Picking Keywords for SEO – A Different View

The first step to developing any search engine optimization
effort is picking keywords. The general consensus is pick
keywords with solid amounts of traffic and a minimum of
competition. At the risk of being laughed off the Internet,
here’s a different view.

Going Big…Going VERY Big

Should you do research to identify keywords receiving lots of
traffic? Absolutely. Of this group, should you identify the
keywords with the lowest amount of competition? Again, yes.
After all, who would be foolish enough to try to attack keywords
with a few million competing sites? Well, me for one.

People that go for a keyword phrase like “for sale by owner” [2
million plus searches a month and KEI of 0.000000000...] are often
dismissed as amateurs with unrealistic expectations. For those
of us that have been in the business for some time, this bias
deserves some reconsideration. The motivation is greed…pure and
simple greed.

Seo greed arises when one achieves top listings in Google, Yahoo
and MSN for a site. Using the example above, assume the client
is a car-listing site and you’ve conquered all the listings for
“car for sale by owner.” Yes, it took 15 months, but the client
is happy and so are you. Or are you?

After a few weeks, you start thinking, “Damn, I should have gone
for the phrase ‘for sale by owner’ and the extra 700,000
searches a month.” You start getting visions of changing the
site, but the anchor text in links and so on is already set. In
the end, you feel dissatisfied because you want more, damn it!

A Different Approach

Okay, I am not advocating you throw competition analysis out the
window. You should absolutely find keywords that have solid
traffic and low competition. If nothing else, you need
short-term carrots to keep you motivated. That being said, you
must also plan for the inherent evil greed in your twisted
little seo soul. Don’t even try to deny it.

Here it comes…

I am advocating you go for keywords with monstrous amounts of
traffic, competition analysis be damned! Yes, I know. What a
fool.

Throwing caution to the wind, I am even going to argue
that…[drum roll]…you consider one-word keywords! I know…
Blasphemy!…Insanity!…Stupid Moron…etc. But think about it. When
you’ve accomplished your goals with low competition keywords,
why not have a go at the biggies? What if you get them…even a
few?

Putting it all together, my theory is this. Identify the low
competition keywords, optimize your site and so on. Just make
sure you also throw some “wishful thinking” keywords. If the
optimized site survives for three or four years, you might just
be thankful you did.

I’m off to optimize for the keyword “travel.” Lets see, Expedia
is listed number 1 with a page rank of 8 and 67 thousand back
links on Google.

Ha! Expedia I mock thee!