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:-)

Business to Business Marketing - Digital Marketing

Today most of the companies want to have a social media presence and emerge as a key player in Digital Marketing field. But they fail to realize that only by building any Facebook page or creating a profile on Google+ is not sufficient. 

To build an online reputation is not only difficult but also a challenging job. If a person does not like a certain product or services, the probability in an offline world is somewhat 20% of a person complaining to some other person and so on. But in case of an online medium, this probability mushrooms upto 70-80% as people can simply send out a tweet or update stating the reviews about the services or products offered in a fraction of minute. Hence, creating your profile and maintaining it online is somewhat challenging. SO, one needs to actually plan their activities accordingly so that they know the direction they are going on and follow a strategic plan and activities.

Before that, let's start with the meaning. Digital marketing is a means of marketing that involves using your mobile devices, Smartphone etc. for exchange of information, messages and updates. In this tech-savvy world, no individual can sleep without using mobile phones. Hence, digital marketing has evolved as a premier for most of the brands and organization. Every organization wants to leverage digital media or Internet Marketing to remain available 24*7 and interact with the people out there and build an online reputation.

Having your existence on digital media sites is just a beginning but maintaining that profile or building that profile is important. And the big question that arises here is - How??

Is not creating a page on FB enough or sending out emails to same groups sufficient or creating a profile on Twitter and posting on it more than enough????

The answer is - NO!!!!

1. The basic rule with starting a digital marketing campaign is - to evaluate your goals. Every social media tool has its own importance and usage. No every social media tool will benefit you & your organization. Hence, sit down, take a piece of paper and decide your goals. The goals entirely depend upon the type of organization, kind of eyeballs that you are targeting, showcasing your image or organization's image, geographic segmentation, total shares that you obtain, overall traffic coming to your website, total no. of leads generated.

2. Secondly, note the right audience that you want to focus at as the brand that you want to promote or highlight maybe specially designed to suit some age group. So, you need to properly evaluate your activities.

3. Thirdly, building a brand trust is very important as it makes easy for consumers and customers to follow you in whatever decisions you take and make & any announcement or news posted by you. Building a relation of trust is somewhat difficult even today.

4. Such has been the impact of digital marketing that most of the companies today are developing in-house social media tools to remain engaged with each other. A classic example is - Adobe's Marketing Cloud service that allows digital marketers to analyze a complete set of analytics, advertising, targeting & experiencing management solutions and a real-time dashboard that brings everything together.

Digital Marketing has become a need of an hour and will continue to be in the near future. The companies or organizations just simply need to understand that working in a systematic way and maintaining their profile online is required, that would help to turn data into insights.