Okay, once in a while I get to pat myself on the back.  This is one of those times.

If you’ve been reading my blogs for a while or if you’ve spoken to me about SEO Services (Search Engine Optimization) then you know that I often mention the concept and focus on conversion.  I often find myself mentioning conversion to clients or callers (or readers) who focus their Internet marketing concept on rankings.

“I want to be #1 for Hollywood Florida attorney…” one client told me.  I responded with the usual comments about how we could get him on the search engines for that phrase because the competition wasn’t very low but it would be MUCH better if we could get him up in the search engines for another phrase, “South Florida attorney” because the number of people typing in the latter phrase was so much higher.  Of course, we would want to target both keyword phrases and frankly, for this particular phrase we could do that with one website page but that’s not always the case.  Sometimes, the phrases are so far apart that they really do need separate website pages.

I also get the reverse type of thinking.  I hear things like…”I want to be #1 for the phrase name tags…” And to that I usually respond with something like “That will take some time and work to get a top ranking for that phrase simply because of the amount of competition for that phrase AND the number of pages that your competitors are using to market that phrase are much more than what you’re using…”  – “It would be more effective to target a less competitive phrase like “name tag accessories“.  The concept here is that the client could get a top listing for the less competitive keyword phrase which would absolutely bring in traffic whereas being on page 10 of a more popular phrase doesn’t do any good.

Also, the more general the keyword phrase the more likely it is that the audience typing in that phrase is not the targeted audience.  In other words, if someone is typing in “name tags” into a search engine, what exactly are they looking for?  Are they looking for how to make a name tag, printing a name tag, buying name tags, samples of name tags, what?  The more specific the keyword phrase being typed in, the closer that person is to making the purchase of the product.

Yes, you’ll get fewer people, but the conversion rate of the more specific keyword phrase will be higher.

The average conversion rate on websites is 1% – 3%.  Of course, everyone wants it to be more and you should strive for it to be higher.  So work with your SEO firm on finding the keyword phrases that will bring in the higher conversion rates.

Tags: internet marketing, keyword research, search engine optimization, seo, website conversion