a condo in a city?
e. Looking for books on real estate?
f. Looking for real estate schools?
g. Looking for commercial properties or land for sale?
The best thing to do is to target multi-word keyword phrases
that give you the highest quality leads. For example, if
you sold software, you wouldn't waste your efforts trying
to rank #1 on the word software. That's just too general,
not to mention too competitive. Ideally, you will want to
target keyword phrases that are queried with some frequency,
that are specific to your Web site, but less competitive.
The easiest road to success is to target popular keywords
that your competitors have overlooked. If you
are considering two phrases, each one appears to be queried
with roughly the same frequency, but one returns 5,000,000
matches and another that returns 500,000 matches, which
one should you target first? The one with the fewer matches
of course! That's because you'll be competing against fewer
Web sites for the top spots!
Also, just because a phrase returns 500,000 matches does
NOT mean you have only a 1 in 500,000 chance of ranking
number one. If you simply submitted your page and did nothing
else, then yes, your odds of ranking near the top are low.
Discovering the "magic" quantity of keywords and tags to
rank in the top 10 is also next to impossible to do by hand.
We know that the majority of Web site owners are targeting
the WRONG keywords. How did we reach this conclusion?
Easy. A recent study showed that only 34% of Web site owners
knew enough to include a simple keyword meta tag on their
Web page! Therefore, just by adding a keyword meta tag AND
properly optimizing the rest of the page for your keywords,
you'll be doing far more than the 66% of Web site owners
have ever done! If you take the time to target the RIGHT
keywords, we're guessing you'll be ahead of 99% of the world
and you'll be generating more traffic with less effort.
Work smarter, not harder is what we always say! |
