Today I'd like to address another question that came up during my seminar at the JCK Show in Las Vegas on May 31, 2013. Although I was presenting details about e-commerce, a question was asked about keyword ranking. Specifically, one of the attendees asked if they should trust the emails or phone calls they receive from companies offering to increase organic ranking of keywords and also claiming to work with Google.Please refer to yesterday's Daily Golden Nugget where I explain telephone calls and people claiming to work with Google.
In today's Nugget I'll explain the myth of guaranteed keyword ranking...
First of all, there are no guarantees. If and when you manage to get your website ranked in the top search results spot for a target keyword you might only stay there for as long as you continue to build content on your website and maintain up to date search engine optimization techniques. Your ranking will be short lived if your competitor has better SEO people working for them.
Companies that do guarantee keyword ranking are probably going to offer a guarantee of a "long tail" phrase, which means 3 or more words. My home town is Totowa, New Jersey and I could easily achieve top ranking if I spend time and money optimizing my website for "engagement ring totowa new jersey."
I hope you realize what I just did in that example. That's 5 words.
1. engagement
2. ring
3. totowa
4. new
5. jersey
Optimizing a website for "engagement ring totowa NJ" is a 4 word phrase and it would be a similar, but different process. Guaranteeing placement for longer word phrases is much easier than shorter. The question you should ask yourself though is if your customers will actually search for those longer phrases?
Will a customer fully type out "new jersey" or will they type "NJ." Notice that I'm intentionally not capitalizing New Jersey because most people do not use proper punctuation and capitalization when typing into search. In the website log files I analyze I see very few indicators of people fully typing out state names, so that's a wasted phrase to be ranking for.
Looking back at my example of "engagement ring," I'd like to point out that I usually always see far more searches for the plural word "rings" rather than just "ring." In the jewelry industry, even though someone wants to buy a "ring" they usually search for places that sell "rings."
If I ran a less reputable company I would offer the local jewelry store a guarantee to rank their website for the long tail phrase "engagement ring totowa new jersey" because I already know that few other local jewelers would target the words "ring," "new," and "jersey." My guarantee would surly work, and I could charge extra money without fear that I would ever need to make good on the guarantee.
For the jeweler, it would be much more valuable to rank in the top 5 for the phrase "engagement rings" but that's a highly competitive keyword phrase that BlueNile, Kay, and Jarad already rank highly for. Your best bets for high ranking are with local town names. In other words, long tail phrases that include your town name like I used in my example above.
What I've just explained is how the guarantees work. When someone offers you a keyword ranking guarantee you need to look carefully at what they have offered and if the keyword phrase will really help your business. Sure, guarantees could work, but they are never worth the time or the money because the phrases being guaranteed are not worthwhile for your business.
