When creating your website and optimizing for keywords, what is the best way to go about deciding what keywords you want to target? For an example the site that I am building we have a bunch of different 2nd and third tier keywords that target our niche. Many websites only sell a few of our niche, while we are going to specialize in selling those products. Is it best to just optimize for those niche keywords then to optimize for higher traffic but more competition?
when you go your website to optimize first must to you see what your website pages, which page write what content then go low target keywords for every pages with including business area.
Most people make the mistake of targeting too many keywords. Set your site up to target just a few and you can add the rest later when you rank for these few. The traffic is at number one on page one of Google so you want to attack each keyword and get it ranked as high as possible. Too many keywords and you efforts get spread too thinly.
It sounds like you're already off to a good start if you've identified 1st, 2nd, and 3rd tier keywords. Make sure that you have categorized them and have a strategy for getting your 1st tier keywords ranked. Pick the long tail 2nd and 3rd tier keywords that are easiest to rank for and which will bring you at least enough traffic to be worth your efforts (2500 searches a month or more). Once you have narrowed these keywords down, you can optimize your site and link build for these terms. Good luck. Let me know if you need anymore help.
Thanks for the advice. The trouble I am having is picking what keywords I want to target, because with my Niche, I feel that it will not be hard to rank for many different keywords. What is a good number of 1st tier keywords you want to target, 2nd tier keywords and third tier keywords? Im assuming your saying to target the most searched keywords with the least amount of target first, then move down the list finding lesser searched keywords with less competition. Most of my keywords have little competition. Does this make a difference?
Here's an example of breaking down a niche by different tiers of keywords for the auto niche (these are hypotheticals) 1st tier keywords: cars (this should be the term(s) you really want to rank for) 2nd tier keywords: american cars, foreign cars, supercars (these should be a breakdown of your niche into smaller sections that are still relevant to what your website is about. As you'll notice, they all have the term "cars" still in the keyword which will ultimately help you rank for this term.) 3rd tier keywords: american vintage cars, american cars invented in detroit, american corvette supercar, etc. (these should be the terms that are easy to rank for so you can start getting immediate traffic. They should still be relevant to your 2nd tier words the same way your 2nd tier should be related to your 1st tier.) This is a very basic example of how you should segment your keywords into different topics and tiers. As for which keywords to target first, do as you said and target the ones with the most traffic first. If, for some reason your 1st or second tier keywords are just as easy to rank for as your 3rd tier than just go for the ones that give you the most traffic and then move to the keywords that have less traffic later. Make sense?
Happy to help. Here's a video that I found helpful when I was learning all of this stuff. It's a basic intro to keyword research and it's worth watching: noblesamurai.com/dojo/marketsamurai/7284-introduction-to-keyword-research