This is a very common request. There is at least one important word missing in the above statement however .. and that word is the word ‘FOR’. This is a very important concept to get if you want to compete in Google searches ( or in the searches of any other search engine such as Yahoo, Bing, Etc. ). If you want your website to rank high in Google then it’s vitally important to express EXACTLY what you want it to rank FOR. Imagine for instance you are the owner of a Japanese restaurant located in Dublin, you would definitely want to rank high in Google FOR search terms: Japanese, Restaurant and Dublin … and this would be ideal, that your Japanese restaurant would come up first if someone googled for example the keyword “Dublin”. This is the wrong way to go about it though – the term “Dublin” ( along with most other single words out there ) is way too competitive for the majority of businesses; because you’d be competing against not only other Japanese restaurants in Dublin, but also other restaurants in Dublin of any type and actually every other business located in Dublin along every other site in any way related to Dublin, and not just the Dublin located in Ireland either! (yes there are at least 10 other places known as Dublin ) So it follows that the more specific we can make our search term, the less competitive it gets, (and most importantly the cheaper it becomes to optimise, market or promote for ) ….. so for instance optimising for “Japanese restaurant Dublin” would be ideal, in that we’d theoretically only be competing against the other Japanese restaurants in Dublin. This is known as a search phrase or a search term and this is what you need to do as a business owner. You need to narrow down exactly what you think your customers will search for you under and make that as specific as you can. Really as a business owner you should have a good idea what this would be before you ask your web developer to make your site rank higher. Multiple search terms The downside with picking “Japanese restaurant Dublin” as a search term is that you may also want to rank for say, Sushi Restaurant Dublin. This is of course possible however it gets more difficult to rank a single page for multiple search terms and so you might want to consider adding pages to your site for each search term or phrase. You may also want to be more specific and rank for not only Japanese restaurant Dublin but also Japanese Restaurant Stephens Green. If you have a good idea what you want then a web developer versed in SEO or an SEO specialist will be able to help you. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) If you run your own business website then it’s really good to know something about SEO yourself. SEO is a bit like wine, it’s extremely easy at the shallow end and virtually impossible at the deep end. Google SEO best practices to out some find more. Be aware though that there are 2 flavours of SEO – “White Hat” and “Black Hat”. Never engage in Black Hat practices which in general involve one or more ways of “cheating” the search engine. Some SEO companies engage in Black Hat techniques and these could cost you in the long run. Conclusions

• Nobody can just make your site just rank high on Google, it has to be “rank high on Google for ” You ideally need to know your own market and work out your own search terms. A web developer or seo specialist can do this for you but will really only be teasing the information out of you yourself in most cases.
• Non specific search terms are by definition more competitive and therefore will cost much more and in some cases be impossible to rank for anyway.
• You may need to consider multiple pages for multiple search terms.
• As a business owner you would greatly benefit from some basic research into SEO

Comments are closed.