Back in Action

As of late, things have been very busy for the Rank Seeker staff. We are feverishly working to build out our new site. We have received an unexpected number of great comments towards our new site and the work we've been doing, thank you!

Yesterday, a friend refered me to a CNN Article. The article is written about a man, Daniel Kovach, who makes over $10,000 a month with a scholarship web site. His web site is unique in that it has used an unconvientional method of finding visitors. Kovach, has built his site to directly target search engine terms that are popular amongst searchers but have very little competition, such as "The White Man's Guide to Getting a Minority Scholarship." By targeting many of these smaller markets he has gained a tremendous market share from the other scholarship sites, which are all competing against themselves and have to forfiet many of the search results to the competitor.

I highly recommend that newer web sites that wish to get into national markets, first look at targeting the 2nd and 3rd teir terms which will come much quicker in a SEO campaign, and once these terms are met, the bigger terms will come much easier.

Keyword Popularity

Most businesses struggle to develop a successful internet marketing campaign due to their incorrect determination of keywords. It is a highly overlooked subject that can be the key to your company’s online success. As a result, it is very advisable to ask your SEO specialist to research the keyword popularity, which is the number of search inquiries for phrases related to your business.

For Example,
Scenario: You own a bakery in South Boston which sells specialty baked goods. Most people would expect you to optimize your site for the keywords “Specialty Baked Goods.”

However, after a thorough analysis of recent search terms, it would be best to target the terms that best define your business as well as have the highest search requests. The term bakery has over 230,000 monthly search requests and would be our suggestion as your starting point. Speciality goods, receives under 100 searches every month; therefore, making it an ineffective search term.

In conclusion, defining the most effective search terms at the beginning of an SEO campaign can make a large difference to both your bottom line and ROI associated with your web development project. Keyword selection is just the beginning of your SEO project and does not guarantee success, but it will put you in the right direction from the start.

Things to Consider for SEO

1. The first step in creating a well optimized website is to identify your audience. This step is very important and something that can easily be over looked when starting a webpage.

2. Research the area of which your page is being built. Find out who your competitors are and where they are listed in Google.

3. Determine which keywords people are using to find your topic. If you’re a realtor in Boston are more people searching for “homes in Boston” or are they looking for “real estate in Boston”?

4. With these factors in mind, create a list of keywords ranging from most important to least important and use these as targets to determine where you would like to be listed in Google.

5. Build your page to impress each keyword. And what do I mean by impress? I like to look at SEO is being an audition. In this case, Google is the producer and your website is the actor. When Google calls you to the stage it is important that they have you applying for your most qualified part. You wouldn’t want to be a Boston real estate company and come to find that Google thinks you’re a Boston general contractor. To prevent this, there are a number of easy steps that can be used to help present your site to Google but before you do so, make sure you check out Google’s Guidelines at http://www.google.com/webmaster/ for helpful suggestions.