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As an Internet Marketing Professional, I am often asked: Why is my site not being found? Why do I not show up when someone enters my keywords? Why am I always outranked by site X? Here are the answers to all of these questions and more.
What makes a site rank higher than another one
Google currently uses over 200 criteria to determine where your site should fit into their rankings. They use a combination of your sites authority, links, and several other metrics. Google adds up all of these items and gives you an overall score for each individual keyword or phrase. It takes more than any one criteria to get your site ranked high.
Keywords
Often I get approached by a client that sells watches, for example. Naturally, the client wants to be ranked #1 for the keyword watches. It is always difficult to explain to the client that their site is simply not going to be #1 for this keyword. The cost involved with attacking an extremely competitive keyword is always just too much for any small or medium sized business.
It is always much better to target more specific keywords. It may be better to go after the watch maker or even the model #. While targeting these keywords, often this will help us in the “watch” serps by default. This way the client receives traffic everyday until the main keyword climbs to the top.
One more quick thought on keyword selection. The keyword difficulty and value are meaningless if people are not searching for the keyword. Stats don’t lie, always trust the statistics not your idea of the keywords that people are searching for. It is not uncommon to find zero searches for any given keyword in Google. When this is the case, being number one will not matter at all!
Why bother with Search Engine Marketing
Some cliens look at the Internet in the wrong way. They say things like, well I can take an ad out in the paper or I’m going to go door to door. People that are still living in the 80′s actually think the best marketing they can do is the local yellow pages. They really think that people still look in the massive phone book to find local businesses. The customer you want is a customer that has already made up his mind on which product to buy. When you go to the grocery store to buy a can of soup, you ARE going to buy a can of soup. You will never leave the store without one. The same principles apply to Internet Marketing. If a customer does a search for Seiko model #SPC011, he knows exactly what he wants. When he clicks your link and is looking directly at the product he wants, it all comes down to price. This man is not shopping for a “watch” he is shopping for SPC011.
