It is important to realize that picking the right key words is crucial to your SEO success.
Always remember that for search engine optimization, your end goal is to rank high in the search engines for key words most relevant and valuable to your web site. For example, if you run a pet dog business, you naturally want to rank high for key words such as ‘pet dogs’, ‘dogs for sale’, ‘pet dogs for sale’. Better yet, you can narrow down the key words to target very specific niches such as ‘chihuahua pet dogs, pet dogs for sale in Brooklyn’ etc.
What a Client want?
Many of my clients start out being very ambitious in what they want to rank for.
For example, one of my clients ran an online T-shirt retail store and she wanted to rank for the very generic key phrase –‘t shirts’. A quick search on Google returned a whopping 118,000,000 results and many competitor web sites all having obviously invested much time and money into building their own SEO and web traffic driving efforts.
I told her to drop the idea and instead focus on a niche. She specialized in selling t-shirts that had a green theme and I suggested that we focused on keywords directly related to what she was selling. ‘Green t shirts’, ‘tree t shirts’, ‘earth day t shirts’, ‘environmental t shirts’ etc. You get the idea.
She took my advice and I started implementing the search engine optimization strategies. Before long, her web site started ranking for those keywords and the first trickle of traffic came in. She started making sales as the traffic was highly targeted and relevant customers who were specifically looking for green themed t-shirts.
Her business has since grown and she is now focusing on a range of themes, not just the green theme.
The take away from this story
Aiming for highly searched key words may not necessarily be the smart way to go if takes forever to rank for them. The smart thing to do is to use your common sense and consider what your most possible immediate customers are likely to key into their search engines.
If you live in London and you are craving for sushi, are you more likely to key in ‘sushi in London’ or ‘sushi restaurants in London’ as opposed to ‘sushi’ and ‘sushi restaurants? I’m sure you will agree with me that the answer is the former. Better yet, if you stay on Oxford Street in London, you might just search for ‘sushi restaurant in Oxford Street London’!
It is no good struggling to rank number one for ‘sushi’ if you own a sushi restaurant along Oxford Street of London because you could have ranked number one for ‘sushi restaurant in Oxford Street London’ and gotten your customers about 1/100th of the time!
So before you pick your key words, consider what key words or key phrases are likely to bring you the most relevant customers in the shortest time. Who needs customers from New Zealand when you sell sushi on Oxford Street London?
Image credit: Man met Bril