SEO is a waste of time....

Most SEO'ers will already know this, but many do not.

When deciding on what aspects of your site you want to do SEO on, one of the biggest contributing factor is which keywords you will be targetting.

Usually the largest keyword is chosen, which will produce the most traffic, but also at the same time produce the most work required to rank for that keyword (in most cases).

What budding SEO'ers forget to do is too properly test and analyze the keyword that you will be targeting.

In a recent case I was SEO'ing for a particular keyphrase which was much higher in traffic then all my other keywords, but also came at a cost of fairly decent competition.

So as I do, I decided to test the keywords to see which one is the most "productive" in producing end sales and end conversion.

As it turned out the keyword with half of the traffic and significantly less competition was a much higher converting keyword and produced much better Time > Profit ratio.

So by implementing a small ammount of tracking on your sites, you can greatly improve your SEO efforts not only in getting higher SERP listings, but also in producing more backend profit whilst spending less effort on a smaller phrase (presuming that a smaller keyword is a higher converting one).

Most know this, some dont. But more importantly, most dont use this technique.

So what results have you had from better keyword research?

How much did it effect your online business and or site?

 

I would say hit the less competitive keywords first but do some on-site seo to target the big keywords.

Then after a year when the site is established you can go after the big keywords with an offsite campaign.

 

little off-topic, but can you verify something for a newb

onsite would be like optimizing title tags and landing pages

offsite would consisit of stuff like bidding for keywords on google and the like

right?

 

Yes.

And also link building.

 

This raises a good point that a lot of people miss - traffic doesn't mean a thing without conversion - if you've got a high-ranking keyword that's big with freebie seekers, you're still poor, just popular

I always run an Adwords campaign with conversion tracking for as many relevent keywords as I can. Let it run for a couple of weeks and then pick out the winners - now I can intelligently plan my SEO efforts (or abandon it altogether if the slope is to steep - surprisingly, we often forget the other ways to drive traffic besides SEO - there I said it... )

 

Stumpy exactly right.

And you let out a little secret tip there

Adwords is a fantastic way to do conversion tracking of your keywords. There are many other systems too. Clicktracks is pretty good if you are prepared to fork out the price.

 

conversion isn't the whole story. Some corporations want to rank well for certain keywords and have a good Pageank for their site for the reason of ego or corporate image. Of course they get money to spend.

 

seo is a process, you won't call it a waste anymore once Google falls in love with your site and your traffic increases X10

Just don't expect it to happen on your terms

 

In that case it would be for branding puproses. But you could say the majority of sites on the Internet want to rank well to achieve better results.

They think more traffic = more sales. Where as more quality traffic = even more sales

 

People need to like what they see once they get there, true. SEO is only a small part of it all, unless you just want the Adsense-trainstation effect (they come, hate your site - and click on adsense instead).

 

This is one of the best posts I've seen on the forum. Similar to a key point shoemoney made in his tips post.

 

Traffic from google never increases 10x, maybe about 5x sometimes, but that's from like 25 to 125... well i guess sometimes it can be close to 10x, but never reeally.
My point is, unless you rank #1 for Doctor or PHP or something of your niche that is like 1 word, you never get anywhere.

If you target #1 even on a fairly popular 2 word keyword, you still won't get more than 50 people from google from that. Through my experience, i've gotten #1 on like atleast 50 keywords, and i only get about 5 people a day from each. Which adds up, but it never is anything like... OMG 2000 PEOPLE Came to my site from this keyword... it never is anything that powerful. Sure millions of people everyday search for stuff @ google. But all you can do is become powerful in thousands of keywords, for example i rank well in google that is outside of US, in a lot of countries, so lots of foreigners come, but it's never a big rush of people coming from one keyword.;

Anyone have experience where this one keyword brought you like so much traffic?? I mean i'm ranked #1-#3 on 2 different "two-word keywords" and they don't really bring that much traffic. Don't get me wrong i get a lot of traffic, but it's from thousands of keywords... people search the craziest things and find my site, like "how does a firefox css cursor work" and long stuff like that.

The best source of traffic is probably advertising in your niche. Possibly Adwords or maybe a big site has your link on it.

 

You don't need the main keywords, you need to rank for the large amounts of related terms which you are getting ranked thru unique content, variations of anchor text and such. You need to be busy branding yourself, getting your site out there and improve quality. You can't sit back and complain or wonder why others rank in Google while you don't. You do that and brand your name well at the same time: I guarantee you, you will get your business in gear as long as you have something to sell at a reasonable price!

 

LMAO, True Blogmaster.

It was more just a quirky title really of course SEO is not a waste of time.

But you can certainly waste your time by not doing it properly.

Thanks Hon Daddy Dad. I figured it was something that alot of people dont fully understand.

Sure most of if not all of the pro's will know about it and it is just part of the research. But I see many new starters not quite grasping this.

Blogmaster it is quite amazing at some of the unique terms you can come up with original content, but im sure you have seen your fair share of these

In fact in lots of cases the minor terms will generate much more intermediate traffic until youre main terms pick up.

Brad

 

I Dont believe SEO is Dead.

 

It's on life support

 

There's still plenty of keywords which provide heaps of hits that can easily be turned into money - and they have virtually no competition.

 

Exactly right, and by just doing a little keyword research, you can uncover a huge ammount of potentially awesome keywords.

Allthough it is rarer to find those "gold nugget" keywords, it can still be done with the right research and the right tools.

 

Traffic can easily increase more than 10X with a nice shift in placement...and it doesn't have to be for "doctor" or something that common.

That statement kind of sums up the thread: If you conduct solid keyword research before you start actively trying to achieve page 1 results for your target terms you won't end up with #1's for 50 terms that are bringing 200 - 300 total visitors a day. You'll end up with 200 - 300 terms bringing 50 people a day each.

 

I typically shoot for one or two kw's or phrases per page to optimize for based on my site theme. Generally this can get me ballpark, then I'll start developing for other terms.

What's even more amazing is getting top placement for something totally obscure that you didn't even optimize for, but since you mention it on the page it pulls ranks in the SERP's. Sweet!

I am by no means an expert like you Brad but I have learned a few things along the way, including learning from you!