Can I get a site ranked in this target market?

[MrYossu]

Hello,

I'm only a beginner at SEO, having spent more of my time building sites and doing other forms of IM, so please be gentle with me!

I've just been asked to build a site for a translation company based in Switzerland. Their current site has little to recommend it, and I have no problems about building a better one.

My problem is that they want the site to get traffic (duh, really!), but I have no idea how realistic this is. I know enough to know that trying to rank for "translation" is a waste of time. As yet, I don't know what long-tail keyphrases they would want, but then I don't think they would know either!

I know there are other ways of getting traffic apart from natural SE ratings, and I will be looking a those as well. I am currently trying to find out if it's possible to rank them on natural searches at all, and if so, for what keywords/phrases.

Anyone able to help me work out how to get them some rankings?

TIA

[Kevin Lam]

I'd have to say it's a waste of time and effort. However, if they go for "translation service" or something to that affect, it would be more beneficial.

As for me, I usually just search for "English Vietnamese Dictionary". That's the only translation I need and people who are like me aren't looking to pay for it. However, there are individuals and companies out there who require the "translation service" and willing to pay big bucks for it. Obviously, that's the market you should be going after.

[MrYossu]

Hi Kevin,

Thanks for the reply, however if I type "translation service" (without the quotes) into Google, I get 328 million results! How can I rank amongst all that?

Even "english to french translation service" (again, no quotes, languages picked at random) gives 16 million results, which sounds like pretty stiff competition.

Do you think it's reasonable to try and rank with those sorts of numbers? If not, how would I go about getting some sort of ranking?

Thanks

[xanol]

You need to search with quotes to get a better idea of the competition.

And, of course the phrases you target need to actually get some search volume to be useful.

[AlexTampa]

go after edu links, they should not be that hard if its a quality site

[4morereferrals]

Thats cute :-)

Originally Posted by AlexTampa

go after edu links, they should not be that hard if its a quality site

Uhhhh ... this is what keyword research is ALL about. Client needs to assist!

They want traffic? ... ok ...

Put up nude photos of Britney Spears or 2 of the latest American idol contestants ....

Ohhh they want traffic that converts to sales? Hrrrmmm... They need to find out what they want to sell, and mate that up to what keywords phrases getting searched they may be able to rank for.

From there - On Page SEO the landing page / site - then backlink that like MAD for the long tails you decide on.

You should be able to kill this longtail ...

Results 1 - 10 of about 1,470 for "english to french translation service". (0.33 seconds)

Translation service will be a bit more of a challenge ...

Results 1 - 10 of about 2,050,000 for "translation service". (0.24 seconds)


#10 competitor seems to be wise to backlinking tactics - they have a little over a 1,000

Have a look here:

Site Explorer - Search Results

This is still very doable ... with a concerted effort.

After 60 days - im competing on a single word keyword phrase with over 8.7m competing pages "in quotes" ... at #15 after a brutal google dance. Most of my competitors have insane amounts of backlinks - like 5 figures.

Just advising that data for you as a yardstick to see if you feel compelled to move forward and try to go for it for your client.

All the best!

[MrYossu]

Hello,

Thanks for the reply, there's some great information here!

Originally Posted by 4morereferrals

You should be able to kill this longtail ...

Results 1 - 10 of about 1,470 for "english to french translation service". (0.33 seconds)

Translation service will be a bit more of a challenge ...

Results 1 - 10 of about 2,050,000 for "translation service". (0.24 seconds)

I didn't realise that the quotes were needed for an accurate assessment of the competition. When you put those in, it looks a little more likely that I could compete :-)

Originally Posted by 4morereferrals

#10 competitor seems to be wise to backlinking tactics - they have a little over a 1,000

Have a look here:

Site Explorer - Search Results

This is still very doable ... with a concerted effort.

Hmm, that's very interesting. The #1 result in Google has almost all of his 170 inlinks from the same domain, as do some of the others. It's interesting that quite a few of the first page results don't have huge numbers of inlinks.

Any other major factors that will help them get such a high ranking? From the little I know, it doesn't seem so hard to get a couple of hundred inlinks for a specific phrase. Surely there's more to it than just that though.

Originally Posted by 4morereferrals

After 60 days - im competing on a single word keyword phrase with over 8.7m competing pages "in quotes" ... at #15 after a brutal google dance. Most of my competitors have insane amounts of backlinks - like 5 figures.

Just advising that data for you as a yardstick to see if you feel compelled to move forward and try to go for it for your client.

All the best!

Thanks, you've given me some hope!

[Silveda]

You can always to PPC if you want immediate results.

I am also a firm believer in long tails, you should be able to meet your goals faster with them.

But remember, with the proper effort, you can rank for anything, some are just much harder :P

[maestero2010]

The best thing is to read on some e-books over SEO which will better help you in guiding through all the procedures of optimizing a website.

[MrYossu]

Originally Posted by maestero2010

The best thing is to read on some e-books over SEO which will better help you in guiding through all the procedures of optimizing a website.

I think I need to know more about how to get off-site optimisation done. I think I know enough about the on-site stuff, especially for a fairly simple site as this will be.

Any recommendations for some clear concise details?

Thanks

[Kevin Lam]

Have you looked through the Google SEO guide?

[MrYossu]

Originally Posted by Kevin Lam

Have you looked through the Google SEO guide?

I looked through it a while back, but as I remember (could be wrong), it was mostly about on-site optimisation. I understand that pretty well, especially for a simple site as this would be.

I'm more interested in off-site techniques to rank for this site. Any ideas there?

Thanks

[Jon Steel]

Onsite SEO should consist of the following:

1) Backlinks (already mentioned)
2) Meta Content: Your Meta-Title and Meta-Description MUST contain your key word string. This is vitally important.
3) Keyword Density used on your webpage
4) URL - If you have a URL with the keywords in it, this will work in your advantage
5) Time - the longer your website exists, the more "respect" Google will give it

good luck,

js

[Kevin Lam]

Jon, don't forget to mention the internal linking, tagging, RSS, sitemap, meta-description and page title.

[SakeSushi]

and the header tags.

to add on to 4morereferrals posts, do the necessary keyword researches and add in a couple of nouns such as

english to french translation company (add a company)
english to french translation companies

english to french translation service
english to french translation services (pluralize the noun)

With even longer tail keywords, you will be able to capture the larger market share of the low-volume searches

[Kevin Lam]

Originally Posted by MrYossu

I'm more interested in off-site techniques to rank for this site. Any ideas there?

There's lots of ideas, it's just a matter of taking action.

I mean, take your pick:

- article marketing
- social media marketing (myspace, twitter, facebook, etc.)
- video marketing
- blogging/responding to blogs
- social bookmarking
- responding to blogs
- forum marketing
- directories (make sure they have an elimination process like Yahoo! Directory)
- google maps
- google profile
- google news
- press releases (paid and free)

There's plenty more to go round, but these are the bulk of it. Get on it and take massive action. Good luck.

[Peter Adamson]

The translation market is very fragmented. You can't just translate English to French in a general way and make money. You have to specialise in legal, industrial, technical, academic, or some specific type of translation. Find out what market they are targetting and then do your keyword research based on that. If they specialise in software manuals, that would be one set of long tail keywords. If they do proposals for industrial firms working internationally, that would be another set. It sounds to me like you need to sit down with them and get your head around their business.

[timpears]

From what I have read, and I am trying to get over the hurdle of putting it into action, I have learned that you should be able to rank for just about anything you want to. It will take time and effort.

1. keyword rich domain
2. keyword rich title
3. keyword title or H1 tags
4. as many back links as you can get, the higher PR the better.
there are a number of WSOs right now that can help with this
I just bought the 500 forum backlink package a few days ago

Obviously you have to have good content, but I would think that is a given. How long it will take to rank if the first page in Google is made up of lots of PR4 to PR8 or higher, is a question I can't answer. And that is the struggle I am having, which niches to try and go after to build sites that I can monitize with Adsense.

[MrYossu]

Originally Posted by Jon Steel

Onsite SEO should consist of the following:

1) Backlinks (already mentioned)

I assumed that was offsite, as it's nothing to do with my site.

Originally Posted by Jon Steel

2) Meta Content: Your Meta-Title and Meta-Description MUST contain your key word string. This is vitally important.
3) Keyword Density used on your webpage
4) URL - If you have a URL with the keywords in it, this will work in your advantage

OK, understood all of those thanks.

Originally Posted by Jon Steel

5) Time - the longer your website exists, the more "respect" Google will give it

I haven't much choice about this one! I don't reckon their current site is helpingthem any, so I'm basically starting from scratch.

Thanks for the ideas, it gives me plenty to work on.

[MrYossu]

Originally Posted by SakeSushi

and the header tags.

to add on to 4morereferrals posts, do the necessary keyword researches and add in a couple of nouns such as

english to french translation company (add a company)
english to french translation companies

english to french translation service
english to french translation services (pluralize the noun)

With even longer tail keywords, you will be able to capture the larger market share of the low-volume searches

Thanks! Some great ideas there

[MrYossu]

Originally Posted by Kevin Lam

There's lots of ideas, it's just a matter of taking action.

I mean, take your pick:

- article marketing
- social media marketing (myspace, twitter, facebook, etc.)
- video marketing
- blogging/responding to blogs
- social bookmarking
- responding to blogs
- forum marketing
- directories (make sure they have an elimination process like Yahoo! Directory)
- google maps
- google profile
- google news
- press releases (paid and free)

There's plenty more to go round, but these are the bulk of it. Get on it and take massive action. Good luck.

yeah, but what will I do with the rest of the afternoon

Thanks very much for that list. I guess I can't complain about not knowing what to do now eh!

[MrYossu]

Originally Posted by Peter Adamson

The translation market is very fragmented. You can't just translate English to French in a general way and make money. You have to specialise in legal, industrial, technical, academic, or some specific type of translation. Find out what market they are targetting and then do your keyword research based on that. If they specialise in software manuals, that would be one set of long tail keywords. If they do proposals for industrial firms working internationally, that would be another set. It sounds to me like you need to sit down with them and get your head around their business.

That's very good advice. At the moment, I'm just tying to get a feel for what I can do for them, so hadn't gone into that sort of detail. However, I can see the sense in what you are saying, and will need to discuss it with them more before moving forward.

Specialisation is a good thing as far as I can see, as it gives me more chance to find long-tail keywords. I was worried by the competition for the simple keywords, but this gives me a lot more hope.

[jitterbug978]

i love how insightful and helpful each post is... i learn a bit more each and every day i spend here.

[MrYossu]

Originally Posted by jitterbug978

i love how insightful and helpful each post is... i learn a bit more each and every day i spend here.

Why not show your appreciation to the people who have helped by clicking the "Thanks" button? It doesn't cost you anything, but makes others feel better about helping.

[Kevin Lam]

It certainly makes me feel good, hehe. Just trying to know I really am helping.