Everyone with a website or an online business will be looking at their rankings and wondering how they get more traffic or rank higher for a keyword or key phrase. Sometimes, wanting to rank for something and actually getting results from being there are two very different things, as our article discusses.
For us, there are three main things that we look for when deciding on the keywords that we really want to land or chase for our clients and these are:
- Traffic
- Competition
- Return On Investment
We will look at these in more detail shortly, but although you could list many reasons why the keyword or key phrase is really worth going for, you need to get into the mindset of quickly structuring how you are going to decide which keyword or key phrase is going to be the one you’re really aim for.
Many business and companies now offer more than just one service, which makes knowing what to rank for as a primary keyword or to really go for really difficult. If you only have one product or one service then it is easy, all you need to think about is location or niche, but when you have more than one service or product you need to pick the one(s) that you really are intent on getting a good ranking for in the search engines.
Following on from our bullet points above, we will now expand on why we think these three things really make the keyword or key phrase worth your time, effort and money when it comes to an SEO campaign.
Traffic – One of the most common mistakes people make when choosing the keywords is not checking that they actually attract any traffic! There are various tools out there or you can just ask an SEO company for some advice, but you really do have to make sure that the keywords or phrases that you are going for are actually going to get you traffic, else you could be sat at the top of the tree and still not see any progress.
Competition – Sometimes we all want to rank for the keywords that everyone else seems to want to go for as well, which is going to make this keyword extremely competitive. There is no harm going for the more competitive keywords as long as you understand that these are going to be much harder to achieve and will take longer to really establish as a stable ranking. Sometimes you just need to come down a level and go for something a little less competitive but at the same time try and work towards something really juicy and rewarding in the background.
Return On Investment – It is important to know which keywords are going to offer you the best return on investment before you decide which ones to target. For example, if you were to spend loads of time, effort and hard cash trying to get into the top three for Product A, and yet you only made 10p a sale, you then have to consider is it really worth it? It is better to work out which are your best products or services when it comes to the margins and then take this into consideration, because if you are going to work hard to achieve this ranking, you need to make it worthwhile.
