One of the passions that I have is Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing. I have a Masters Degree in Marketing and I have always had a passion for understanding why people do what they do and I seem to have a knack for getting great placement for my keywords in Google. The question that I wanted to know is just how much impact would it really have on a business to have a top ranking for a keyword that is very specific to their industry?
People are always telling me how much better their business would be if they only had a top 5 ranking in Google. They speak top positioning as if it were the Holy Grail to unlock the potential of their business! BUT IS IT ALL THAT IT IS CRACKED UP TO BE?
So I choose to put this to the test, I have two clients who are in very high margin businesses but their Internet sales; rankings and overall Internet strategies have been disappointing. They have owned the domains for a number of years and have relevant content on their pages.
They have not done any real optimization but did have meta-keywords on each page from when their web sites were written. They were basically blank slates with no bad habits and low search volumes. They had the basic of for e-commerce and some feedback forms to get more information. I am not going to tell you what the specific sites were but the industries are medical devices and convention supplies.
My first steps were to determine what their highest margin or most profitable products were and also what they would like to be selling online. What had the lowest rate of return and what items had pictures that really helped the customer to understand just what they would be getting. They each picked five total product and we I am not talking about popular keywords but sort of niche business-to-business phrases that have low search volume but are highly specific to the industry. So they should be perfect for a SEO project. High relevancy, low search volume niche products.