So, today, I had the first two hours of Squeezathon on the phone and the lines were lit up. I didn’t stop talking for two hours! It was awesome! Over the past couple of days we helped 250+ people to get their squeeze pages up and running. (That we know about.) Feels very good, indeed.
But I had one call that disturbed me, and thought I’d blog about it so that maybe it can help someone else.
One man had a page that is #1 on Google, and he was hesitant to put a squeeze page on his website as the front door. Now, any smart marketer knows that the squeeze page always, always, always goes first, right? Well, that’s a little hidden secret that a lot of people just don’t understand. Every single thing you do online should be geared toward list building.
So, I asked how much traffic he was getting from Google. He told me 30K hits in the past three months. Not too shabby, not at all.
But I looked at his stats. He had a 4 million + Alexa ranking. Hmm… That didn’t compute. I think his stats were pretty far off.
Knowing that, I asked what his keyword was. I won’t type it in here because I don’t want anyone to realize who this person was. My intention isn’t to embarrass anyone. So, let’s just say it was a really obscure keyword. In fact, when I checked it on SEOBook, there were NO results whatsoever for it.
What’s the big lesson?
You can have a No. 1 ranking in Google, but if nobody is searching for that keyword, it DOESN’T MATTER. I mean, I can have the #1 spot for “raccoon clothes,” but it’s not going to bring my little tailor shop any hits, you know? People have to be actively searching for your keywords or your ranking, no matter how high it is just doesn’t matter. Not a hoot.
Do some keyword research before deciding what keywords to target. If the keyword has been searched for at least 10,000 times in a month, it’s probably a pretty good keyword. I mean, you might have stronger keywords in the list that pops up, but you also have to determine how competitive they are. You don’t want to try to compete for a keyword like “pets” for example because the competition is too high. Find something lower on the list, and something pretty specific, too.
Here’s an example:
If you search chairs, you’re going to have tons of competition.
If you look further down the list, you might find “office chairs.” Well, that might still be too competitive.
But what about “leather office chairs”? That’s a bit narrower.
But what if you used “black leather office chairs”? That’s a long-tail keyword that might get some very targeted traffic to your website and if you’re selling black leather office chairs, your chance of converting your visitor, who is looking for such a specific item, to a sale just skyrocket.
So, two things to take away:
1. If you’re using a keyword nobody is searching for, you can be #1 on the page at Google, but it won’t do you any good.
2. Never try to compete for the most competitive keywords. Choose specific long-tail phrases and not only get more traffic, make more sales, as well.
How ’bout that?
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Pat Marcello | 
10 4th, 2008| 
I just figure I’ll catch more readers with the real me than the SEO me. She’s really boring. All that META tagging and link gathering and on-page optimization! It’s almost too much to bear!
