How to top the search listings

by Guy Levine - Wednesday, 4th June 2008 - (2) comments

A front-page Google listing can be worth a whopping £100,000 a year. Search engine expert Guy Levine reveals how to reach pole position.

Do a quick competitor analysis
There are many strategies to slice and dice a market to reveal its viability. As an entrepreneur, I want something which is quick and dirty – and gives me an insight into what is possible within a few minutes. My quick and dirty method is to type in my search word or phrase and see how many results there are. Less than 1,000,000 results and it’s normally quite easy to get to the top. 1,000,000 to 5,000,000 and it is getting competitive. 5,000,000 to 30,000,000 and it’s a nice project!

Refine your search words
Everyone wants to come top of the pops for their search words or keywords. But remember: it takes three or more keywords before a customer is “converted”. Let me explain...

If someone searches on the keyword “holiday”, it’s unlikely they will buy from the site they arrive at, if they click any site at all. The search is refined and becomes “discount holidays”. We’re getting there now. The final refinement becomes “discount holidays France”.

In a nutshell: the person who searches on the keyword “holiday” will very rarely buy. The person who types in “discount holidays France” is red hot and ready to buy.

The maximum keywords used per page is around six, so have a look at your site, choose six keywords per page, and do your research.

Next up, I'll be looking at what needs to be done to the site to woo big G.

Guy Levine is the CEO of SEO company Web Marketing Advisor.

Picture source

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2 Comments

September 24, 2008 1:13pm
elchenuk Says:

Some interesting points here and essentially your describing the 3 stages of a potential customer. They start with a broad search and then finally refine the search term the more into their research they go. Whilst this article discusses SEO it can also be said that these stages should also be taken into account when creating PPC campaigns. On another note there isn't a limit as to how many keywords you should optimise for on a single page. Some of my pages have had visitors using over 5,000 different keywords, remember 80-20 rule of search!

June 04, 2008 2:03pm
Spencer Adams Says:

Thanks for this insight. I have been trying to gen up search engine optimisation and have enjoyed your articles. Now I know why these SEO companies are wanting to charge me a fortune - because they want show pieces on competitive keywords and not necessarily what’s best for me! Spence