Search engine optimization is a challenging business by nature. SEO consultants and experts are competing all the time to win top ranking positions for their clients’ websites on the first pages of Google, Yahoo, Bing and other major search engines.
The daily problem of every SEO consulting firm is that clients expect instant success, and this simply is not possible. There are sometimes millions of companies vying for the same traffic, many of them using very similar optimization techniques. If it were possible for every SEO company to magically boost a client to a top position in a short period of time, SEO experts would be spending a lot less time working and a lot more time relaxing on a warm beach somewhere.
SEO competition has increased significantly
If you have been in the business of search engine optimization for an extended period of time, you understand the increasingly fierce online competition in recent years. New web sites are popping up at an alarming rate; the number of them has increased exponentially in the recent past. In the early days of SEO, it was relatively simple to gain search engine ranking.
Nowadays, it is an entirely different “ball game.” Not only is it difficult to achieve good ranking with popular keywords, it is also equally challenging with obscure key terms and phrases. Additionally, even if one is able to achieve rankings momentarily, those rankings can be lost as quickly as they were gained. This dilemma is intensified when the website or business is new.
For sites that have not been around for more than a year or two, SEO becomes a much more daunting achievement. This fact lends credibility to the need for an ongoing online marketing campaign strategy. Competing in the web marketplace is by no means a “set it and forget it” plan.
Keyword research, analysis and selection are the most important steps in every marketing campaign
It is essential to target a distinct group, or niche, of consumers who are in the market for the specific products, services or other content on your client’s website.
Targeting a keyword that is too generic does not help in acquiring results. For instance, if a real estate company targeted a keyword like “houses,” they would receive random visitors looking to decorate their houses or wanting to see the houses of celebrities. This would hardly generate any real profit. There would be no return on the marketing investment. However, if the real estate company targeted a more specific keyword like “houses for sale in West Palm Beach,” the traffic is now more pointed – and the resulting visitors are more likely to be in the market to make a sale and generate profits.
There is less competition for such long-tail keywords (or “key phrases”) and these should be the major focus for every SEO consultant. Once these long-tail keywords are established, then medium traffic and high traffic keyword targeting can subsequently follow, respectively. This is an important “SEO plan of operations”, since Google expects a site to establish itself well before they will allow it to compete for keywords that are very competitively sought for ranking.
