Don’t turn your site into a "keyword flea market!" A friend of mine recently asked me to review the search optimization work he’d just done on his business website.
I clicked on "View Page Source" in Firefox to see the keywords he’d included in his HTML code…
… And I almost had a heart attack!
Turns out he’d included more than 60 different keywords in his keyword metatags… and most of them had no connection to what his site was actually selling.
You probably know that one thing we here at IMC preach is, "Don’t turn your site into a flea market!"
In other words, don’t try and sell a whole bunch of totally different products — such as pet supplies, jewelry, and sporting goods — on the same site, because you’ll find it absolutely IMPOSSIBLE to target your marketing efforts to the right people.
(Why? Because the people who go online to buy jewelry are NOT the same people who are searching for pet supplies or sporting goods on the Internet — and if you try to appeal to all of them at the same time, you’ll have such a mixed marketing message you won’t be able to speak to ANY of them properly.)
Well, the same principle applies to your keywords.
Whatever you do, don’t use the "flea market" approach to your search engine optimization efforts.
You have to keep your keywords as focused as possible!
When you use a keyword research tool like Keyword Discovery or Wordtracker, go for the specific keyword phrases. Don’t get sucked in by big traffic numbers, thinking the more people you get to your site the better.
After all, why brag about traffic when it doesn’t turn into a sale? Say, for example, your site sells an "all natural" solution for acid stomach problems…
… You start to do your keyword research and you discover that the keyword phrase "natural remedies" has 288 daily searches — but over 2,000,000 sites competing for it.
… While the phrase, "acid reflux natural remedies" has 67 daily searches — with just over 11,000 competing sites.
Do you want to spend all your time and effort trying to optimize for the first phrase, which gets more searches — but is so general, you’ll never know how many of those searchers want to buy your stomach acid remedy?
(Not to mention the HUGE number of competitors it has!)
Or would you go for the second term, which only has 67 people searching for it — knowing those 67 people are looking for EXACTLY what you offer? (With a MUCH lower competition number to boot!)
Obviously, the second term is the one to choose!
Sure, you might get less traffic (though with over 2,000,000 competing sites, I doubt you’ll get much traffic from the first term) — but the visitors you DO get will be MUCH more likely to buy your product.
So make sure you focus your efforts on the specific keywords that describe EXACTLY what your site offers. Don’t be tempted by more general keywords with higher traffic numbers — because they’ll never send you the traffic you want.
Finally, remember to optimize each page of your site for only 2-3 keywords MAXIMUM. It’s literally impossible to optimize a web page for more than that.
That’s why it’s so important for you to do the research and find the keywords that will pull the BEST visitors to your site — not just the MOST — so you can focus all your optimization efforts on them!
