Keyword research is often vital to the success of your website.

The only time keyword research might not be needed is if you're lucky enough to operate in a market with no or very few competitors. In that case, if you use common sense and accurately describe in your website content, page titles and META tags what you offer, your website should be found by your potential customers.

However, in most cases the market will be more competitive. Particularly if your website is still new, or you have only just begun to optimize it, it can be incredibly difficult to rank well for the keywords you think describe your products or services best. 

You could be competing against hundreds, if not thousands, of other websites that are targeting the exact same keyword phrases as you. And it will be hard to outrank your competitors, because they may have many advantages over yours, such as:

• Their websites may have been up for years and have 'proven' their worth.
  
  
• They may have many more pages of content than you do.
  
  
• They probably have a lot more incoming links to their site than you do.

Google and other search engines are bound to rank those websites higher than yours in searches for those popular keywords - especially if your site is new, doesn't have a lot of content yet and no or few incoming links. This is regardless of how good your content is or how well you have optimized your site for those keywords. 

If you start a new website, you have to be realistic with your expectations of SEO.

Here are two observations that may seem obvious but are still worth pointing out:

• The more general and popular a search term, the harder it will be to be able to rank for that phrase.
  
  
• Single keywords are way harder to rank for than keyword phrases consisting of 2, 3 or 4 words.

What can you do to still get your website found?

1. Find out what people type into search engines. Do keyword research (or have someone do the research for you) using a keyword research tool, so it's not a guessing game but you actually KNOW what people are searching for. In addition, you can ask a number of different people what they would type into a search engine if they were looking for your kinds of products or services.
   
   
2. Check out the competition. Type some of the relevant search phrases you have found in your research into Google (or other search engine you want to optimize your site for) and see how many results you get. Decide whether it's worth it or even possible to compete on those phrases.
   
   
3. Think of alternative keyword phrases. Many keyword research tools give suggestions for related words. You may hit upon a slightly different description that people use in their searches as well, but not many other websites are targeting. That gives you a great opportunity to optimize your site for that phrase and rank well for it.
   
   
4. Target so-called 'long tail keywords'. These are longer and quite specific keyword phrases that maybe only a handful of people search for each month but have very little competition because nobody else has thought of optimizing their pages for them. Blogs are great for targeting long tail keywords because you can keep adding new pages, each optimized for a different long tail keyword phrase. An added benefit is that because the keyword phrases are really specific, they often attract very qualified traffic so your conversation rate from those pages is often higher.
   
   
5. Start small: Go local. Rather than immediately trying (probably unsuccessfully) to capture the market in the entire country or world, consider starting smaller. Focus on your town, city, region or state. You'd be surprised how many people type in their location after a search phrase because they are looking for a business in their area. Targeting "web designer Newcastle", for example, is likely to be much more successful than only optimizing your site for "web designer", a generic and popular keyword phrase that just has way too much competition. Also make sure you claim your Google Maps/Local Business Center listing and submit your site to various local and regional directories. Once you are successful locally, it's a natural progression to target a wider audience. Of course, this option may depend on the type of products or services you offer, but for many businesses it's a good way to start.

Finally, a few more tips for your website to be found and be successful:

Unique pages: Target different keyword phrases and combinations with each of your web pages and ensure you have different page titles and META descriptions in place for each page.

Professional content: Have clear, concise and compelling content on your pages to engage and retain your visitors, plus obvious calls to action to convert those visitors into customers or at least get a sales lead. Consider outsourcing the content writing if that is not your or your web designer's strongest point.Link building: Try to obtain valuable links back to your website from 'authority websites' with some of your targeted keywords in the link text. It's best to get links from a variety of different types of websites, including social media sites, to different pages on your site and with slightly different link texts. The idea is to mix it up for more natural results and gradually build up your links over time.

And last but not least: don't expect miracles overnight.

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Hi Kalena

 

Hi Kalena

In the past, I made sure I was not logged in to Google when I checked my Client website standings in search. But, now are we going to have to clear *Web History* and Disable customizations every time we want to check our client's rankings manually?

This article claims that Google's new 'cookie' extends Personalized Results to All Users. Here's a quote:  "Google has begun using a cookie placed on users' machines to track their search behavior and offer personalized recommendations, even when they are not logged into a Google account."

Regards

Mitch

Hi Mitch

It's true that Google have extended Personalized Search to all users, whether they're signed in or signed out of a Google account. But you can turn history-based customization off - both temporarily and permanently. The method of turning it off differs depending on whether you're logged in or out of Google, but in both cases the instructions are very simple.

Probably the easiest thing is to run your searches as normal and check to see if the SERPs you're seeing have been customized based on personalization. As per Google's official blog post:

"You'll know when we customize results because a "View customizations" link will appear on the top right of the search results page. Clicking the link will let you see how we've customized your results and also let you turn off this type of customization."

You can then choose to view the same SERPs without customization to ensure you know how the results look to persons who have opted out of personalized SERPs. But keep in mind that personalization has been in place since 2005 and SERPs all look slightly different to everybody.

There's really no such thing as a consistent SERP in Google so traditional *rankings* are somewhat meaningless today. I know that's sometimes a difficult thing to explain to a client, but it's true!

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