The Competition Is Fierce

These days, it’s almost the exact opposite. Even keyword phrases that nobody’s searching for can sometimes be difficult to obtain high rankings with unless you really and truly know what you’re doing. And even then, those rankings may be here one day and gone the next. The problem is magnified for new businesses and new websites. If your site isn’t at least a few years old, your SEO efforts will be less likely to provide the results you want. This is one reason why your website optimization should always be seen as a long-term proposition.

It’s About Targeted Traffic, Not Rankings

As we move forward in this industry, webmasters, site owners, and SEOs need to shift their focus from asking how they can get this keyword to this position in this engine to how they can get more targeted traffic and convert it into customers. Unfortunately, a large portion of those looking into SEO services are still seeing the small picture. For instance, on the contact form on our High Rankings site, I ask people to tell me a little bit about their “business goals.” A good number who fill it out want something like “top-5 rankings in Google and Yahoo for this keyword.” Huh? That’s not a business goal! A business goal is more like “Bring more people to my website who are searching online for the types of products we sell.” (As a side note, soon after writing this, I got an email from someone whose goal was to have their Flash site be “#1 in all the search engines for the word ’spring.’” I kid you not!)

Don’t get me wrong, I very much understand why people would love to move their rankings up from #11 to #1 for a highly sought-after and targeted keyword phrase. I’m quite sure it would very much increase their targeted traffic and their sales (assuming they’re doing everything else right). My frustration lies in the fact that there are people who believe that somehow an SEO company can magically snap their fingers or wave their magic wand and make it so.

Even the best SEOs are not magicians. They can’t simply place a site at the top of the engines when there are hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of others that offer basically the same thing, and provide basically the same information. If they could, you’d see a whole lot more millionaire SEOs.

Does this mean that SEO is dead?

Absolutely not! But SEO that focuses on rankings for the most highly sought-after keywords in any given space is most definitely dying. This doesn’t mean that you have to settle for keywords that receive few searches. It just means that you have to broaden your horizons and see the big picture.

Almost every time I review one of those “put me at #1″ prospects’ websites, I see tons of opportunities for fixing the site in general so that it will work better for both their users and the search engines. They are almost always so focused on their “money phrases” that they completely neglect many areas of their site. Instead they put their special phrase on every page and never research the thousands of others that are being typed into search engines every day.

Content for Content’s Sake

Another trend I’ve been seeing a lot lately is the creation of content simply for the sake of creating content. What’s that all about? SEOs certainly throw the words “good content” around a lot, but why is it that nobody seems to know what that means? We now have a whole cottage industry of companies who will allegedly write “good content” for you. Worse, there are even some that will *rent* you content! Newsflash…good content has nothing to do with the history of your products. Nor is good content a bunch of madlib spam pages where you simply substitute keyword phrases from one page into the other. Good content isn’t stuff you write for the search engines.

What Exactly Is Good Content?

Good content is unique. Really and truly unique. It is creative ideas that simply popped into your head which nobody else in your space has thought of yet. The key to good content is creativity. Unfortunately, creativity itself seems to be a dying art. Being creative isn’t looking at what your competitor is doing and copying them. It’s being a leader, not a follower. It’s having your own voice and your own opinions and expressing them, regardless of what others might think. It’s pouring your heart and soul into your website, not looking for the next quick fix. And it’s (say it with me) making your site the best it can be for your site visitors AND the search engines. It’s what brings targeted traffic to our own site for thousands of phrases, and it’s what will help your site gain traffic for whatever phrases relate to it. But it’s not easy, and it’s not fast. And it can’t be done with the flick of a switch.

Written by Jill Whalens on highrankings.com

If you aren’t familiar with the term Geo Targeting, it’s the method used by search engines to determine where you’re searching from, so they can provide you with (what they think) are the best search results or ads based on your location (ie. country, region/state, city, post/zip code etc.)

How do they do this?
By looking at a number of factors, such as:

Country-specific domain name – eg. .com or .com.au or .co.uk etc. etc.

• Where your site is hosted – be careful with this as a lot of hosting providers may have their offices in one country, but use servers and equipment based overseas
• Language used in your website content – even things like UK English vs. US English can make a difference due to spelling and colloquialisms
• Inbound Links to your site – are they mainly from other Australian websites, US sites, UK sites etc.
• Listing of your address / location / phone number on your website.
• Location of people who look at your site – if your site has more traffic from Australian visitors it is likely to rank better in Google.com.au than it would in Google.com

7 Simple Geo Targeting Tips for Your Site

Knowing the above information makes it a lot easier to perform a Geo Targeting audit on your site. Here are the things I would do:

1. If you run an Australian website and your main customers / clients are other Australians, spend the few extra dollars and buy a .com.au domain name. If you’re targeting clients in the UK, buy a .co.uk. etc. etc.
2. Apply the same logic (as above) to the web hosting – spend a few extra dollars to have your website hosted in the country that you are targeting.
3. Take the time to check your spelling and use the type of wording your clients will understand and are familiar with. For example the term swimwear, swimsuit, beachwear, cozzies, bathers and togs all mean the same thing but people in Queensland, Australia (where I’m from) rarely use the term bathers or cozzies – we wear ‘togs’.
4. An inbound link is like a personal referral or testimonial for your website. Having links from other relevant local sites will be far more valuable with Geo Targeting than having lots of inbound links from overseas sites.
5. Submit your site to local business and local search directories – this can often be one of the easiest methods of attracting local links and local traffic. As a rule-of-thumb, just make sure the directory presents well and that you are comfortable being listed amongst the other sites that are in the directory. If you think the directory isn’t great quality, you’re probably right and it should be avoided.
6. Mention your address, location and contact details in the footer of each page – this is one of the easiest things to do which can help tell your clients and the search engines that you are a local business. The only time this doesn’t really help is if you have offices in multiple locations. Mentioning a dozen countries / cities in the footer won’t do much for your local profile in each of those places. If this is the case you should build separate sites (or at the very least separate pages) for each location.
7. Build your brand locally as you will usually rank well for your business name before you’ll start ranking for more competitive terms.

Snapt is extremely familiar with Geo-Targeting and how it helps OUR customers take full advantage of the local markets. Why spend endless hours trying to get global search rankings when your main clients are normally within a 20 mile radius of you business. GET YOUR LOCAL CUSTOMERS! Local customers and clients are your repeat business and they are whom Snapt targets!