If you have a website that you only want to rank for one phrase and nothing else, and that phrase isn’t particularly competitive (and by competitive I mean a specific term that plenty of people search with the actual intent to buy) it absolutely is possible to achieve a good rank relatively quickly simply by applying fundamental ‘SEO’ techniques (Google tells you all you need to know about the basics).
- Optimised, unique titles for each page (common sense)
- A self explanatory H1 per page (just the one!)
- On topic readable content (common sense)
- Backlinks (votes of confidence)
- Unique meta descriptions (not strictly a ranking factor but helps to avoid the dreader filters, aka the ‘supplemental index’, while giving potential visitors reason to click your listing from the SERP)
And if you are targetting a local market it is pretty vital to add or claim your Google Local listing from the off (off course, you’ll need to divulge a physical address for your organisation to make use of this).
A keyword focussed domain name also continues to give you VIP tickets to seats within the first 100 pages of Google, sometimes the first 30 or higher. This site reached #30 for manchester seo with ZERO backlinks. I simply told Google it existed (WMT, Analytics), the domain name did the rest. But heed a word of caution. These types of domains may not be ‘trusted’ as much as perhaps a ‘branded’ domain name due to the quick and dirty tactic of buying up keyword-rich domain names for their perceived value by:
- Lazy get rich quick types blinded by the success stories of the dot.com era
- Adsense marketers
- Black hatters who skillfully use and abuse it for a few months, make a few grand, get it banned and send it to room 101 to be picked up later by the lazy people.
- Domainers who watch for potentially attractive domain names, buy them and then re-sell them at a higher price
If your ‘keyword’ domain (that sums up your full service) is available and has a pretty clean history then great. Otherwise if you’re building a brand, be smart and choose a domain that reflects that.
In the real world, a genuine business website (with a competitive product or service) should be written and optimised in such a way that it is taken seriously by its visitors. A business that wants to grow, a business that wants to not only get clicks but also conversions needs to look the part too. A domain name that reflects the brand is the best choice along with a marketing and PR strategy, which SEO is only a part of.
Whoever is providing the SEO for that website must take on the responsibility of ensuring there is a balance between optimisation for ranks and optimisation for visitors. It’s no good to vomit keywords all over a site, get it to numero uno (for one phrase) and consider your job done. That is a strategy that can easily destroy a business website before it has even started. Approaching it in a steady, structured, balanced and logical fashion with an understanding of the target audience will take longer but will also be more sustainable.
Back to this site, I said earlier it reached #30. With a few quick and easy links and continuing to add content it climbed a bit higher. I then left it for a while doing nothing and as of the date of this post it is #25. I’m now interested to see what happens if the site just continues being updated and used without any typical ‘SEO’ activity. How it progresses remains to be seen but here goes…
