How much work it will cost to optimize a web page and get it to rank high in the search engines depends mainly on the level of competition and the targeted keyword phrase itself. Keywords with little competition require different tactics than keywords with high competition. If you want to get the best possible results for your website, you must use the right tactics with the right keyword.
1) On-page optimization has a higher impact for long keywords
The relative value of on-page web page optimization is very significant if you target very long keywords with little competition:
For example: say you want to be listed for the search term “buy blue nike ‘the overplay’ basketball shoe in Atlanta“. In this case, it’s probably enough to optimize one of your web pages for that search term because the competition for that search term is low. You don’t need many inbound links to get high rankings for that keyphrase. When targeting more competitive keywords, you’ll need more backlinks to rank high on the search results pages (SERP’s) of Google, Bing, Yahoo etc.
2) Even if you target competitive keywords, it is important to optimize your web page content
The chart above might create the impression that on-site optimization is not important to get high rankings for very competitive keywords. That is not the case. Optimizing the content of a web page is the essential basis for high search engine rankings. By optimizing a web page for a keyphrase, you tell search engines that the web page is relevant to that keyphrase. If more than one web page has been optimized for that keyphrase then the web page with the best inbound links will get the highest position in the search results.
3) First optimize your web page content, then focus on getting more backlinks
If you want to get high rankings for a keyword, the first step is to optimize one of your web pages for that keyword. Then work on the links that point to the optimized web page to outrank other websites that have been optimized for the same keyword:
4) The more pages you optimize, the better
When you optimize your website, optimize different pages of your website for different keyphrases. Start with longer keyword phrases that don’t have a lot of competition and then proceed with more competitive keywords. For example, start with the keywords “buy sneakers in atlanta“, “buy cowboy boots in atlanta“, “shoe shop atlanta“, etc. When you have managed to get high rankings for many of these keyphrases, Google will know that your website is relevant to the topic “shoes”. As soon as Google knows that your website is relevant to the topic, it will be much easier to get high rankings for more competitive keywords such as “buy shoes” or even “shoes“. The more pages of your website you optimize for different, but related keywords, the better.
5) It’s not necessary to have more links than your competitors
It’s not always necessary to have more links than your competitors. You need better links. Try to get links to your website that use the targeted keyphrase as the link text (also called anchor text) and that point to the web page on your website that has been optimized for that keyphrase. Don’t focus on quantity, focus on quality. Getting hundreds of links from a link farm won’t help your website as much as a few dozen links from relevant web pages with authority. If your website has both optimized web pages and good inbound links then it will be easy to outrank web pages that only have one factor.
We hope these tips help to get you started and assess which strategy works best for your business!
