Keywords Can Be Confusing

Anybody starting an Internet based business is going to get confused about Keywords before very long.

Naturally enough we need to discuss the subject in the context of Google, because while there are lots of search engines, it dominates the traffic.

Look at any Google Search results and we’ll see three sections – at the top are the sponsored links, in the right hand sidebar more Google Ads, and in the middle the genuine Search results.

Google is effectively two search engines at the same time. One that searches the ads people are paying it to display, and another which searches the Internet for articles relating to the search query. The two are mutually dependent. Nobody would use Google for search if it only returned ads – the content is what most searches are looking for. If nobody paid Google for the ads it wouldn’t have be able to search the content for free.

There are tens of millions of web sites, the majority of which are spam, but even without those the number of “real” sites is in the millions. These pretty much break down into two categories a) those sites selling something and b) those sites contributing something (for free).

Google understandably wants the sites that are selling something to compete for position in the sponsored links sections while it wants the sites contributing something to compete for position in the content part of the results.

(This differentiation quickly gets confused by the sites contributing content and also “selling” stuff – principally carrying Google Ads – but we’ll look at that later).

Keywords is the currency of the “selling something” sites, and Search Engine Optimization is the science of labeling web site pages with those keywords. It used to be the way to get marketing site displayed in the content results, but Google’s moving on from that.

So the simple theory of SEO and Keywords is a) build a page b) add appropriate Keywords c) buy Google Ads related to those Keywords d) sit back while the ads bring the traffic e) optimize the ads spend, Keywords, and Conversion strategy until the page is making a profit f) retire to the Caribbean on the profits.

Couldn’t be simpler!

Except everybody else is doing the same thing. Major businesses have big budgets with no expectation of ROI. These guys don’t care what the ads cost because their strategy is about dominating the traffic, or brand management, or ?

Anybody wanting to compete for position has to be able to outbid these advertisers in the Google auction. The only winner in that game is the search engine, of course.

Never mind, the SEO consultants tell us. The answer lies in the “long tail” (an over used expression if ever there was one).

The theory of long tail keywords is the big spenders optimize for the high traffic terms, leaving the lower traffic keywords for guys like us. To get traffic all we need to do is find enough keywords in the long tail and build our SEO and PPC campaigns around those.

Couldn’t be simpler! All we need to do is pay somebody who understands all this to do it for us. Then we’ll be able to retire to our boat in BVI.

Except, by the time we get there all the long tail keywords have been dominated by somebody else. They cost almost as much as the high traffic words, but produce a lot less action, and make more money for the search engine and the consultants.

Meanwhile, we run out of cash.

There are other factors which impact the picture, but for the moment we’ll keep it simple.

As an example of how this transpires we have the Front Office Box site checked out by Website Grader for free thanks to Hubspot’s generosity.

Grader tell us
“A website grade of 94/100 for frontofficebox.com means that of the hundreds of thousands of websites that have previously been evaluated, our algorithm has calculated that this site scores higher than 94% of them in terms of its marketing effectiveness. The algorithm uses a proprietary blend of over 50 different variables, including search engine data, website structure, approximate traffic, site performance, and others.

The website frontofficebox.com ranks 61,141 of the 987,698 websites that have been ranked so far.”

Impressive? Well we think so. But?

Grader finds keywords on our site and tells us how we rank for those keywords and the typical monthly search volume. This is what it tells us:

Keyword = Sales Management Search Volume = 9,932 Rank = 100+

Keyword = Sales Process Search Volume = 1,214 Rank = 100+

Keyword = Sales Qualification Search Volume = 20 Rank = 3

This tells us a number of things:

Google ranks us highly on a keyword the more discerning “searcher” is looking for.

This keyword is a fundamental component of the other two keywords, but we get no credit in the wider category for our contribution.

The keywords related to our business have already been dominated by others, probably with less sophisticated contribution.