Target High Conversion SEO Rankings
Filed under: Local Search Optimization, Location Based Services, Online Advertising, geo domains
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.
Well said Bruce.
In fact, most of the traffic – over 50% – of even the best keyword domains comes from longer tail keywords than the exact match keyword itself.
The exact match gives you the best shot to get on page 1 for the search results of that particular word but if this is your only end game then you really do not have a plan – just a lottery ticket hoping to cash in when Google decides one day they like your site for a page 1 placement – and a site that can be crushed in a single day.
Thanks Alan. Your numbers are very true on most traffic coming from the longer tail terms which actually end up converting better because of their more targeted nature.
Better to balance across many terms instead of banking on one or shooting for one that is not even of value to the business model being worked on.
Glad to hear from you Alan!!!
I just posted this on Morgan’s blog but it is even more applicable here so I though I would add it in a comment.
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Bruce,
Thanks for clarifying some things but in my defense I want to say that I never claimed that you were trying to rank for “Missouri”, that was not the point of my comment at all.
The point of my comment was to point out that .me domains (and really many other smaller extensions) simply do not have the ranking power that the top three have. You site is a good example of this.
Again, I believe you when you say that you are not trying to rank for the term “Missouri” however, if you were trying to rank for the terms Missouri you really would not be doing much different at all. The plan to rank for the term “Missouri” would include a handful of things to do such as:
1. Build up backlinks that have the word “Missouri” in the anchor text.
2. Include the word “Missouri” in the page title of the home page.
3. use a domain name that includes the word “Missouri”
4. Use the word “Missouri” prominently in the text of the home page.
5. Use the word “Missouri” in the meta tags of the home page
Whether of not you are consciously trying to rank for the term “Missouri”, the truth of the matter is that you are doing each and everyone of those things. You have over 600 backlinks according to BacklinkWatch.com and the large majority have “Missouri.me” as the anchor text. Your page title include the word “Missouri” three times, your domain name is Missouri.me, you use the word Missouri multiple times on the home page in spite of the home page being very low on text and you use the word Missouri multiple times on the keywords and meta tag section.
Truth of the matter Bruce is that it is good that you are not “targeting” the word “Missouri” because after all you have done it is pretty certain that you simply would not get it. And if Missouri.com, Missouri.net or Missouri.org did what you have done so far they would most likely be on page 1 of Google for Missouri. Missouri.me has done a ton of work and is not even on the first 100 pages.
I don’t know why everyone is scared to admit saying that these smaller extensions such as .biz, .me and .TV suck for search engines. Lets all just admit it.
I am not attacking you individually, you made a choice to work with .me instead of a better known extension and as a result you have probably saved hundreds of thousands of dollars that you would have had to have used to purchase the names you have in a better extension. This is not an attack on you, you have made a choice and it seems to be doing well for you, but the simple truth is that .me sucks on the search engines, you have simply been able to compensate for that.
Congrats to you for building a winning business on a sub par extension. That is something to be proud of, but take the credit for your work and at least admit it is a sub par extension that does not rank well at all on Google.
Troy,
I appreciate the nice comments in there, and want to be clear I was not targeting you individually either, the same comment has came up in the past and it just made for a good topic for a post since many are not familiar with proper targeting of their search efforts.
Although we can agree to disagree on some of your comments about .ME vs .COM , at the end of the day it all comes down to link building and proper keyword targeting. We have been successful with customer sites ranking with .ME as well, in reality I was a bit concerned with a couple as the “Google .COM love factor” was in question. We were able to rank and rank well though.
We are ranking well for many city/state and city/biz/service combos as well as city/news combos which is far as I will go with details:) Many of these are extremely competitive in region and we did it without the .COM.
I am not saying that Google does not have some level of preference for .COM, but I am saying it can be overcome and its not always about the obvious term.
I appreciate the comment Troy, thanks, truly.
Bruce
“I am not saying that Google does not have some level of preference for .COM, but I am saying it can be overcome and its not always about the obvious term.”
We can agree on this, but I am sure that we agree at different levels.
Best of luck to you with everything Bruce.
Troy
Hi bruce,
I also sent you recently an email on your contact form about same discussion but never got back from you.
Anyway all this is not true but I hope that .me is not “hated” by google because I’m getting my dot me ready to launch in 2 months so I cross my finger or I might be like missouri.me not on top for the main term. Otherwise, look at other extensions, I know for example that a high comptition niche keyword have a .pro on top “starcraft 2″ (not my site).
This is a big challenge for any tld other than .com in a competitive keyword. All efforts might be 5 to 10 times more done than a .com to get on top with 1 word or generic.
I will do all my best to promote waikiki.me when site will be ready, I have a business and marketing plan too. Local businesses owners in my GEO is hard to meet and convince to put ads compare to Bruce M. because most of businessesin waikiki are big companies, franchise… not rural ones or small businesses and you know how they do business.
But to be success you need 3 things: Motivation, Faith and hard Work
I don’t know why missouri.me did not even get on 1st or 2nd page of Google for term missouri but have an idea on it and have nothing to do with .me, I think that because there are already 2 missouri on top (missouri.com and missouri.ed) that Google don’t accept more than 2 same keyword domain in a page or it will look too spammy.
Anyway even if you don’t target that term, I’m sure you won’t say NO I don’t want to be on top if you could be.
Anyway, Bruce is a pionner in the .me project and I congrat him for his business. I know that beign on top is not just what makes the business lucrative but it helps a lot.
You still can target more specific keywords or use your website as a “brand” for locals but Google and search engines when talk to website as a business is simply essential.
Thanks for the comment and vote of confidence. I am way behind on email but do respond, you will hear something:)
Bruce – you need to get Missouri.me listed in DMOZ (free) and Yahoo Directory ($299 per year) and you’ll see much better SEO results. It looks like you have 20+ .gov links to your site which is good but you also have zero .edu links — get more .edu links!
Logan.
Thanks, it is interesting the luck we have had with link building without even fighting for it. Never a bad thing at all:)
We have ranked quite well (And easily) for many city terms and city/service/business terms where we chose to focus.
Agreed on needing to do DMOZ , funny enough that is something I have recommended to people. Funny how sometimes we forget about ourselves…