How to Increase Ranking for Highly Competitive Keywords

Ranking For Highly Competitive Keywords

I am presently handling a team of 10 people, yet I have various clients highly dissatisfied and eager to get their keywords ranked at #1 in a span of say 3-4months (sometimes 1 month!!! ALAS..). Getting rankings for long tail keyword and domain specific keyword is not challenging but if a client gives you single word keywords or highly competitive keywords, it sends a chill down your nerve because you actually need to plan your work out for such keywords. I am presently facing such issue so wanted to write this post to help people like me in achieving their goals and even getting suggestions or tips from other users.

One thing that I certainly feel is the website domain authority is an important factor that helps the website gain ranking easily in top positions. The main issue with the domestic clients that I have seen is that they do not know the basic purpose of SEO and SMO or PPC, but they generally feel that creating a website, then updating the meta tags on the same will drop them high inquiries, and they have loads of revenue generated for the same. What I fail to understand is that, how can they think the old and popular websites to just diminish away and they enjoy the best top rankings in search engines and get revenue generated for the same, without building the visibility or reputation online? This is actually a serious matter as SEO ,SMO or PPC are just not another way of MAKING MONEY!! You need to be tactful, strategical and plan out your daily activities in order to get the website meet its goal. Just creating a website and updating meta is not any way of generating leads to the website. Online Marketing is not an easy job. If you want to get ranking for competitive keywords , then you need to actually work upon it.

The starting point is - Website Development and Designing

How many times have you simply clicked on a website and closed it only after having a look at the homepage? I guess most of us do that and on an hourly basis. A website's look and feel is very important to help it gain an online reputation. It has to be developed diligently such that if it is a service provider site - it has to contain a Home Page, About Us, Services Offered, Contact Us and Inquiry Form (if any); if it is an eCommerce site - it has to contain the above details along with the hipping policy, Veri sign any other policy certifications, so that a user can RELY on it. Similarly, if it is a hospital website, it needs to have a proper about us information and details about each doctor and a proper appointment form.

A proper testing of the above factors is mandatory for a healthy functioning of a website. If a website is properly developed and designed but the contact us / feedback form is not working, then means a huge loss for that business. Hence the roles in any organizations need to be streamlined and explained to the employees and a proper process needs to be followed if you want actual leads for a business.

Keyword Targeting

After the website passes a QC analysis, the website is ready for the Optimization. But again, there are a few points that An SEO strategist needs to check -

The website design, the URL structure, the seo friendly navigation, the working of all the links, CONTENT RICH sections. Remember that a content plays a vital role in helping a website to gain the depth. Google's new algorithms are giving more importance to a website if it has supporting content to the services offered. Hence, it becomes important for every website to make sure that you need to have a proper detailed website in order to get visitors coming to the website that enhances the link juice to the website.

Then you start with the meta optimization techniques that would include - Title, description, keywords optimization, image optimization, header tags implementation, sitemap creation, robots file, ror file ( if the website has regular updates in news and announcements section) and alt tags etc.

The next step comprises of - directory submissions in - Dmoz, Google Listings, Botw, Yahoo directory etc.; bookmarking in good sites like - Reddit, StumbleUpon, Digg - but this step is not just limited to submissions; you need to build up profile here, make connection, like the relevant bookmarks and share them so that they would also like to share and bookmark your link. Your activity is not done by simply posting a link - you have to be a genuine user who has liked something and shared with others!

The Article Submissions and Blog Submissions is another way of getting better links to the website. Make sure that the article is submitted in high quality websites like - E zine, Amazine, Isnare, Searchwarp, Articledashboard etc. Insert the links to your main websites but limit it to 1-2 max. An author bio should look professional and not a sales pitch.

Think before starting with any project and never target any website using simple sales pitch but work as a genuine user and see the wonders!!!

Then start off with SMO best practices - leverage Facebook, LinkedIn, Google +, Twitter and throw some light on the services that you offer; participate in QA's ; post few updates ; build connections and use the profile in a similar way as we use ours.

Similarly, we should run a PPC Campaign too for a faster way of generating leads. It is not at all possible to get rankings for highly competitive keywords in 3-4 months time. You have to work hard for them and then you would be able to gain benefit from them. You have to be patient and let the website gain back-links, indexes, such that it makes the website a trusted one and you achieve rankings for the competitive keywords.

SEO/ SMO/ PPC is not any magic wand that will give you #1 position in search engines; but a timely work plan based on these areas will surely help you gain visitors to the website and increase overall traffic to the website. The sum of all these activities is sure to give a bounce to the website but yes you need to have PATIENCE.

Other additional activities that you need to work upon is - posting in online discussion boards like - Forums ,blog commenting in do-follow blog websites, sending out email newsletters and using links in your signatures, sending offers to your visitors and customers etc.. But some of the additional mentioned activities can be indulged only if you are ready to spend some extra bucks out of your pockets.

Rest do share your ideas and suggestions so that I too can get to learn new techniques:-)

Email-Marketing

Email-Marketing, is a form of direct marketing which uses your mail system to send commercial messages to your customers.
Email-Marketing is popularly used by many companies to:

• Distribute information to a wider range of targeted customers at a low cost
• It is inexpensive
• Delivery Time for any email message is short
• Easily trackable via unsubscription requests,read receipts, click-through etc.
• High Reach for the subscribers who wish to receive the content based on their interests
• Allows to build royalty and acquire new customers
• Higher profits

How to increase your sales via Email-Marketing
Build a relevant mailing list: This is necessary because you must know who would be interested in buying your product. Build a list for your targeted audience because they are the ones who can be converted into your customers.
Appropriate subject-line: One of the important rule to follow is to choose a good subject line. The subject will give the first impression related to your product. Do not make the email-reader feel that it is a same “spam” mail.
Email:Less : Send less number of mails to people as they would not be interested to learn about your new product again and again. Lower the mail delivery and increase the content for that particular mail.

Disadvantages of Email-Marketing:

• Companies send bulk of unsolicited messages, also referred to as “spam” (To prevent this from happening, the subject line and content of your emails should not imply that they are spam. Avoid using words like “Free”, “Discounts”, “Coupon”, etc.)
• Difficulty in sending a mail on different ISPs and firewalls
• Strenuous to keep an email-recipients them engaged via emails