Appearing At The Top
Google is the front door of the Internet. Most people will start their internet experience with a search and probably come back to a search regularly while they are online. Therefore, appearing on the first page of results is enormously valuable to any organisation.
The Top 10 Positions.
By default, the first page of a Google search shows the top 10 results. (Not including the paid positions and local search map). When was the last time you clicked through to the second page? Probably never. Unless when you were looking for your own website.
So you need to be in the top 10 to get any sort of traffic from search engines and in my experience its only when you get in the Top 5 that you see real impact.
You Can't Rank Well For Everything.
However you can't be in the Top 10 for everything. Google is measuring the relevancy of your website against the user's search terms and the broader and less focussed your website, the less relevant you will be scored for any individual search.
Focus & Emphasis
So to be scored as relevant you need to focus on a few key topics. Somewhere between 10-15 words seems to be about right. Some will relate to the whole website and should be used on the "Home" or "About Us" page while others will be more specific and relate to a particular section.
Google will look at the titles of your webpages and also what words are used in a heading font as part of their relevancy calculation (amongst a lot of other things) so it is important that your keywords are used in prominent positions to maximise visibility.
Make Sure There Are Fish In The Pond
However there is a catch. You may choose a keyword that is important to your business and do a really good job of giving it the proper emphasis and start ranking well for that search. But despite all of this you might not see any change in traffic.
This is what happens if you chose a term or phrase that your customers don't use. You have got all the right fishing gear but there are no fish in the pond. So when you are picking your target keywords make sure they are terms you customers will use when searching for a business like yours.
Of course this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) but for all the technical complexity, the selection of your target keywords is the foundation of success.
Groundstation can help you find the right target keywords, contact us for a chat!
