Keyword optimisation is perhaps the most important yet most poorly understood element of SEO. But keyword optimisation is no black art and any half-decent direct response copywriter should grok it immediately.
I don’t know about you, but I’m heartily sick of seeing outrageous claims by people selling Internet Marketing information, keyword optimisation strategies, tips and techniques propped up by a few very rare and exceptional successes.
In reality, though, while it takes a lot more work than the sellers of this information like to admit, keyword optmisation is actually very easy in principle – and most of the problems come from our old friend the 80/20 rule (and they’re only problems because we ignore the 80/20 rule, I hasten to add).
Fact is, most people make three huge mistakes when they try to improve their natural search engine rankings with keyord optimisation:
- First, they spend their keyword optimisation efforts on wrong keywords entirely (as in, they’re not focused enough).
- Secondly, they do their keyword optimisation for the right keywords (in a sense) but don’t understand it’s not enough just to dominate rankings for the most popular keyword in their niche.
- And thirdly, they often try keyword optimisation in too competitive a market without what we might call “ranking collateral”.
So, first off…
Keyword Optimisation for the Wrong Keywords.
As you know I live in Ireland. If I mosey on along to google.ie and type in, say, “photography Galway”, on the right-hand side I get loads of results, some of which are actually from photographers in Dublin.
Yes, these are Adwords (which people are paying money for) from photographers in Dublin who are popping up when someone is looking for a photographer in Galway.
Now, I don’t know whether you know Ireland or not, but believe me when I say you wouldn’t want to drive from Dublin to Galway just for some mugshots. Some people would, but the vast majority won’t. So a Dublin photographer doing keyword optimisation to target the people of Galway is a waste of time, effort and money.
OK, so you might say, “But, you short, bald irascible git, this is Adwords not SEO keyword optimisation!”.
True. But I don’t care – the same principle applies to keyword optimisation wherever you find it. Business owners do their keyword optimisation for too broad a category – say, “photography” rather than “photography galway”.
Not only will the first generate you many spurious enquiries, but it’s also much harder do the keyword optimisation and rank for.
Thirdly (yes, I’ve skipped ahead – I’ll do No.2 in a minute, because it’s the most interesting, the most valuable, and the least well understood by the plebs)…
They Go for the Big Fish Without the Proper Bait or the Right Equipment.
OK, that’s a crap (or “carp”) metaphor. But what I mean is, they might try keyword optimisation immediately for “photography”, which returns 54 million results rather than, say, “galway photographer” which returns only 201,000.
It doesn’t take a genius to work out keyword optimisation to get you into the top 10 with 201,000 competitors is much easier than keyword optimisation with 54 million competitors, does it?
And this is related to the second point: why it’s not always best to aim your keyword optimisation at popular keywords.
Or, to put it another way…
Keyword Optimisation for Keywords with High Search Volumes Might Get You a Lot of Traffic, but Might Not Make You a Lot of Money!
There are a few reasons for this, but I’m going to cover just one of them now (the others are worthy of a post in themselves).
It’s to do with what you might call buying temperature. Someone searching for “photography” could be after anything to do with the subject – books, galleries, cameras or, as a photographer might hope, a photographer.
But someone searching for “galway wedding photographer” is most likely at least thinking about someone to take photos at his or her wedding, correct?
That’s Why with Your Keyword Optimisation You’re Often Best to Target the So-Called Long-Tail Keywords!
Not only are they easier to rank for, but the lower search volume is often compensated for by their buying temperature
Now, you’ll find this theme – niches and keyword optimisation – cropping up all over the place and any marketer or direct response copywriter worth his salt will understand it in a trice.
Y’see, the Internet, SEO, keyword optimisation, Social Marketing and all this other new-fangled stuff calls for a difference only in style not substance.
There are a lot of people getting rich out there selling “secrets” to keyword optimisation which are nothing of the sort and are really just sensible observations and “niching” on very familiar and formulaic strategies that have been around since year dot.
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{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Precisely. Nail. Head.
I think I’ve just read your entire website so I’ll round off with a few of my own comments about this subject.
Here in Cornwall (UK) I see many hotels, judging from their source code trying to compete for the most daft keywords possible.
From several hotels I looked at, generally speaking they all were trying to target keywords and to rank for these when in truth, they haven’t got a hope in hells chance of getting onto page 1 of Google – let alone garnering that all important first position.
What is the bleedin’ point in trying to rank for a keyword such as, “Hotel”? Or for that matter, “Hotel UK”? Or even, “Cornwall”?
What bloody good is this going to do them? I can tell you right now, diddly fat squat. And thats a fact, an indisputable, like it or not, fact.
It clearly shows that they haven’t got the foggiest idea how to utilise the Internet and especially their marketing to their advantage.
There is no point whatsoever in trying to compete for a single keyword such as “Hotel”. The competition for this keyword will be in the hundreds of millions. You’ve got more chance of winning the lottery at 14 million to one than getting the first position on Google, for such a highly competitive keyword.
The same goes for the keyword “Cornwall”. The competition might be lower than “Hotel” but again the chances of your 3 star hotel in Penzance ranking very highly is slimmer than a rattle snakes butt. This marketing strategy is about as useless as a bucketful of armpits from a search engine optimisation point of view.
What you need to ask yourself as a business owner is, what are my potential customers typing into the major search engines to find the goods, products and services that I can offer in this area?
This will mean putting yourself right into your customers shoes and thinking like they think.
In the example of the hotels in Cornwall, rather than going for very highly competitive search terms (single keywords) with millions upon millions of websites all vying for that first page, as Jon rightly stated, go for the long tail keywords instead.
A long tail keyword is simply a keyword of more than one word. In other words, two keywords together is a long tailed keyword.
So, a hotel in Cornwall might be better off trying to rank for keywords such as…
Book a hotel in Cornwall
Hotel bookings Cornwall
Cornwall Hotels Special Offers
Weekend Hotel Breaks Cornwall
These few examples are all made up of a keyword string, in other words a long tailed keyword.
The competition for these long tail keywords will be a hell of a lot less, sometimes just a couple of thousand websites vying for that number one slot, at the top of any given search engine.
To rank at the top for these kind of keywords is chicken shit easy, it can be accomplished in a matter of hours and certainly no more than a day or two at most.
And the beauty of this is… You are now specifically targeting your precise audience, your target market. Get your offer right in front of their eyeballs, make it as irresistible as possible, give them a direct call to action and chances are you’ll win one over on your competitors within the same industry.
Best regards,
Mark Andrews