Keyword Sweetspot

Our analytics consulting team frequently receives calls from people asking if RWeb Consulting can get their website ranked on the first page of Google’s search engine result page and we always respond the same way. "Only if we can pick the keyword so we can fool you." Trying to optimize your website so it appears in the 1st page of Google for a keyword like "mortgages" is nearly impossible since your competeting with companies that have multimillion dollar web marketing budgets (like lendingtree.com who currently appears first). Optimizing your website so it appears number 1 in Google for a keyword that no-one searches for isn’t to useful either (eg. "duke togo").

When analyzing keywords to optimize your website for, try to find a keyword that has a reasonable number of searches on but isn’t overly competitive. For a relatively small, new website I like to go after keyword phrases that have approximately 5-20K searches a month. A top 5 listing should get at least several thousand visits for the website per month.

In addition, make sure the keyword phrase(s) you want to optimize your website for aren’t overly competitive. Usually, the more searches on a keyword the more competitive they are (eg. "mortgage" which is searched on 185,000 times a month). One of the quickest and free ways to do verify competitiveness is just to search for the keyword phrase and visits the sites that are returned. Is the keyword listed all over their landing page? Is it in their website URL? Is it in their meta data? Its it in large bold letters? Is it being hyperlinked (from within the site and from other websites)?

If the keyword(s) doesn't hit the "sweet spot" criteria above, keep searching for other keywords that you can generate leads for your website once its search engine optimized. Or better yet, contact our analytics consulting team and have us do the work for you!

Geographic Based Pay-Per-Click Campaigns

If you have a business that only has brick and mortar stores in a small geographic region (eg. one city) and doesn't have a huge presence on the web (eg. thousands of new visitors a month via organic search) you should consider launching a geographic based pay-per-click campaign.

Most major ad networks (including Google, Yahoo and MSN) allow you to display your pay-per-click ads only in the geographic region you specify. For example, if you are business that has 3 brick-and-mortar stores in San Francisco that sells "website consulting widgets" you can bid and have your ads display on the keyword phrase "website consulting widgets" to only people that search the term "website consulting widgets" in the city of San Francisco.

Include the term "website consulting widgets" in your ad along with the city name (San Francisco in my example) and the value proposition why customers should buy your product over your competitors. Include an online coupon on your pay-per-click landing page that can be used online or in store. The use of the online coupon in your stores will allow you to track the source of the lead and it will also help customers remember your store if they print out the online coupon while continue to research the product they want to buy online.

To learn more about our Pay-Per-Click Website Consulting services contact our website consulting team.