SEO Secret - Don't Tell Anybody!

Content, content, content is the mantra. Then many gurus go on to espouse 'go for the long tail keywords' - it is easy to get top rankings for these keywords. Tosh - more of this later.

Long Term Keywords

Say you are trying to create a page on your website that is targeted at the keyword "Directory". Hey that is a highly competitive keyword with 977,000,000 competing pages. However, if you design a page targeting "top submission list of business directories in UK", the competition is down to just 240,000 pages. So the gurus will tell that is easier to get a top ranking on that phrase - its true but is it worth it?

Proportionate Effort

How many vistors will you get for such a phrase? Probably peanuts - remember you still have to create the page, and promote it with a linking strategy. So how many long term keyword phrases (and content pages) will you have to target to get reasonable traffic? It is also probably true that sites with high rankings for "directory" or "directories" or "business directories" will also do well for this long tail keyword phrase because the power phrase is "directory" or "business directory".

OK - if you go for the killer phrase, nobody is going to kid you that it is going to be easy! Aiming for a 1000 visitors a day from one keyword phrase has its attractions though! But as before you have to create the content and have an extensive linking strategy. However, even if your ultimate aim is a Page 1 ranking, one of the side effects is that you will rank well for long tail keywords anyhow as the campaign rolls out. For example, you will start to rank well on various combinations with the keyword "directory" included.

This is not going to happen overnight but there are plenty examples where small companies have taken on the big boys. Even for example in the highly competitive market of Golf, at least one of big hitters started from nothing and competes with the big boys.

Howard Farmer
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