View Full Version : SEO Competitive Keyword Success
hiero
08-17-2004, 04:14 PM
I have some examples on my company site of competitive and non-competitive keywords that we have targeted and achieved positive results with. http://www.hiero.com/search-engine-optimization.html (Results are in the left column about half way down the page)
Does anyone have any competitive keyword results that they would like to share and tell us why they achieved the results that they did?
There are no competitive keyword phrases there, sorry.
hiero
08-17-2004, 04:42 PM
hmmm.....We must have a different opinion of what competitive phrases are.
Granted some of these are industry specific, but none-the-less they are still competitive.
seobook
08-17-2004, 05:33 PM
hmmm.....We must have a different opinion of what competitive phrases are.
Granted some of these are industry specific, but none-the-less they are still competitive.
"SEO Phone Consultation" = not competitive
"SEO" = competitive ...
seomike
08-17-2004, 05:41 PM
Keyword = Incorporate (and about 1000 + other related keywords)
Google = page 1
Competition = 7+ million (just shy of 8 mill)
How: the usual on page optimization, good links, and TIME.
The 3 key ingredients :)
hiero
08-17-2004, 06:03 PM
Sorry all....I don't think I made what I was trying to say clear. About half way down on the left side of the page are links to client sites results. These were the results I was referring to, not the actual page that I was linking you to. :confused:
These results vary from month to month as expected. So these are constantly tweaked.
Fear The Pie
08-17-2004, 10:43 PM
Surely you jest! :p
Pretty much every single one of those keyword phrases have ZERO searches out of 332 million searches according to Wordtracker.
Those are not only NOT competitive phrases, but they are completely useless phrases that any SEO worth their salt would be embarrassed to put on their site, let alone post in a forum.
What's the point of optimizing for phrases that will never bring a lick of traffic? :rolleyes:
hiero
08-17-2004, 11:35 PM
Well I can tell you that for the e-commerce sites they have generated sales. To that degree they are definetly worth something. You have to keep in mind also that some of the phrases that were chosen were site and product specific.
donut
08-17-2004, 11:50 PM
When it comes to specific phrases, many of us are bound by client agreements not to go bragging in public forums about them or posting them on our own sites.
I'd say for most of those phrases, simply repeating them on the page a few times would be enough to achieve #1. That doesn't make them less worthwhile for the client, but its not a real achievement for the seo involved.
Fear The Pie
08-18-2004, 12:30 AM
Zero searches out of over 300 million.
Zero. Nobody types those words into an engine. Never. (According to Wordtracker)
Even if Wordtracker missed a few, then maybe there are 1 or 2 searches a day. So, sure, maybe you do get a few stragglers from those crazy phrases. But you certainly don't need to be an SEO for that.
SEO is all about choosing the right keyword phrases. It's one of the most important things you can do. Had you done your keyword research correctly, you may have at least tried to optimize for phrases that are really searched for. For instance for the classic television videos site:
classic tv shows 69 predicted searches
old television shows 49 predicted searches
Certainly nothing competitive, but targeted and they are searched on. They're not great, but a whole lot better than classic television video which gets ZERO.
I hope the company didn't pay you much for your work.
hiero
08-18-2004, 01:14 AM
Keep in mind that the phrases you chose to mention are on a site that was optimized close to 2 years ago. Things were somewhat different at that point and time.
Fear The Pie
08-18-2004, 01:22 AM
Well you're the one who had it on your site and was bragging about it!
As it happened, I checked all of the phrases you have on your site as your successes, and there were only two I believe that had any searches. Both of those had 10 or less, if I remember correctly.
Are they all out of date?
And if so, maybe this would be a good time to do a little tweaking?
Real optimizers don't rely on overture numbers for very good reason, as you can see.
sem4u
08-18-2004, 05:42 AM
All I can say is that they don't look very competitive to me. :confused:
hiero
08-18-2004, 11:01 AM
You're right some of the links are older customers that I need to re-visit. I was hoping to get this thread going where others also shared some of their results and success's.
Robert_Charlton
08-18-2004, 05:04 PM
I was hoping to get this thread going where others also shared some of their results and success's.
hiero - Please forgive my saying this, but I feel it's naive to expect any good SEO to talk about specific search targets, let alone results, in public. I think it was unwise of you to do so, and to expose your client sites to scrutiny... even though your phrases are not very competitive and it's unlikely that your post will be creating competitors.
How to decide what's competitive, and also what's worth targeting, might be the subject of another thread. In setting any search phrase targets, you need to evaluate not only how many well-optimized pages you're competing against in the top 10, but also how many likely searches there will be and what the ROI might be for these searches.
Some of the most productive targets might not be the most frequently searched, by the way. Often, a more specific phrase reflects that the searcher knows what he wants and may be ready to buy. There does have to be a reasonable expectation, though, that the phrase will be searched.
Pretty much every single one of those keyword phrases have ZERO searches out of 332 million searches according to Wordtracker.
Under the radar phrases are problematic with all of the keyword tools. In my opinion, Wordtracker is perhaps the worst of these for detecting infrequent searches, because it extrapolates its data from a very small sample size, thereby multiplying its errors. It's unlikely to report infrequently searched terms at all. The Google AdWords suggestion tool is probably the least skewed, most sensitive tool, but it doesn't attach any numbers to the phrases it reports. It does seem to report them in order of descending search frequency.
>In my opinion, Wordtracker is perhaps the worst of these for detecting infrequent searches, because it extrapolates its data from a very small sample size, thereby multiplying its errors.
I agree.
I'll go further, I don't think wordtracker is a useful tool for a competent SEO.
seobook
08-18-2004, 05:33 PM
I'll go further, I don't think wordtracker is a useful tool for a competent SEO.
I like using digital point's cross referencing tool more than wordtrackers tool. I just use them for a glance though...no deep type research.
what (if any) keyword tools do you recommend NFFC? or do just go for what makes sense and start testing on AdWords? or what?
>what (if any) keyword tools do you recommend
I think we may well be taking this tread off-topic, maybe a new one is in order?
You lead, I'll follow.
hiero
08-18-2004, 07:58 PM
hiero - Please forgive my saying this, but I feel it's naive to expect any good SEO to talk about specific search targets, let alone results, in public. I think it was unwise of you to do so, and to expose your client sites to scrutiny... even though your phrases are not very competitive and it's unlikely that your post will be creating competitors.
Hi Robert,
No harm, no foul.
I must have a different opinion than most. We're trying to learn how to be better SEO's everyday. I take nothing personal and chalk it all up as a learning experience. Thank You for your comments they are appreciated and well taken.