What Keywords can you target for me?

The ones that most accurately describe your business, and the contents of your website. Seems reasonable yes?

The reason for this page, is to explain what is and what is not possible with regard to rankings. Let me detail some examples.

Example One – website about Babies. In this case, the client's website, is about babies. Its a general information site, with tips and advice aimed at mothers and fathers. Products and services are also offered for sale on the site, including about 15 different baby toys. I was asked to get this site a top 10 ranking on Google.com for baby toys.

My reply? Google is far too clever to allow this to happen. Google will want to show its users websites that have baby toys as their main reason for existance on the first page. The top ranked sites will likely have many pages about baby toys, maybe hundreds of products, some reviews and information and advice pages. It would be next to impossible to gain a top 10 ranking on Google result for a site for baby toys, when the site is in fact more generally about babies, not just baby toys.

My advice to the client? To target such a competitive phrase like "Baby Toys" you need to build a site dedicated to baby toys.

So, with regard to "What is Possible to rank your site for" note the following.

  • If a keyword is very, very competitive, your site needs to be really, really about that keyword to compete. Not just a little bit about it.
  • Your best chance of getting rankings, is by targeting keywords that really describe your site. These keywords would likely already be on your site before you start thinking rankings….. they are there because that is what you do…. they are not added later simply so you can rank on them.
  • Its much eaiser to rank on products (eg chanel letter opener) than categories (eg. letter openers).
  • Only very, very popular sites, are able to rank on multiple high value terms. For a site to rank on both "children's furniture" and "antique furniture" would involve more work than building two seperate sites and promoting them seperately. Even if money was no object, gaining both these rankings for the one site would also likely involve a miracle.