Hey Guys, I recently started a gift shop and have been ranked first page on Google for a couple good keywords. One is EXOTIC NOVELTIES, where I am ranked ninth. This keyword has approx 6000 searches a month. It took me about a week or two to get there. Do you think that I should go with higher traffic and competition or should I find smaller keywords and stick to them. What kind of traffic do you recommend because Exotic Novelties has about 700 - 800 thousands competitors and I am ranked 9th in under a month. Thanks, Nick
What keywords should you go for next? I don't know your niche, so I can't say. But I will say Google knows most niches. Visit the URL below and plugin your primary keyword for some suggestions. https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
As snowbird said, use that tool and keep adding more related pages with good quality keywords on the URL and in the contents. Do some one way or two way links exchange to keep up the positions in SE, as SE results are won't stick for long time without you update the site and getting links..
When you use Google's keyword tool, make sure you switch the match type to exact. For 'exotic novelties' Google actually only shows 210 people searching per month. Apparently most people are specifically looking for 'california exotic novelties' instead. So unfortunately that is not a very good keyword to target. Most people searching for this are looking for that specific company's website. Choosing keywords for your website will be quite difficult. The reason being is that your website does not have one specific niche. It is tough to do seo for general websites that cover a wide range of products or topics. Your marketing would be much easier if you stuck to just one niche. You might want to rethink your whole website strategy. Perhaps you should check out similar general ecommerce websites and see what keywords they target. In the end, your best strategy may be to concentrating on marketing each product category as if it is its own website.
WE had some success in the earlier days with keyphrases ending 'gift ideas' - the conversion rate is't great - but we found it a good starting point, relatively easy to get up the listings with. So maybe novelty gift ideas?
I think you should think long term and go for high competitive keywords and smaller key words at the same time.
I think these days the best way to go is smaller keywords. These people are very targeted buying who are looking for something that a general search wouldn't give them. IMO this means they are more willing to pay for the product/service when they find it. Plus smaller keywords are easier to get so you can make profit while continuing to build your site up enough. When you get enough unique content the search engines will notice and you will say on top longer than the others.