SEO - Should I bother?

Hi,

I'm helping getting a new site up and going. The domain is only a couple of months old and the number of quality backlinks is very small but there are some. I have paid someone to submit the site to 450 directories.

The main keywords for the site are 'charity' and 'donate'. It looks like we'll need a page rank of at least 7 to make the first page of Google SERPS for either of these terms. I am pretty clueless about SEO but from the reading I have done here it sounds like this will be a very tough job.

Do you think it is worthwhile me spending any time on SEO or is it a lost cause? Or should I just concentrate on other ways to bring in traffic and promote the site?

Thanks in advance for you help,
Brian

 

Good luck getting ranked for those keywords, I would say it is 99% a lost cause.

Pick something easier

 

Thanks for the advice fryman. This was what I suspected.

I saw a thread a while ago about 'the long tail' for SEO so I think I'll need to take a read of that.

 

Yes, but i suggest you to take it easy...
use this tool
http://inventory.overture.com
for finding keywords with a less compettion , after `u rank good on small keywords, you can move to better ones

 

try for some keywords which define your sitye even more better and has fewer competation

 

Here is a simple rule you need to follow:

Instead of optimizing for singel word try adding something else. For you for example: Give charity, give charity + state+town+suburb etc....

Hope you see the idea. That is the long tail effect, simple as that. First of all ask your self, if you was going to give away charity, how would you have searched for it in SE?

What you need to do is to attract all those who are in action mode and not only is searching mode or seeking information.

And at the end. Even though if you have a new website, it is still possible to rank high for this term. Just gonna take some time to work with your site content, but don't mix it up with the statement that you need some links from pr 7 sites etc.

I would not reccomend using free directories, although I have used them for alot of my site, this has only been done in addition of getting hig quality links from other sites. For one of my sites, I have over 230000 links in totalt using the tool from Marketleap, but the good thing is that I haven't spent a single dollar!

 

I conducted a research on the keyword charity and it seems that it has 97,869 searches per month on search engines. It also has many competitors which is about 81,000,000 on Google. It would take some time for that keyword to be rank. Just be patient.

 

my advice:
1. use more specific keywords.
2. try some common spelling mistakes.
3. be regional. figure out which country/state/city you operate in and focus on it.
4. contact other sites that are focused on charity and ask for link exchange. Who knows, they might be charitable?

 

Thanks very much guys. This is all great advice and was exactly what I was after.

 

Depends on your service. If you need huge traffic to sell your service, then I will suggest you buy traffic first to make your service known by your customers or potential customers. SEO is a long time work, and you can't reach number 1 in google SERPs by doing some SEO action.

My suggestion is buying some traffic, and spend some time on your daily SEO.

 

Yep. Do this and a few years down the road you'll have a good chance of getting better SERPS for the more competitive keywords.

 

What does your site offer? You can get traffic without relying on the search engines. Social bookmarking, smart commenting on your blogs in your sector, etc., etc.

Good luck!

 

I recommend sitting down with your family/friends/co-workers and writing down a list of 100 keywords that relate to your site. Then go to wordtracker.com and type each keyword in and select the keywords they suggest as well as your own, to generate a report of different keywords you can target. They also have a system called "KEI" which is a calculation based on competition pages vs. the number of times the keyword has been searched. The higher the KEI, the more chance you have succeeding in ranking for that keyword - especially if you are just starting out.

I will be more than happy to do this for you as it's for charity, PM me if you are interested.

EDIT: Spelling

 

as urs is a fresh site n those keywords are very competitive better target 2 or three phrase key words rather than single keywords as it is easier to rank.Then later on if ur site is doing good u can target single keywords