Search High Newsletter September 2006
by Paul McIntyre
Can Potential Customers Find You?
Hi everyone,
Here's our September newsletter to help you increase business through your website.
Good luck with promoting your website and increasing business. Any questions? Just ask!
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In this edition of the Search High Newsletter:
1. How can you help potential customers find your website?
2. Other SEO Articles or interest.
3. Want to try Keyword Research yourself?
4. Comment on our SEO Blog Site.
5. What do you want to see in following newsletters? - win a free consultation.
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Your Host - Paul McIntyre ( paulm@searchhigh.co.uk )
Our main article today asks if potential customers, who are looking for your products or services, can actually find your website to see what you’ve on offer. If you have a website that people can’t find, you may as well have a shop and lock the doors, because it’s the internet-trading equivalent.
Fortunately, a change in the way of thinking about what people are searching for can make a massive difference.
1. How can you help potential customers find your website?
If you want new customers to find your site, you need to know what search terms they are using, as well as how many other websites are competing in the search engines for those phrases.
Keyword research is the most essential part of optimising your website to rank highly in Google’s pages (or Yahoo, or MSN, etc). Get this wrong and all your other efforts will be wasted.
Let’s take an example:
Let’s say you sell shoes online. Maybe you specialise in certain niches. Let’s see what your options are.
1. You could not do any keyword research. So you probably know what your customers are searching for, so you optimise your site for these phrases. You choose:
a. Shoes online
b. Cheap shoes online
c. Fashion shoes
d. Ladies shoes
With these broad categories, you’re bound to catch loads of visitors, surely?
Well look at the actual figures of predicted searches and competing websites
a. Shoes online - 81 predicted visits, across 2.18 million competing pages
b. Cheap shoes online - 8 predicted visits, across 14,300 competing pages
c. Fashion shoes - 64 predicted visits, across 1.19 million competing pages
d. Ladies shoes - 95 predicted visits, across 1.45 million competing pages
You will see that. With these terms, it’s going to need a lot of work and expense to rank in the first couple of pages!
However, with keyword research, you can find what people are really searching for. Look at the niches you’re targeting.
When people are looking to buy online, they usually start with the research phase, so they may well be using phrases such as “shoes online”.
However, once they have decided what they want to buy, they use more specific searches, such as “Doc Marten’s children’s shoes”, “miu miu by prada leather cowboy boots" or “Jimmy Choo size 6”.
If you know what people are searching for, and you can use these key phrases intelligently in your site, you will have few competing web pages for these terms, and every chance of being top of the search engines for the terms that your customers are really looking for when they’re ready to buy.
Keyword Research really is that important.
The best tool we know for keyword research is WordTracker , and you can get a free trial of WordTracker here.
Alternatively, we can help, so get in contact.
And, as we’ve said before, try and build the best website you can, to service the needs of your customers, with useful content, selling benefits rather than telling them how good you are.
There are no short cuts to quality, effective, professional SEO. At Search High, we offer a copywriting service to add “search-engine-optimised” content to your website, as part of our objective to design and implement a long-term SEO strategy in partnership with you.
Of course, you could always try it yourself ...
If you need some help or advice, you know where to find us.
2. For other useful articles on SEO, go to our SEO Articles page
3. Want to try keyword research yourself?
4. SEO Blog - we have a blog site giving thoughts and tips on optimising your website for high search engine ranking. Do please visit the SEO Blog, and feel free to leave comments or ask questions.
5. What would you like to know about marketing your website successfully? Let us know and we'll try to include the best requests in future newsletters. The best suggestion each month wins a free consultation, specific to your business.
Our previous newsletter can be viewed here
If you need help on any SEO issues, call us, without obligation, on 0845 734 6580
Search High - Professional Search Marketing
Feel free to forward this page to anyone else that you think may benefit from our straight-forward advice. Please help us to spread the word.
Paul McIntyre
Search High Ltd
0870 734 6580
"Search High provide managed SEO services, pay-per-click management, SEO training and mentoring."
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Copyright (c) 2006 Search High Ltd