Search engine optimization (or SEO for short) is the process of making a website as search engine-friendly as possible so that it shows up in the highest, most prominent positions in search results. Basically, when someone searches on a term that relates to your business, you want to be sure that your website comes up near the top, and preferably first!
The reason for this is that it is statistically proven that the top 3 to 5 results that show up for any given search get almost all of the clicks, and the further down the page you go (or onto subsequent pages), the less and less traffic you’ll receive.
So it’s very important for businesses, especially small and medium sized businesses, to take search engine optimization very seriously. It could be the difference between getting your business seen and making a sale, or remaining unknown while your competitors rake in business.
But how can a small business compete with all of the larger companies and giant corporations floating around on the web? Is it even possible to outrank them in the search results when they have such vast amounts of resources available to them?
The simple answer is: yes. And it’s all about the strategy you take when approaching your SEO.
If you’re a camera store and you try to outrank the major players for the search term “cameras”, you’re sunk. You literally have almost no chance of taking those spots from them. It isn’t impossible, but it would take a huge amount of time and effort. And that isn’t worth it because there is a better strategy.
That better strategy is targeting long tail and local keywords to give yourself a better chance of showing up higher in the results. Sure, those terms will get less traffic, but the idea is that instead of trying to fight for a very tiny piece of a big pie, you instead take a whole bunch of very large pieces of smaller pies! In the end, you’ll be much better off.
So what is a long tail keyword? Well quite simply a long tail keyword is a longer, more specific keyword, as opposed to a short generic one. So for instance, “cameras” is a generic keyword, whereas “Point and shoot digital cameras” is a long tail keyword.
By doing some good keyword research, you’ll be able to identify a list of such long tail keywords that get a decent amount of search traffic, but also have low competition, thus making it easy for you to rise to the top of the search results for those terms.
That brings us to local keywords. Local keywords are valuable for much the same reason that long tails are. They’re highly specific, and so the amount of competition you face is much lower. Local keywords also have the added benefit of being location specific, meaning they’re likely to provide your site with more qualified traffic.
The vast majority of small and medium businesses focus on local sales, and so someone coming to your site from across the country, or in another country, probably has little to no value. By targeting local keywords, you get the benefits of lower competition for search rankings and also ensure that the traffic coming to your site is made up of people who are actually potential customers.
So if you’re that camera store, and you’re operating in Mississauga, Ontario, trying to get your site to rank for “cameras” is a waste of your time. You probably won’t hit the top, and even if you do the traffic it brings you might not fit your target customer profile.
However, by targeting the keyword “Mississauga digital cameras” or “Mississauga camera accessories”, or other such terms, you have a much higher chance of taking one of those top spots in the search results, and the visitors they bring you will be exactly the kind you want: potential customers.
