Competing for the Top Spot by Going Niche

Like many companies, you are probably trying to take on position number 1 in the Google organic search results. You have chosen a generic keyword that you know a lot of people will be using to look for products and services that you offer. You have optimized your page to the perfect keyword density. You have established a number back links. Yet you still find that the competition is just too tight. Maybe it’s time to look at the bigger picture.

Your problem is that you are in denial. The keyword you are optimizing for is probably so competitive that it is either impossible or it will take a very long time for your page to appear on the first page. The first step is to accept that you are part of a very crowded marketplace. You are not the first to build the website that you have now. Whatever idea you came up with, someone else has already thought of it. Once you accept that you are in this very busy market place, you will have the correct mindset to set attainable SEO goals.

The problem with generic keywords is that, well, they’re generic. For example, if your website sells coffee, you probably optimized your page for the keyword “coffee.” That is so unoriginal that millions of other websites have already done this. Even if you managed to take on the first page, a large portion of your visitors are probably going to bounce because some of they may have been looking for coffee mugs, coffee filters, coffee restaurants, but when they land on your web page, they will discover that all you sell is coffee. The best approach is to choose a key phrase that specifies what type of coffee you sell. Better choices of key phrases could have been “Arabica coffee” or “Fresh arabica coffee in Ontario.” Now, if you get visitors who searched for these keywords, they are more likely to be interested in your website because it was relevant.

If you were selling many types of coffee brands, you could also optimize for those brand names. You can also add the strength, weight, quality, etc. and somewhere, somehow, someone will be looking for that particular product. The visits may get lesser the more specific you get, but I can guarantee that those visits are of higher quality and can convert better than generic visitors.

Spend some time examining your website and choose which top keywords and key phrases you think people might want to type to search for your product or service. Then create a second list that is more specific. You will get more visits from the second list than the first. If you cannot think of any more keywords or phrases, there are tools on the web that can suggest these for you. In my next article, I will cover these tools. Choosing your keywords and key phrases is the first step in a successful SEO campaign .