OK, so I've worked-on or managed well over 100 SEO campaigns over the last few years and a common trend I've noticed is that many small business clients don't really understand how choosing the right keywords affects and defines an SEO campaign and what it takes to deliver results.
Let us start off with an example. Say you're a landscaping company in Central Jersey where the bulk of your business comes from Landscape Construction (walls, patios, driveways, etc). What keywords do you want to rank for?
Landscaping can cover many things: Landscaping, Landscaper, Landscapers, Landscape Design, Landscape Construction, Landscape Maintenance, Lawn Care, Plantings (Bushes/Shrub/Trees/Flowers), Nurseries, Hardscapes (Patios/Pool Decks/Driveways/Walkways/Stairs/Walls), Water Features/Fountains, Recreation (Golf green/tee/Bocce/Horseshoes/etc), Drainage, and on and on and on.
Now, unless you have a huge budget and a team of people working for you, it's unlikely that you can try to rank for all of these terms. And just because your company can do all them, doesn't mean you need to rank for all of them if you specialize in a particular area. Since each of these words are not geo-targeted with a location (such as New Jersey Landscaper) it means you are searching nationally. Doing a search in Google for Landscapers brought back 11,000,000 search results. That's 11 million web pages you have to compete with.
Can it be done? Yes, but there are factors you have to consider if you expect your SEO to deliver this.
- There are 11 million web pages to compete with.
- It's likely that the top ranking sites are optimizing their sites in some way or another.
- The sites that are already ranking probably have had a website for a long time now.
- They've probably started optimizing long before you did, so they have a head start.
- They are likely known brands in the industry and will get preference in national searches.
- You're competing verse more than just landscaping companies. This may include How-To sites, manufacturers, wholesalers, suppliers, landscape architects, home goods companies, and more.
- They probably have tons of natural links. That means people are linking to them without being asked.
- A ton of natural links means they have great link diversity.
- These sites are usually very large with a ton of content. Optimized or not, it still counts.
- They may be trusted sources, or have gained links from trusted sources (such as CNN, Wikipedia, and the Library of Congress).
So, before you even choose your keyword term, you should decide on your target area. It can be a town, city, county, region, state, or another geographic name. By geo-targeting your keyword term with a location you narrow down your customer base to who is likely to buy from you and decrease the number of competitors to deal with. This ultimately means faster results and lower costs.
Keyword Research
Let's look at some keyword research to get an idea of what we're in for. Right now I just want to show how different keywords terms and different locations affect the difficulty of the SEO campaign. Google provides the first three columns of results. The SEOmoz Keyword Difficulty Tool provides the difficulty percentages.
NOTE: Google Search Results gives the total search results, intitle and inanchor gives the search results with keywords in the titles and anchor text and shows your likely competition. SEOmoz Keyword Difficulty Score shows the competitiveness of the keyword.
You can see by this information that Landscapers get more search results and is more competitive than Landscape Construction. Even though landscape construction gets fewer search results, it would likely provide better traffic results and conversion rates since it is more specific to what our example company does, which is landscape construction.
Once you add on "NJ" you really cut down on 'search noise' and have a better idea of who your audience is. It also decreases the difficulty by a good amount. If you swap "NJ" for "Somerset County" in NJ, you lower the difficulty again. Each time you narrow down your focus you can expect faster results and lower costs.
A keyword difficulty percentage of 26-50 means it's moderately competitive. A keyword difficulty percentage over 50 means it's highly competitive. The higher the percentage and more competitive the keyword, the more it is going to cost and will take to achieve results. Although they can provide a lot of traffic to your website when you rank high for those keywords, getting there is a challenge and will take some time. You will have to wait much longer before you see a return on investment (ROI). Many small businesses don't really have time to wait for large SEO campaigns to develop. It's a better strategy start with a smaller SEO campaign and upgrade as you go.
It's a good idea to choose one competitive keyword and then try to rank well for less competitive keywords related to that category and geography.
The Benefits of Starting Small
It's not uncommon for a client to say, "I don't want to limit my business to a specific area." SEO people understand this and try to accommodate where possible, but it's not always practical. Here are issues you have to deal with if you choose too large an area:
- It will take longer to see results
- It will take longer for the client to get a return on investment (ROI)
- You'll have less overall web visibility
You will see better results if you start by ranking locally and then expand to more competitive markets. Begin by ranking well for your town, then County, then Central Jersey. Once you rank well for Central Jersey it's much easier to gain rankings for NJ than if you started with NJ initially. This enables you to keep your strong search results for your less competitive (and more localized) keywords providing you more reach and web visibility.
If you choose to start statewide first you won't rank as well (or at all) for all those local searches. And if most people who search for your product or service are searching on a local level, such as they do with landscaping, you may be missing out on high quality leads.
The same goes for the keyword term itself. By optimizing for less competitive, but similar terms (landscape stone wall construction, landscape construction water drainage, etc), you make it easier to rank for the more difficult term landscape construction.
Consider this analogy: SEO is like preparing for a marathon. You need to compete in shorter races before you can compete in the marathon. It takes time to build these campaigns. It may take months; it may take years.
Switching Keyword Terms
When you start an SEO campaign, it's important that you know what you want to rank for. Choose a keyword term that is specific to your business. If you start an SEO campaign with one keyword term in mind, and then change your term to something different, you may be wasting all the effort and money that was spent on your campaign already.
Take our landscape construction company. If, in six months, they tell you that they mostly do landscape maintenance rather than landscape construction and want to change the focus of the campaign, it will have wasted much of your previous efforts. Here's why:
- The set of keywords will be different, so your SEO person will have to do all new keyword research.
- Your website has been optimized for "landscape construction" when it should have been optimized for "landscape maintenance".
- Any content written for landscape construction may be useless. All new content will have to reordered and rewritten.
- Site architecture and hierarchy may have to be changed.
- All the internal and external links that were built are using the wrong anchors.
- Website analytics and traffic data may be meaningless.
Each of these is time consuming and costly. Whatever results you achieved in those six months will likely take another six months to achieve with the new set of keywords, if their difficultly is equivalent. For keywords that are more competitive it will take even longer to see similar results. Looking at the numbers below, that is exactly the case for landscaping company. Landscape maintenance is much more competitive on the state and national level than landscape construction.
NOTE: Google Search Results gives the total search results, intitle and inanchor gives the search results with keywords in the titles and anchor text and shows your likely competition. SEOmoz Keyword Difficulty Score shows the competitiveness of the keyword.
Changing Geography
Any affects changing your keyword terms might have is basically the same affects you can expect if you changed your geography qualifier. The affects will be even more dramatic if the new geography is more difficult.
If you choose a less competitive (and a more localized) geography, the issues are easier to overcome, depending on how the SEO campaign was being executed. Changing NJ to Somerset County NJ will take the work you've already did for NJ and it count towards Somerset County NJ. From that point on it shouldn't take long to see good results because there has already been work done that is relative to the first campaign (although not exactly the same) and it is less competitive. The biggest downfall to this is that you waited six months before you got on track, so your return on investment (ROI) has been delayed.
If you change from NJ to NY, it could be considered a whole different campaign, especially if the new geography is more difficult to rank for. Remember, changing your geography is the same as changing your keyword term.
The only time you should really change your set of keywords is if you realized that you chose the wrong keywords from the start. It makes no sense staying with something because the rankings and traffic are good, but it doesn't provide you with any increased business or it brings the wrong type of customer to your website. Only you can tell your SEO person what your business does specifically and what your goals are. Once they have that information they can research the right keywords and work on your campaign. This is why knowing what your business does and what you want to get out of SEO is so important; it will help you choose the correct keywords and geography at the start. Don't waste time and money trying to figure it out.
Adding another Keyword Term or Geography
Ok, so you've had an SEO campaign running for about a year and it's showing results for Landscape Construction NJ and other terms like Landscape Contractor NJ,and showing up in local search results as well. Now that that's done, you can move onto other words. Wait... What? DONE? No, it's not done.
Without continuing an active SEO campaign you allow your competitors to catch up and overtake your search results. This, along with a drop off of relative links being indexed by search engines can work against you. Adding a different set of keyword terms to your list without upgrading and spending more for SEO means that you're splitting the attention of your SEO person.
A new set of keywords means new research, re-optimizing your website to include the new keywords, new content and new pages, and many more links. If the new keywords are different enough, it could take longer to see the same type of results you saw earlier, especially if the difficultly is equivalent. This is because you've divided up your SEO person's time between the old set of keywords and the new set of keywords.
The proper way to accomplish this is to upgrade your plan to include the new set of keywords. This way your SEO person can increase the amount of time spent working on your campaign. They can spend the proper amount of time researching, strategizing, and executing your new set of keywords while increasing your reach and web visibility for your initial set of keywords.
Conclusion
Make sure you have the right expectations of what SEO can provide for you. There is no doubt that SEO is a long-term investment that will pay for itself and more over its lifetime. Don't waste time or money SEOing for the wrong keywords; know you business and what your goals are. Be realistic about the geographies you are trying to rank for. Popular areas will be more competitive; expect to pay higher prices for these competitive SEO campaigns. It shouldn't take longer than a month to see improvements, but SEO takes time. The harder the campaign it, the longer it will be before you get a return on your investment.
Hey Brian, great work!
For small businesses, we often try to help them build authority around a very small niche. Then work out from there by growing towards other niches and/ or broader categories. Meanwhile- building a community around everything if at all possible.
Initially, we always start with a PPC campaign to help determine favorable keywords to target. This helps in the short run too. Usually the question becomes, "while we work on organic rankings, would you like to continue getting these customers through PPC for only $xxx/month?"
Easy answer. And it solves the short term goals (sales) of most small business owners, which gives you the time to achieve the longer term goals (SEO) :-)
Yeah, PPC is good to bring initial traffic. It's all about the clients budget, goals, and expectations.
A great post Brian and a good comment Donnie.
Working with small clients is often the most difficult because they usually understand little about the whole process. Educating them properly is the key to a sucessfull relationship.
A PPC campaign not only helps get the ball rolling and gives you valuable information on what converts well and what doesn't, but also provides documentation on the per click value of their keywords. Use this per click value to document the return you are providing with organic traffic you drive.
Thanks SEMPassion, I like your username, nice!
Agreed. We have found the very best keywords and content ideas come from running PPC campaigns and then using the "See search terms" tool in AdWords to see what people are actually searching for. It can be very telling and a rich source of keyword ideas we haven't though of or had suggested to us by keyword tools.
Great point, I try to set up a PPC to help determine target phrases for clients SEO
I think that is the best strategy. Its difficult to get clients comfortable about paying for PPC AND SEO sometimes. Seems like many business owners don't always understand the short-term and long-term strategies needed to really succeed. I suppose thats my job though.
Good reply Matt. I fully agree with you.
Yes, but communicating that is not always easy as you well point out.
Amen Donnie. I've found PPC is the perfect way to find those profitable keywords before investing in SEO. Nothing is worse than optimizing for a an EGO keyword that quickly turns out to be a dud.
Nice information.
As for keywords I'd rather be working on 20 low comp keywords and get some trafic then working on 5 high comp keyword ( with high traffic ) and get 0 traffic... the "moto" is "rather have 20% of something than 100% of nothing".
The challenge reside in trying to make understand the customer this point of view. He often wants to rank... with "this" keyword... :) Wich is you all presume is "the one keyword"... and want's to rank with "the one competitors" wich you quickly see that this comp have an internal team working on the seo of the site ( those are quickly stuff we can see )...
So the hard part is trying to get the customer to understand that it's better ( in fact it's not better.. it's mandatory! ) to start small and target some "reacheable" keywords and get some traffic than trying to start by attacking the planet.
Hey Brian
Great article. :) Often the hardest part of the campaign is the keyword research and we do this before we test the water with PPC where the budget allows to determine the keywords that will drive traffic and conversions.
Often, we will gather a bunch of metrics:
keyword, local volume, PPC competition (quality), keyword difficulty score (seomoz tool), optimisation of top 3 results for keyword (seomoz tool).
With this data in a spreadsheet we can sort by multiple columns and generally spot any cracks, find any keywords where the difficulty is not so bad, or the optimisation of the competition sucks a bit, or as is often the case, just the best keyword in terms of volume and ppc quality.
You are always going with your gut to some extent but we try to limit that as much as possible with the available data and then test our findings with on page optimisation (sometimes we get some easy wins) and PPC for the tougher ones. When we finally have a set of keywords we are happy with we can bed in and get to work pimping those keywords. :)
Keyword research and evaluation is the foundation that everything else is built upon. Get this right, get the client on board, build traffic and business around these core terms and then start building that up around the fringes and going for the bigger terms.
Softly, softly, catch the monkey. :)
Cheers buddy, have a good weekend all. Marcus
Well said. Core terms are great to have, but I think it's our jobs to create more web visibility for our clients.
PS, I liked your take on creating content - The "Write" Way to Optimise Your Website
It's very challenging explaining to clients that the keywords they think are the best ones will not bring any traffic. I think keyword research is one of the most important factors regarding a strong campaign.
It is the meat and potato of every SEO campaign.
Agreed!
Always two sets of keywords -- "Vanity keywords" that the clients look at and ones that work. Often frustrating to spend time explaining each.
Really nice post. Relates quite alot to a small SEO client we have at moment a skip hire company. We started out hitting one of two of the local towns, then moved it further afield we now have them ranking number 1 for keyword + scotland, but we find we still get better ROI on the more local keywords and this is crucial for alot of businesses as people always want to go after the big keyords that dont get any or much ROI at all.
Glad to hear others have the same experience. Thanks!
Some people present broad match search volumes to clients but that often results in false expectations. Especially when the website reaches first page and the client is expecting the volume of traffic proposed earlier. On the other hand, sometimes it's very difficult to describe the difference between exact and broad match, so I just use exact match and don't go into details about this.
Yep, that's a picky one... I use broad match as an initial keyword list but target with exact match and show thoses figures to the clients as being the ones targetted... and I also add an estimated figure based on the position ranking from 1 to 5 from those exact match figures... taking in consideration that the percentage of clicks on the first 5 sports are 42, 12, 8, 6, 5.
As how to explain the difference between broad and exact well yes it could be difficult to describe.. I go by trying to explain that if we rank well for the exact match well in long term we will get out for some broad terms also
What a pleasantly straight-forward and helpful article for the SMB seeking SEO. Nice job.
Thanks! I've dealt with a lot of customers that aren't computer and web savvy over my time at an agency and they didn't get why you can't just change your keywords. Sales people also seemed to mislead them too.
For most small businesses, localized keywords are critical! To use your landscaper example, if I live in San Francisco, what could is a landscaper in New Jersey going to do for me? People search for local services because they know it will give them the best results. You have to fo after those keywords!
It's funny that customers themselves will search locally for products/services, but then turn around and ask you to rank them nationally.
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Thanks for the article. Information like this is useful to share when working with clients to help explain the what's and the why's of what we are doing for them and bring it some legitimacy. I am pretty new to seomoz and I am not a pro member (yet) so I can not use the Keyword Difficulty Tool they provide. Since you did the keyword search in Google they also provide the competition score in adwords and it is free just incase someone reading this didn't know.
Not all small businesses want to pay but I have found PPC can be good in bringing your clients rankings or just giving them a presence in more competitive keyword markets as well.
Cool, hope the article helps you with clients.
Great article. I'm just now getting into SEO for clients on a local basis. For now I've been focused on local search domination in the organic fields. Some of my clients are interested in PPC. Good read, great information. Thanks for sharing!
nice article
This is right on the money.
I was a landscape contractor for 20 years. I didn't know much about SEO at the time (7 years ago) but was frustrated with the fact that my business ranked low in our area - despite the fact that we were one of the top companies (I sold the business three years ago).
We were optimizing for keywords like landscape construction. When I surveyed my customers and asked which words they would use to ... "search for a company like ours" - they unanimously said "landscaper."
Within a couple of months of optimizing for that term (with location) we jumped from page 7 to page one of a Google Search.
In fact, we held that position for 2 1/2 years after the company was sold! (the company we sold to just recently took down our website).
I don't claim to be an SEO expert, but I have learned the key to SEO is to discover the keyword phrases being used by your ideal customers - and the optimizing for the geography you serve, which is LOCAL for most mainstream small businesses.
Ah, I can't believe they took a site that was ranking down! Hope their web people know what they're doing so they don't lose those rankings in the transfer.
Small businesses definitely have a level playing field when optimizing locally. In fact, they have the advantage of being local and knowing the area. Great job with changing your strategy.
it surprised me too.
Yes, that location is indeed something I miss about that business.
It's kinda tough to optimize for your home office or airports!
Excellent Post- I've noticed many people expect almost instant SEO results. I love your quote in the conclusion about the harder the campaign, the longer it will be for you to get ROI.
Totally, people think it's a magic bullet. That's why setting expectations early on is important.
Great post! I think it always comes down to being able to explain what you will be able to di for the client and be as straight forward and honest as possible and being able to keep it in their terms and not SEO terms that they wont be able to understand!
You're right, they don't know SEO. Using their terms are the way to go.
First I would like to say great post thanks for putting it up and all the comments are very informative. While Im not claiming to be any SEO expert. I have had several other business in the past and my experience in those just confirms what Im reading here. I know the times I took a little extra time at the beginning to "educate" my clients were the times I had better clients that actually understood the work I did for them better. I know when I started I was worried if I told them too much they wouldnt need me to do the work for them. I soon learned my clients didnt want to do this work even if they did know how thats why they were hiring me in the first place. This post just goes to show me the basics of good customer service carry over to any business and always pay off in the end. Like the saying goes " there are pennies in the sale but dollars in the service". Thanks again for for the great information.
That's a great saying. And besides, you'll always have people that won't want to pay for it, but those aren't good clients anyway, they're more trouble then they're worth. I do believe it's worth taking that extra time in the beginning. Sure it works with any field.
Thanks for the comment!
Whenever I deal with small business owners that haven't had a website before i always mention the Yellow Pages. If your a local florist from New Jersey you advertise in the New Jersey Yellow Pages not the New York Yellow Pages.
I've found that to be the easiest way to explain things to new clients.
I think that makes a good connections with the customer about how changing geographies will hurt you.
Yes,it is true the honesty is a part of success .
Agreed. If you start out lying to a customer it's just going to be a bad experience for the both of you. Clients can't be expected to know better, we have to do it right from the start.
Honestly for my clients I've had the most success by explaining everything to my clients as ROI. "Listen if you start drilling eventually you'll hit oil but most people don't have the money to drill deep. Why don't we go over here where the oil is bubbling out of the ground and once you start seeing a return on your marketing we can start going after the harder stuff. I wouldn't want to see you lose money on your web marketing efforts, even in the short term"
Brett, Love the analogy! I think it sums it up perfectly.
Nice work. We should, more often, do this short of work and show small clients what it takes to do a good job for their site...this presents added value to the client and should be taken into account when charging.
I agree, it would be nice if they understood what we do. Then they wouldn't think it was so expensive, lol.
I also think ranking well when you change a keyword is a matter of how well you are currently ranked and established. I have clients in which we can change keywords and within 1 week they are up to the top of SERPs. They are in a vastly competitive industry too.
I agree that an established site that's been around has more flexibility. It's tougher for small businesses that are late to the Internet game.
Great post, this was super helpful for me.
Amazing Work!
I hope more clients read this article.
Thanks, Print it out and send it to them. I wrote it for them. Hopefully it can help set proper expectations between client and SEO.
This is brilliant. I was actually just considering putting together something similar for my clients. Awesome post and thanks for sharing!
No Problem. Thanks for the comment. I think if you deal with small businesses this becomes a very common issue to deal with.
Have to disagree with switching keyword search terms, a good SEO should have the ability to do this, 3 - 12 months into the project and get good results in a reasonable timeframe.
Only exception would be if completely different area, landscape construction to wind surfing for example!
Switching from landscape maintenance to landscape construction would not be a big deal, a good link building campaign should use a variety of complimentary link texts so looks natural and the link sources will still be in same topic area.
As long as client understands potential timeframe for the new keywords to rank well would be fine as links previously built, particularly those containing sites brand name for example, will help new optimisation.
As for number of keywords, is possible to rank for many if client happy to do optimisation on an ongoing basis. Choose some local terms for short term results and some more competitve terms for results 6 - 18 months down the line, could take years but with enough time and reasonable monthly budget possibilites are excellent once optimisation gets going.
Obviously the more that can be got right in terms of keyword selection from the outset the better, however also an important skill for an SEO to have is the ability to adapt as projects progress.
Granted switching from Landscape Maintenance to Landscape Construction isn't too bad, it all falls under landscaping so there is some spill over. I think that adapting to keywords and areas are normal for most SEO's, but the more stable the keyword set from the start, the better the results for the client.
When small businesses don't understand SEO very well and have a small budget to work with it's really a benefit for them to go for the low hanging fruit and work your way up. Leting them see early returns gives the SEO more room to maneuver later on.
great point FIMS. I would expect many businesses to want to change their search terms over time. part of being a successful business is the ability to adapt, to offer new services, and stop offering old ones as technology improves, or peoples needs change.
True, it would be expectated that overtime a business may change or add keywords, but my point with this article is that businesses shouldn't start an SEO campaign and then feel free to change keywords constantly. They should work with the SEO to find the best keywords for their business/product/service.
If new products/services are introduced, or the business makes a major change in what they offer, then they should start a second campaign or start over with a new campaign. Whether or not they keep the first campaign going doesn't matter. But each new campaign requires new research, new content, new optimizations, new strategies, new links, and maybe having to go back to old profiles and revising them.
Take a lawyer for example. If you start optimizing for Divorce Lawyer and 6 months later they want you to also optimize for Personal Injury Lawyer... That's a new campaign and should be treated as such. The client should then be charged for two campaigns. Absorbing new, unrelated keywords into you current 'Divorce Lawyer' campaign would cause your results to suffer for both. Less time and work is done for each set... or maybe the SEO works twice as hard (for the same money) to provide the same service/results the client grew to expect.
I don't believe in having a rigid set of keywords that can't be adjusted over time. Adding related keywords you or the client discover during the process is fine.
The other point about the article is that the client should understand why choosing the correct keywords are important, and why they shouldn't just freely change keywords often. This also helps clients understand that it will cost them more down the road if they don't take keyword research seriously, or if they want to start a new promotion.
An excellent explanation of keyword research strategy. As someone who works for a small business I particularly enjoy these articles and would love to see more along these lines. Hope to see this on the main blog!
Wow, Thanks! Since this post seems to be doing well I'm considering doing another. It would be awesome if it makes it to the main blog, thanks for suggesting that. Don't know what the requirements are, but hopefully it does reach there.
Really great article. Agreed: it's often hard to explain to clients why their keyword choices aren't the best ones, especially since as we know longtail keyword searches are the majority of searches, rather than generic terms. Local and specific indeed seem like where it's going.
Thanks, appreciate it. They may not get as much traffic as ranking for the generic terms, but the conversation is certainly better.
I like the way you put it, train light first then heavier as time goes for marathon.
I think that it's best to go for long term keyword (low volume) first then target the mid range keywords (mid volume), then finaly the general term (high volume).
This way you will still get traffic and close more sale.
Especially with small businesses with small budgets. I think it gets them some ROI faster and helps them believe in SEO more when they can see the results. Even if it doesn't pay for itself right away any improvement in traffic, emails, calls, or leads shows them that SEO isn't just magic, lol.
Great article, Brian. Love the emphasis on making sure marketing efforts are realistic and aligned with the function of the business, which is sometimes overlooked in keyword research.
Thanks, I think you get better results that way. No reason to try and rank for something just cause you want to. Better to rank for something that fits your business.
We are a local business as well, and seo for a small business is in the longtail. That is to say, and using your example of NJ, drumming down the content to such a point where the landscaping website is getting traffic for "subdivision x landscaper" whereby there might only be a 100 homes in subdivision x. Once all the other 100 (or 1000) subdivisions are added, you can see the traffic potential.
I think that tactic works great for Real Estate agents. It's a very competitive market and the best way is to get down to the local level. Especially cause people often search for homes at the community level. You may not get as many leads, but the ones you do will be solid.
I used to work for an SEO firm that specialized in offering services to small businesses, so I can say with with authority...amen! Good post.
Same here. I think when you separate sales people and SEOs that equals uninformed customers and wrong expectations.
Good article. l like the comment about clients saying they don't want to limit themselves. A lot of clients don't get it with regards targeting and optimizing for local search for business.
Thanks, I believe that is important step. I think once you make them realize that people generally search locally for services then they get it. But then they want every locality, lol.
With all SEO keywords focus is the key from my experience. In most cases it is unrealistic to rank for words such as "shoes" or "glasses". In additon search is becoming local and for two reasons: 1. Google wants it that way and 2. the cosumer wants it that way.I really enjoyed this read specifically because it was clear and concise, but more importantly I have a Landscaping client!
I look forward to more SEO chat.
I definitely agree that both Google and the consumer are heading that way. Non-SEO people sometimes don't realize how difficult it is to rank for generic keywords, and even if you could it probably would be the best words anyway for conversion.
Glad to hear I wrote it well. Appreciate it!
I love the Analogy you used. That is something which can help clients understand what SEO is in a generic view.
Thanks! I think it's important to set expectations from the start, otherwise customers get frustrated.
Great Post. Helps identify more quickly where to place effort.
Aloha,
Thank you for the great blog understanding SEO 101 for small business. Working with a new start up company can be challenging especially when you are in a very competative arena like most new companies find themselfs. Since I am from a different generation most of this information is foreign to me-thank you for breaking it down and making it so simple to understand the basics. (Of course all my employees are on top of their SEO game) or at least they better be after all this time and monies. Our web is up but our retail side won't be live for about 4-6 weeks after product launch (August 20, 2011). Your blog helped me gain confidence and understanding as to what my team is working on.
Much Aloha,
Devra
http:/www.etsishats.com
I'm glad to here that many people have found my blog post useful and easy to understand. Thanks for the feedback.
Hi mate, as the owner of a small business (www.noyelling.com.au), this guide is great. I've implemented a similar strategy myself, targeting searches for my city in Australia relating to driving lessons. In Australia, we don't really go by neighbourhoods or Zip codes, its much more the name of the city and the constituent suburbs. Targeting geo-keywords at the suburb level (the most granular) has proven a great long-tail strategy for my company.
Good to hear that the same idea works around the world.
Thanks for sharing these useful information….
I would like to give thanks to Austadpro for sharing with us these fruitful information. As we all know that keywords are backbone of the website. Before starting SEO of any website keywords selection had to be done carefully & also the competition in that particular area within that niche. After selection of keywords then we should start the SEO for any website. As we all know that small business or home made business is booming all over the world, so in this case before starting the SEO we shlould kept the above points in the mind.
Glad you like my article. I'd like to add one more thing to your comment and that is to also set the right expectations. There are a lot of "SEO" companies out there now-a-days sellilng hype and false promises. It will never work out for either the SEO or the client if the expectations are wrong.
Good post..very interesting and contains all the information related to the keyword search and the keywords according to the scale of operation are present in this post.so it is helpful to the clients whose business is at local niche and its beneficial for them to just use keyword according to their local needs and then make thier business global.
Glad you like the post. Small businesses with small budget just need perspective sometimes.
For how many keywords can I optimize my webiste??
I heard its we cannot go beyond 200 characters, is it true?
I don't know if they have a hard limit like that, but it really doesn't make sense to do that. Most search fall between 1-5 words. 2-4 words per keywords phrase is what most people optimize for.
It's interesting and a little strange that you categorize the keywords by the amount of search results rather than by the number of searches for a particular keyword. It would seem that organizing the keyword by the number of user searches would be more relevant to the popularity of that keyword rather than the number of search results. Although the two numbers probably correlate, the number of searches is probably a healthier number to work with. Great article showing the progression from local keyword rankings to stronger statewide and national keywords. Thanks!
It's more about showing a small business client about keyword competitiveness, and not about real SEO keyword research. Small businesses usually don't have a lot of money to spend on SEO, so you don't want them to waste money on the wrong terms. Since they aren't SEO people themselves they may not understand the difference between keywords. They also like to try and change keywords during a campaign cause of new ideas or things they didn't think about up front. I wrote this as an explanation so they understand the problems of changing keywords mid-campaign.
Nice article. My problem is finding good performing keywords in a 3rd world/developing country.
Searching within the boundaries of South Africa for instance:
Landscape Construction – 58 Local Monthly Searches
and the above term isn't even geo-targeted.
Fun!!!
Seems like the Internet hasn't caught up to demand over there yet. But when it does, you'll have a great foot-hold and strong SEO.
Hey Brian, Nice post and thanks for being so on top of the comments too! We work with regional law firms that are licensed to practice law in certain states. So local SEO is definietly the way to go for these guys. We can confirm that your idea of starting small and building from there really works!
- Jim
Hey Jim, I enjoy all the comments, great to talk with other SEOs and hear different points of view. Probably the best way to learn this stuff is from other people in the field. The Internet is way too big for one person to know everything... although Rand and the gang sure do know a lot, lol.
I liked your post on Google PageRank. I believe it is still relevant too and people still use it as a measuring stick. I think people just got too focused about it and tried to SEO for PageRank rather than just building a good site and doing good SEO. Cause if you do that, the PageRank will come.
I find that one of the most difficult things is geo-targeting when a client offers products/services in a number of different areas. It involves A LOT of content and thanks to Panda this must be unique on every page. I still see some sites that rank for the same keyword with lots of different locations using duplicate pages with only the location changed, but it is not an advisable tactic and not one I'd be comfortable using.
If I might ask, how would anyone else normally go about targeting the same keyphrase in lots of different geographies? For the time being my tactic involves creating pages that talk specifically about each location (in order to make them as unique as possible), whilst also describing the services on offer (there are only so many ways you can write the same thing, but I try!). This seems to work but is incredibly time consuming and inevitably leads to a large number of pages on the site.
Depending on the competition of the keywords, you could try combining up to 3 geos with the same content. That's if competition is low. Otherwise just focus on the main geos cause that can help bring rankings up related geos. Takes longer as a whole, but you'll see more progress with the main geo in the meantime.
If you're blogging you can just rotate your geos with each article and use the geos as categories/tags. Could help your linking structure be more relative to each location.
Hopefully other people might be able to add their ideas to this thread, could be interesting.
That's a really great article, many thanks for that. Atm we're trying to SEO for our iPhone and Android App website, ChewingFat.com, but it's in such a crowded space... how do you suggest we go about isolating the right starting geography?
Although you may be a small business, it doesn't seem like you are working in a local market. If you had a central store/venue/office/location that you work out of and your target customer base was located around that area then it you would just need to see what the competition is for your niche in that area and start a staggerred campaign working from least competitive to most competitiveness.
But your product is not limited by geographic range and is in a competitive market. If the product is good and useful your best bet is to get it recognized and reviewed by other sites promote those types of products.
Otherwise it just seems like you are dropping your link in these comments, especially since you just signed up yesterday. But being an SEO myself, I'm not surprised by this, lol.
Small businesses need to stop trying to do SEO themselves and start outsourcing. The learning curve is to steep for most (not all). Focus on what you know, work on your business, not in it, etc... etc...
Seems like small businesses are always last in these areas. Probably cause they lack the resources. Small businesses could probably benefit greatly from SEO is they were willing to try it. They usually have niche markets that they have no idea have to leverage.
I agree completely. Anyone want to start a non-profit that does SEO for startups?
Depending on type of businesses, there are also tons of ways to engage and get more customers through referrals. Social media channels can be pretty useful in driving that desired result.
Unless you spend on FB ads, most efforts are long term though.
What is your experience with your clients related to Social media?
Thx Rajat Garg SocialAppsHQ
Social media is definitely a tool small businesses should take advantage of. Social media can also take up a lot of time and if the client doesn't have a large budget I think it's tough to run a full social media campaign. You're better off doing SEO and showing your client some social media basics so they can get involved. Even if they don't fully understand it, maybe down the road they can eventually afford it cause of the SEO. The biggest benefit with this approach is the social networks are already created, so you have something to build off of rather than creating everything from scratch.
I found charging a small consulting fee has been successful in helping them with their social media and it takes less of our time. Since social media takes up so much time, yet needs to be done...providing some cost effective consulting can help everyone out. It's done well for us.
Nice Job. I think small businesses are getting ready to try SEO/Social Media. Pretty soon their SEO guy will be as common as theire lawyer and accountant. Hopefully for us, lol.
I am a frustrated SEO ranker for my client..Been into watching tons of video tutorials but there is no one who really does tell the secrets into this SEO..they say its too simple to get into the first page of Google but seems that I just can't..
I am almost half way into the first page as two of the keywords I used were already on page 2, and just right now, when I check the rank, I don't even see it even in TOP 100..
I will study this article and hope this would help me with my problem..
The idea of SEO is easy. You can boil it down to some key points, but within those points it can get complicated. There are a lot of factors that make up SEO. It takes time and experience to learn and understand how they exactly work. The basic ideas the beginners learn about do work, but as you gain experience and do your research you will find more advanced ideas that are faster and involve less work.
But by that point you most likely will be SEOing for more competitive keywords, so the work load doesn't really decrease, lol.
Thanks for the a new challenge you have uncovered in your post. I’ve learned newer and more effective things from the post about seo . Keep writing for us.
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