The Haunting Presence of SEO Consultants
In October we are all haunted by a ghostly presence, not unlike the specter of Dracula, or a friend getting a little too into wearing their Joker costume. No, something much more terrifying: a sudden phone call and the sound of a menacing voice...
"I want to improve your business's presence on SERP with SEO and SEM/PPC for maximization of the CPC, obviously this is way too complicated for me to explain right now so how about I 'drop by' your office tomorrow for a 'quick chat', how's..."
Terrifying stuff, we all know what the last part of this speech means: keep your eyes peeled for those dreaded consultancy fees! Some of us may have an idea of what the first part means, but even if we had the courage to ask for clarification, the answers we would get from a consultant would be truly ghoulish!
Have no fear! Digital marketing is for everyone, it can be understood by anyone, if the people explaining it focus on what's most important, rather than trying to impress and bamboozle clients/victims with as many acronyms as they can possibly squeeze into one sentence. To help you get through this spooky time,
Here are seven answers to digital marketing questions you were too scared to ask.
#1 What Is The SERP?
You're after something a little hard to find in town for a costume let's say you are dressing up as the Swedish Chef from The Muppets, so you need a rubber chicken, you go to Google or another search engine Bing, Yahoo etc, and type in
"buy rubber chicken"
and then you click enter. You then see the answers page with a list of websites selling or talking about rubber chickens, this page is also called the search engine results page, or SERP, that's it.
#2 What are keywords & Keyword Phrases?
According to the rankingCoach keywords data, on average forty people in the United States type "buy rubber chicken" into Google every month.
In the United Kingdom ten people do the same. The number of searches per month is also called the monthly search volume.
The term "buy rubber chicken" is a keyword phrase for people looking to find this item online. Keywords are individual words, and keyword phrases are complete sentences, that a significant number of people use to find a certain thing on search engines.
#3 Is Everything I type Into Google A Keyword?
No not everything, if no one else is using our words to our words to find a thing. For example, if someone with an unusual turn of phrase, typed into Google:
"Where might I find an online purveyor of rubber poultry?"
We don't need to check the rankingCoach keyword data to know that no one is using this term to find rubber chickens on Google.
In another context some of these words could become keywords for other products; for instance- "Poultry" could be a keyword for a website selling Thanksgiving and Christmas turkeys but not for a website selling rubber chickens.
#4 Are All Keywords The Same Difficulty to Rank For?
The Answer to this question is a resounding no. Not many websites are trying to be found for the term" buy rubber chicken", this makes it relatively easy to get a good position on Google for. All it takes is the right digital marketing application and little hard work.
On the other hand appearing on the first page of Google's search results for highly competitive phrases like "free" "money" or "internet" takes constant attention. Terms like this often have whole teams of people working on their rankings five days a week to hold them. Small and Medium-sized businesses need to be much more strategic with their keyword choices.
#5 Why Can't I Just Pick The Most Obvious Keywords?
If we are trying to get our website found on the internet we would be very wrong to think that most obvious words to us are the best ones.
To illustrate this, let's pick a more competitive industry: New York Hotels. I need the keywords for a hotel in the center of New York. Imagine I pick phrases off the top of my head.
I put these phrases into the rankingCoach application I get these results
Search Term Average Monthly Search Volume rankability
Hotels New York 5400 Hard
Places to Stay in New York 10 Hard
NYC Hotels 5400 Hard
Hotels Time Square 480 Hard
Cheap Hotels New York City 1600 Hard
Some of these terms have a high average monthly search volumes but some have very low volumes like "places to Stay in New York". Equally important, all of these terms are hard to rank for. A phrase with a lower search volume but easy rankability could provide much more traffic to a website than any of these choices.
6# So How Do I Find The Right Keywords?
Keyword data help users to find the right keywords to spend time and money on optimizing. They find terms with good search volumes but less competition. This makes achieving a good position on search engines much easier.
In the example, the rankingCoach keywords data identified "Hotels Manhattan" as being a good choice with 1600 monthly searches, and an easy rating for optimization.
This would be a good target for optimization and a front page listing on the SERP would bring a lot of business to our hotel.
#7 Why Is It So Important to Appear On The Front Page of Google?
Getting a front page listing is the main goal of SEO because the majority of users click on results that appear on this page. The ultimate aim of SEO is to appear as the first result.
This is because the first five results on Google receive 67.6% of clicks
That's a statistic that doesn't need any explaining.
Ready to Put Your Keywords to Good Use?
Why not try rankingCoach the online DIY digital marketing software. It analyses your website and helps you find the right keywords to get your website the best ranking for the best value keywords.
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