-
The key when competing against the big boys is two things. First, get 3 to 5 long tail keywords. Long tail keywords will usually be 3 to 5 word keywords. Sometimes you may find a two word keyword you can rank for right away but not likely. So if you would like to rank for "wire Mesh", go to google keyword tool to see if terms like "aluminum wire mesh" or "silver wire mesh" has traffic worth going after. I personally want at least 1000 searches a month. In number one position you will get half of those and maybe about a quarter of that if you make it to number 3.
Optimize your SEO for those keywords. Once you got that done, spend LOTS of time getting proper backlinks. You want backlinks associated with your site. Spend the time to get 1 quality one over 10 cruddy ones. Make sure you use appropriate anchor text. It's important to do this work. It's the work that will seperate you from the wannabe's.
So even though you may not be big, you can be agile. Its not a matter of beating the big guns, its a matter of finding your piece of the pie and holding on to it. Good luck and feel free to ask me questions.
-
Good points Jeff. I like the finding and holding your piece of the pie analogy. I think a lot of people assume they have to target the most obvious keywords, because they assume those are the only ones that matter. I also see people brainstorming a few words and assuming those are the only words anyone else will ever use.
The truth is as you say it. Early on you won't have enough links pointing into your site to be competitive for most one and two word phrases. You need to go after lower competition phrases as a starting point. Once you capture some long-tail phrases you can begin expanding to other long-term phrases and begin moving toward more competitive phrases in the head of search.
-
Yes Vangogh we are on the same wave length. I also want to add that once you show google that you kick but with the long tail keywords, they are going to start looking at you more and more as a player for the shorter tail keywords.
I personally use Google Analytics for most of my sites. There are others but use something to monitor your site. There are a lot of other reasons but pertinent to this conversation is the the ability to see what keywords are being used to access your site. You get a crudload of one-off phrases but you will find ones that you hadn't thought of and hadn't even optimized for. You will when you see the trend :) So in a way, google even tells you what phrases can be good Through the analytics.
-
I think we are on the same wavelength. :)
One thing you can do with analytics is look to see what phrases are sending traffic and then use the information to create similar content, and then more content that helps you rank better for more generic searches. For example:
You're getting traffic for the phrase "red widget thingamabobs" which tells you can compete for 3 word phrases that use similar words so,
green widget thingamabobs
green widget whatchamacallits
red widget whatchamacallits
blue widget whatchamacallits
blue widget thingamabobs
are probably all phrases you can rank for doing what you've been doing. Once you start ranking for a few you can then compete for
green widget
red widget
blue widget
Your analytics will tell you what you can currently rank for, what you'll soon be able to rank for, and what's still a ways off.
