SEO Consult Blog

The world is constantly evolving to keep up with the times. Technology has taken off in the last century and where we once couldn’t imagine a life with it, we now cannot live without it. That includes the wonder of the internet. Cyberspace and all that it entails has changed our lives irreversibly and it will continue to do so. You can either focus on the negative impact it is having on people’s lives or you can see the glass as half full and look at the benefits instead. The benefits are far less depressing and so much more rewarding.

SEO is hard work

Search engine optimization has introduced the concept of using keywords to target a spot in the search rankings. You live by keywords, you swear by them and you build your entire website upon them. But are keywords and key phrases really all that? Yes they are. However, because you’ve stuck some keywords into your SEO copy doesn’t get you off the hook yet. As everyone knows, the internet evolves to keep up with changing times and trends. Your target market dictates which keywords you use and they dictate that you need to change too.

SEO is not child’s play and you cannot expect to sit back and do nothing once you have made the initial effort. In fact you will never be able to stop making an effort because the crawlers and spiders see your content as something new each time you tweak it a little. Your audience will change the keywords they are using to search and so you too will have to change. You need to change according to what is popular and what your target market wants.

Keywords aren’t everything

Yes, your target market wants to find the keywords they are looking for in your SEO copy, but that is not all they want. They are not simply looking for keywords; they are looking for customer service, the feeling of being valued and appreciation. Next time you focus solely on your keywords look at the rest of your copy as well. Read it from a prospect’s point of view and see if you like it.

If you don’t, how can you expect your customers and prospects to fall head over heels for it? You can’t. SEO is aimed at both your human as well as your crawler traffic. Strike a balance and don’t neglect either.

Learn from your own experiences

Have you ever gone to a store and left feeling as though you were an inconvenience? Perhaps you went to the counter to pay for your goods, but needed some extra items from the kiosk as well, but the cashier radiated frustration at having to go the extra mile for you. You probably don’t want to go back there again and your prospects feel the same way.

If that cashier had asked you if you wanted anything else with your shopping you would have felt welcome. You would have felt valued and that is exactly how your copy must make your prospects feel. Change your keywords and focus on them to please the spiders, but never neglect to make your customers feel that you are catering to their needs.

So you’ve created your website and you are happy with the content and graphics but how do you market this wonderful piece of creation?

The obvious answer lies within your search engine optimization and most people tend to pick obvious keywords when trying to market their website. This seems logical but it puts a website at risk of standing in the sidelines for months or even years before it ever shows any signs of reaching the first page of search results. At best, you could expect to be loitering around on page two or three and statistically, you may as well be hovering around in space for all the good it will do as surfers very rarely skip past the first page.

Try combining a string of competitive key words with those that are less competitive as this will have a twofold effect. The first being that the less competitive keywords will have more chance of ranking higher due to there being less competition and the second because the blending of more common keywords will create a string of permutations to raise your ranking, rather like choosing winning number combinations for the lottery or football pools.

Long tail keywords are phrases usually with four or more keywords in them and are often location specific e.g. Wedding reception venues in Blackpool
Short tail keywords are very widely used and are very competitive. An example of a short term keyword could be ‘wedding venues’ and by using this you will be competing with hundreds or thousands of other similar websites.

Long tail keywords combine a chain or keywords which include an even balance of popular and not so popular keywords. You can make long tail keywords by making your website more specific by perhaps including the brand name of your product or a local area or specific feature.

The short term keyword ‘new houses’ for example, could be extended to ‘new Bristol Wimpy houses’. The figures speak for themselves. For example, the short tail keyword phrase ‘new houses’ will lie amongst millions of competitors but the more detailed long tail keyword filters down the competition to just two or three thousand.

The advantages of short tail keywords are that they attract a wider audience but a long tail keyword will bring surfers to you who are specifically interested in the unique product/service that you are offering. These people are more likely to buy from you rather than just browse so it is vital that your keywords relate very closely to what you have to offer.

Finally, make sure that your website has some great content. Look at the text of your competitor’s websites and make it your target to produce better content full of useful information for your users. Add to this some great links and you are on your way to becoming a prominent feature on many of the major search engines.