Search Engine Optimization - The Right Way

If Search Engine Optimization isn't done the right way, it can be waste of huge amount of resources. Why do I say so?

Ask yourself 2 questions,
1. Am I optimizing for the keyword that identifies with my website?
2. How many people are searching for that keyword?

Just like the gurus say, you need to understand the purpose of life, in the similar manner you need to identify the purpose of your website. Then you need to identify the keywords which should bring people to your website. Check their frequency on overture.com, google trends, keyword discovery to zero down on your keywords.

The secret lies in your thinking, yes first you need to think like the person who's looking for something. In other words, you need to look for your audience. It doesn't matter if your audience is 500 people. For example: if you're selling sleeveless T-Shirts and there 500 people looking for it in a day, you stand a better chance of conversion if you optimize for the keyword ''sleeveless t shirts" rather than "t shirts" which would be more generic, very competitive , requiring huge amount of resources and less rewarding. Lets look at the visitors perspective, I want to buy a sleeveless t shirt, I will most probably type the word ''sleeveless t shirts" in the search engine(so would many people). I land up on your website, I got what I was looking for, I will check as many sleeveless t shirts, until I get what I want or I get bored.

On an average a person spends less than 3 minutes on a website or just 3 pageview. But suppose if I came to your website through the keyword "t shirts", are you sure, I am looking for sleeveless shirt, although with the physique I have it would look good (are you listening girls?), but I some how don't like wearing them, I prefer polo t shirts (very picky). I will be disappointed not to find that you don't sell polo t shirts and I will not look into other pages so your bounce rate would increase and thats bad!!

Secondly, you need to think like the search engine, why should you be put on no.1 for any keyword if you do not match up to it. No matter what you do if you don't deserve the ranking you wont be on it for long. Yes, search engines have put their check in place to know whether you deserve the position or not (it fails sometimes though, cause we know the checks ;) ).

But if you don't deserve that place but some how you are related to that keyword, like you would be to your maternal aunts second cousin' nephew, and you have some stupid stubborn marketing guy who doesn't know a bit of online marketing but wants to be optimized for a particular keyword. You call me, either I'll get you the ranking or I will give him my piece of mind ;).

PS: Look for the keywords, "t shirts" and "funny t shirts", doesn't seems very competitive but very rewarding