Focused SEO Targets Valuable Keywords

One of the most common themes I find amongst clients looking for SEO Services is that they have targeted the wrong keywords and have carried out little or no keyword research. A few hours spent researching the keywords your website targets could save you a ton of time or indeed a fortune if you’re considering using an SEO company.

Target Obtainable Keywords

So many business websites try to target highly competitive keywords straight away and end up with little or no visitors for months or even years. In fact by targeting a few less competitive keywords or geographically targeted keywords you can rank highly quicker and attract good quality visitors very quickly with the added benefit of taking advantage of shoppers who prefer to buy local. Always set up for these short term goals with the long term (highly competitive keywords) goals in mind.

There are a number of key factors that must be considered before choosing the keywords for your website, such as;

Search Volume – How many people are searching online for keywords relative to your company, your products and your services on UK search engines?

Relevancy – You must target keywords that are relevant to your website content, your services and your products. It is important that visitors who have found your website via search engines are presented with what it is they are looking for. Relevant headers and sub headers can quickly show visitors that they have arrived in the right place.

Competition – What levels of search engine optimisation are in place on the top ranking sites for your keywords? For example, how many back links do they have? What page rank are the pages ranking for those keywords? Do they have the keywords in their Meta Title?

Commercial Value – Choose keywords that are more likely to bring visitors looking to purchase a product or service. Keyword phrases that include words such as services, company, buy or town (Manchester), show a high level of commercial intent therefore your chance of selling to them is increased.

These are just some of the important factors that SEO companies should research on your behalf when providing SEO services and setting a suitable campaign strategy, likewise if you are to compete on your own these factors must be considered and implemented.
SEO companies cannot perform black magic or have inside knowledge from Google or other major search engines, they have simply gathered knowledge over time about what the search engines do and do not like. Some of this knowledge is gained from the internet itself, and can be found by anybody willing to put in the time and the effort. Search engines such as Google provide extensive guidelines for webmasters; these guidelines offer advice and outline rules. Following these guidelines will certainly help to get the website found and indexed within the search engine. One very important section to pay attention to is the “Quality Guidelines”, this section outlines illicit practices that could get your website penalized or even banned.

More advice may be found on authoritive blogs throughout the web, one such blog that I recommend referring to is that of Matt Cutts. Matt, head of Google’s spam team, offers extensive and valuable information and opinion on issues such as Gadgets, Google and SEO.

By no means am I advising people not to use SEO companies, in most cases we offer excellent value and Return on Investment. What I am saying though is figure out exactly what it is you want to gain from the service before you approach an SEO company, otherwise you may well end up paying for a service that does not suit your businesses objectives or needs.