Many Internet Marketing customers ask me the same questions: What do I have to do to get my site ranked? 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.
Why do some sites rank better than others
Google uses over 200 metrics to rank your site. 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
For example, take a guy that sells watches. Of course, most watch store owners want to rank high for the word “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.
A much better way to gain traffic is to target keywords and phrases that are narrower in their focus. Perhaps targeting a specific manufacturer or even model number is a much better plan. Indeed, if the client really feels that the keyword watches is the only way to go, this plan will put us on that path. The only difference is we will get quality traffic while we climb the steep hill.
One more quick thought on keyword selection. The keyword difficulty and value are meaningless if people are not searching for the keyword. Often customers “know” what their users are searching for to find them. 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
Many people think of the Internet in an extremely negative light. They try to compare it to traditional marketing methods. People that are still living in the 80’s actually think the best marketing they can do is the local yellow pages. They still believe that when a guy buys a watch he fires up the 2000 page book and finds a jewelry store. The best customer is the world is a customer that knows exactly what he/she wants. When you stop at the gas station, you get gas. You will always buy, no matter what. The same principles apply to Internet Marketing. When the client searches for something very specific, he already made up his mind. When he clicks your link and is looking directly at the product he wants, it all comes down to price. The individual is not shopping for watches, he is shopping for a very specific watch.
