Archive for the ‘Competition’ Category

Is your competition good or is it very, very bad?

Thursday, March 19th, 2009

Punch custom web design into your favorite search engine and what do you see? In the case of Yahoo!, the search results show there are 660 million pages. If you’re thinking it’s easier to win the lottery than for your website to rank well for this search phrase, you could be wrong. This search phrase has moderately low competition.

“Why?” you ask. It’s simple–many of the websites competing for this keyword phrase are not search engine optimized. Most companies (particularly small ones) do not spend money on intangibles like search engine optimization. Chances are that if it wasn’t included in the price when they first had their site designed, it probably didn’t happen. Sad for them, but good for you–the competition.

Take care in selecting the right keywords for your business website. Use Google’s Search-Based Keyword Tool to find out how many monthly searches it brings in. Pay no attention to the competition gauge because this tool doesn’t rate the competition–remember, there is good AND bad competition. To rise in the rankings and generally become a much better competitor, you will want to:

  • Increase the number of high ranking websites that link to your site. Be sure that the anchor text (linking text) includes keywords that are important for your site. Use the keywords anchor text when linking within your own web pages as well.
  • Optimize your web pages–using your keywords in all the right places–the title, description, keyword tag, throughout the page. Limit each page to one or two keyword phrases.
  • Keep your website content fresh and unique. Your new customers will enjoy coming back!

    • - Marita Hines, Artspell Web Solutions

    Artspell Web Solutions has been creating websites and database solutions for over nine years. We offer custom web design services at very affordable prices. We’re a full service shop–design, database, search engine optimization, hosting, domain name, and much more.

    Posted in Competition, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) | 7 Comments »