*This is a guest post by Nick  LeRoy*

Everyone wants to rank number one for trophy keywords within their industry.  What they fail to realize is that rankings for these terms is not always the best.  While traffic sent to your site is important it isn’t nearly as important as conversions.  Think about it this way, would you rather have 10,000 visitors visit your site and only 50 convert or have 200 visitors and 100 convert?  Traffic is important but conversions should always be your top focus.

Ranking For Trophy Keywords

Trophy or ‘money’ keywords are what I refer to as any keyword that drives a ton of traffic but is also extremely competitive.  I have already mentioned that traffic does not always equate to high conversions but some people don’t seem to care.  When you’re attempting to rank for trophy keywords it’s very important to analyze your competition.  Below are three things you must look at.

1. Competitor Site Size – Take a look at the top 5 websites ranking for your trophy keyword.  How many pages do they have indexed?  Is it substantially more then your site?  Granted size doesn’t have a direct effect on rankings but typically the larger the site the more authority it can generate.  Site size may not be an element but site authority is a ranking element.  If your website has ten pages and all your competitors have thousands of pages you know that you could be at a serious disadvantage.
2. Competitor Links - Links arguably have the largest impact on search engine rankings but it’s not a ‘more equals better’ algorithm.  With this in consideration it’s still important to see how many and what type of links your competitors have. Are all of them simply ‘www’ domain links? Do the links contain keywords within the anchor text?  Are they “no-follow”?  All of this has a direct effect in the value of each link.  If your competitors have significantly more links and are of higher value then yours you should know that it will be difficult to rank for this keyword.  This is a very important analysis to conduct before you go after your trophy keywords.
3. Frequently Updated Content – This goes hand in hand with site size but I believe it’s important to have its own bullet point.   What type of frequently updated content does your competition offer?  Do they have a message board? Blogs? Articles? All of these are fantastic sources for frequently updated content.  Most of the time it’s these articles, blogs, and message boards that help generate the quantity of links that a site may have.  Also make sure to note what type of content they are writing and who is linking to it.  If you can improve upon what they already have then you too could gain links through frequently updated content.

Trophy Keyword Alternatives

You’ve done the research and you finally realized that it’s not in your best interest to compete with the big boys.  What else are you left with? You would be surprised how much easier it is to focus on ‘long term’ or ‘long tail’ keywords.  Instead of ranking for the keyword “shoes” you can focus on “size twelve Nike shoes”.  Yes these types of keywords may not drive as much traffic as the trophy keywords but it definitely brings in more qualified traffic.  A more qualified lead increases your chances of making a conversion, which should be everyone’s priority when trying to sell a product/service.  The best part about ranking for ‘long tail’ keywords is that if you find enough of these easier to rank keywords you can drive just as much traffic to your website then focusing on a single trophy keyword.

Set Your SEO Ego Aside

A lot of pride can be placed on a top ranking trophy keyword.  However the goal is to drive traffic and most importantly convert the traffic into customers.  Don’t let your ego get the better of you.  Know what your website offers and its strengths.  Compare your site to your competitors and sit down and figure out the best strategy available to you.  If you know that you aren’t going to be able to compete with the big boys then don’t fool yourself.  It might just be a waste of your time attempting to rank for these trophy keywords as your competitors already have a big lead.   Don’t get me wrong, anyone can rank for any keyword it’s just how much money, time, and hard work they want to put into their campaign.  So set your SEO ego aside and truly decide which route is best for your site.

Nick LeRoy is the Search Marketing Specialist at Minneapolis Web Design firm DKS Systems.  DKS offers award winning web design and development that can be very SEO friendly.

Related posts:

1. Keyword Research Services Supposing you decided to build a house, what would be...
2. Organizing Your Keyword Modifiers (SEJ) I just posted an article on SEJ describing different...
3. Tracking Google Keyword Position (SEJ) I have just posted another article at Search Engine...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

I’ve been recently thinking about optimizing my email signature. The problem is, I have too many things to include there and at the same time want to keep it simple and clean. Running a few experiments I came to important (yet evident) conclusions:

• email / digital signature is of great importance: it influences both the response rate and the conversion (in my case, that’s signing SEO consulting service agreement, but that can be anything from backlinks to growing your social community friendship).
• email / digital signature makes your business / brand look solid and trustworthy;
• email / digital signature should comply with your main purposes.

The last point is both obvious and unclear to me. What’s my purpose? I want people to respond (i.e. I want to get them interested); in some cases I want them to become my Facebook friends (or Twitter followers). Besides, I definitely want to provide them with as much information about myself as I can to cut off unnecessary back-and-forth messaging that takes time and lowers the chances of a positive result.

So what to include in my SEO consultant’s digital signature:

• my DBA name;
• my area of expertise;
• my email address;
• my business-related website URL (at least one of them)…

Well, the above points seem necessary. What about the following ones?

Twitter profile URL or Facebook page URL? Or both? Or LinkedIn resume URL? Depending on where you are most active, it seems to make sense that you should link to your social media profile(s) to [first] let people know more about yourself and your community and [second] let them become your friends and thus grow your social media popularity and influence. What if I am active at numerous social media sites and many of them are important to me?

IM contacts and phone number: that seems also essential things to add as they foster further communication encouraging people to contact you using alternative ways.

Your business address (that both complies with common Internet marketing ethics and makes your business look solid);

Call-to-action (depending on what you want to achieve: encourage people to subscribe or to add you to friends or to buy your product or whatever);

Self-advertisement (never tried that and thus I am not sure about the impact but saw many people do that);

Direct link to your services page. If you (unlike me ) have a well-optimized call-to-action somewhere on your site, it probably makes sense to refer people there.

Disclaimer or privacy policy (also makes your business look solid and secure)…

All the above things definitely make sense but doesn’t that look too much?

Please share your tactics!

Post image: lightkeeper’s signature

Related posts:

1. If You Are Easily Offended… A friend of mine came to me recently saying that...
2. Planning Your Social Networking Strategy All social networks are slightly essentially different [well, let me...
3. Sharing versus Manipulating: Where’s the Line? I’ve been banned from StumbleUpon – not banned but...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

I just posted an article on SEJ describing different ways to organize your keyword list to make the most of your thematic search modifiers. Throughout the post I’ve been describing the necessity of exploring your keyword modifiers to:

• to get more organic search traffic;
• to wisely optimize your internal site structure;
• to know how to interlink;
• to get full control of your long tail strategy;
• to better understand your visitor’s behaviour;
• to get more ideas what to write about.

Here is the short post outline for you:

Post image: Puzzling Sky

Related posts:

1. Tracking Google Keyword Position (SEJ) I have just posted another article at Search Engine...
2. Keyword Research Services Supposing you decided to build a house, what would be...
3. Set Aside Your SEO Ego and Set Reasonable Keyword Goals *This is a guest post by Nick  LeRoy* Everyone wants...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Like color, design, and name a company slogan/tagline is may be an essential part of any brand (note: mine have none yet ). I am not going to list key features of a good marketing slogan (you are most probably well aware of them: short, catchy, unique, etc, etc) – I don’t like repeating what is said in each and every how-to-create-a-good-slogan post. What I still want to point out are some advanced features that are often overlooked by most experienced copywriters.

Keep in mind:

1. Rank your company website for your slogan/tagline (the easiest way to do that is to include your brand name in it);
2. Brand your slogan (e.g. make it part of your company logo/banner);
3. Avoid nonsense and worthless [SEO] phrases (like ‘Cheap and Unique SEO Services‘… grrr…);
4. Create a universally understandable slogan.

So how do I sloganize my brand?

I am not a professional copywriter, but I want to create a slogan for my website. How do I do that? (yep, you did expect me to give some actionable advice, didn’t you?)

>>> Find inspiration in English idioms and cliches. Quick example (note, that’s the first thing that came to my mind, so bare with me ). “Every trick in the book” may become “Every trick in SEO,” or something like that.

Note: don’t forget about slogan feature #4 and also about British/American English language differences.

>>> Check English slang and urban phrases (e.g. ‘internetly speaking‘, nice one, huh?);

Note: again, slang may be area specific and often… well, rude.

>>> Learn from others’ mistakes and successful inventions.

Note: if your business belongs to a different vertical (than the original slogan owner’s), you can freely use someone else’s idea unless it’s universally or generally popular.

It’s time for some examples:

So… Please vote:

Some Fun?

1. Watch this bad slogan game - quite a nice read;

2. Try this slogan generator. This is what I got for ‘SEO’ there:

Post Image: Breakfast

Related posts:

1. Learning Web Design From Movie Posters A movie poster usually determines whether or not I am...
2. SEO Logo – What Should It Tell Your Customer? You might have already noticed (after my color branding,...
3. 4 Things To Check Before You Register A Domain Name If you are serious about your new website, you...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

While it can be rather hard (if not impossible) to handle the off-site SEO campaign, on-site search engine optimization is under your control and it will take you no more than a few hours to check the boxes below. That’s not about adjusting your website to search engines ( as on-site sceptics might say) or about pushing your site to the first page in SERP in a day. That’s an online etiquette which demonstrates your level of competence and also makes the crawlers visit your pages more eagerly.

I have made a keyword analysis and chosen keywords to optimize for;

I have researched my site referrals by digging my search analytics and doing thorough website analysis;

I have made sure my keywords are directly related to my niche;

I use unique short meta tags based on my keywords;

I have written unique content using my primary keywords;

I add quality content at least once a week to ensure search bots have something new to crawl;

I do keep to CCS styles;

I keep my javascript in an external file;

I’ve made sure that my code is clean and is no more than 100 K (the less the better);

I do have a customized 404 error page;

I do take advantage of <h1>, <h2> and <h3> to show search pots and user agents what is important;

I have developed a good clean website structure based on my keyword analysis;

I use readable  URLs (I do mod-rewrite if needed);

I don’t use js, drop-downs or images for my navigation menu – just plain text links;

I don’t overuse images and flash;

I use alt text for my content-rich images and links;

I have a site map to make Big Daddy’s life easier;

I take advantage of rel=”nofollow” attribute to direct the PageRank flow;

I do 301-redirect non-www version to www version (or vice versa) to show Google what I like more;

(Optional) I do let SEO experts handle my on-site optimization!

Anything else? Please share in the comments!

Related posts:

1. Set Aside Your SEO Ego and Set Reasonable Keyword Goals *This is a guest post by Nick  LeRoy* Everyone wants...
2. SEO Consulting Services Before you hire a SEO professional, there are several things...
3. 5 Steps To a Smart Internal Site Structure Website architecture or website inner structure or whatever you prefer...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.