Target High Conversion SEO Rankings

One of the things I see come up over and over (and over) again when people are discussing various domains and developments is that websiteA.com does not rank well in Google for the keyword websiteA, I thought I would explain a bit about why this is not a good way to judge rankings, because in reality 99 percent of the time you do not know what someone is trying to rank for unless it is a very small site with a single keyword targeted.

This typically shows me that someone is not familiar with the targeted marketing that is possible with SEO, and specifically how important that targeting is now that local search is growing faster than ever and will continue to become more important with the growth of smartphones and location based services.

Legacy advertising methods were not targeted, based completely on the number of eyes balls that may look at an ad in a newspaper or magazine during any given time frame. With search marketing this model is no longer the proper way to look at advertising, or traffic.

Twice lately I have witnessed people saying that Missouri.me does not rank for the term Missouri. Well you may be surprised but I could really care less. What I care about is ranking for very targeted terms in regions we are focused in promoting our services. We work to rank for terms that bring targeted visitors that will convert better for our customers.

We are not a Missouri tourism portal, if we were I would focus on Missouri and terms surrounding Missouri tourism. This post is not about Missouri.me but it gives me an example to work from that came up a few times lately.

Its not about the broadest term to bring the highest amount of traffic at all times, in many cases its about ranking for the terms that bring the BEST traffic that provides the most value for website advertisers.

With local search growing at a better than 50 percent clip local targeting is more important than ever. This means SEO for localized terms becomes more important than ever so those local businesses are found when customers are looking for them, or in the case of portals, that the highest value customers are finding the website when looking for a particular thing.

This post is not meant to be a knock on people that questioned rankings, etc but really to help people understand a bit more of how they should approach site developments and the targeting of the SEO around it.

Local Search Thoughts

As we head into 2010 local search seems to be a hot topic. As search has continued to go more local it is more important than ever before to have  a plan for your business to be found when people search. One fact that brings this home is that in 2008 people searching for local businesses online grew by 58 percent, it will be real interesting to see what that number is in 2009 since so many have moved to the iPhone, with the ease of use of the current smart phones it is only natural that mobile searches will skew even more local.

I was reading a great post over at LocalSEOGuide.com and after preaching a lot of this over the last year to anyone who would listen it was great to see a leader in the space validate much of what we had been seeing.

A couple bullet points to point out:

SMB SEO Budgets Will Increase Dramatically
A number of misguided souls are predicting that personalized search renders SEO obsolete.  Bottom line: most SMBs don’t know what they are doing with search, are going nuts because some spammer or the guy down the street outranks them, want to spend more time with their kids and are ready to hire someone to make the problem go away.

And:

SEO Consultants Will Become Better Known as Marketers
2009 seemed like the year when a lot of SMBs woke up to the fact that SEO actually existed and could be an important part of the marketing mix.  In 2010 more businesses are going to start to realize that search and social media could be the biggest area of potential for their companies and they will pour more resources into these channels.  As a result search marketers are going to take on bigger roles helping drive comprehensive marketing strategies.

This last one is something I discuss often in my seminars to small business owners, when you start talking about search engines, the internet, or anything that relates to a computer most small business owners tune out immediately. To most people all of these topics are purely technical and seem to be of little consequence to them.

But after showing examples of businesses being found with local search and using real case studies it clicks with them that they are actually using the internet to find services and businesses JUST LIKE THEIR CUSTOMERS.

It clicks at that point.

The technology is suddenly a marketing tool.

We all know this, but to someone that is not involved on a day to day basis with this there is not an immediate link.

Once that link is created they understand that with the Yellow Pages print edition faltering they better start thinking about a plan to attract those that have went away, and to that great marketing tool called the internet.