Time to go for the big one?

[DavidO]

My health niche (blood pressure) site has been active for three years now. I've done well getting good positions for moderately competitive keywords like "lower blood pressure naturally" and even "lower blood pressure" by itself.

Now I want to go after the grand-daddy of keywords in my niche: "high blood pressure".

Previously I've been advised not to waste my efforts because the SERPs are dominated by big health organizations like the Mayo Clinic. But I've noticed that a competitor of mine whose site is highly commercial has made it to the front page. However, the fact that he's an M.D. and has access to high-powered links that I don't have probably makes the difference.

Is it possible for a small guy to dominate a keyword like this or should I stick to long-tail variations like "high blood pressure treatment"?

The whole keyword group will be a new campaign for me so how should I go about it? Simply by adding new pages to my existing site or should I add a /highbloodpressure/ directory to my root domain and add new pages to it?

Any suggestions that can help my strategy would be very much appreciated!

[dreamgirl9]

i'm having this problem.please help

[Intrepreneur]

Get onto angela's Links.. .the .edu links will help you.. everyone deserves a tops psot on Google as long as they are prviding good information. So go for it.. I'm after a highly competitive keyword from the word go.. that's the way it should always be with your site.

One extremely competetive keyword, and a few others not so competetive on to of all your longer tail variations.

You need these big keywords to get rich, it's not easy but work hard and you'll get it.

[Smokey_Joe]

Depends on how you evaluate your site's performance now, I mean how satisfied you are with the traffic you are getting.

There's nothing impossible, you know, but if the keyword is dominated by a bunch of authoritative sites with more resources available, it is going to be a tedious task. Anyway, you are going to need to keep all the backups up in case things do not work in the end. Try to analyse the overall properties of the competitor sites to estimate the amount of work to be done.

[metafever]

If you don't mind black hat tricks you can always do "Google Bowling" on your competitors.

While i don't do this technique myself, I have heard its very easy to deploy.

Do a quick Google search or go to some black hat seo forums to learn about the method.

[TheHutz]

Hi David,

There are a fantastic range of ways to out do them - no matter how big the other sites are. (All without blackhat techniques. Maybe a few grey but thats all )

Yes, it will be tough, but it's all achievable.

The thing is - would "high blood pressure" convert that well? That seems very much a research type word. I know the volume of traffic would increase and in turn customers, but I'm thinking customers:effort ratio it might not be that beneficial.

Content will of course be a great start, so adding /high-blood-pressure as a subdirectory will be good to house your info.

One easier method would be to syndicate your content as much as possible. Video marketing, article writing, pod casting, guest blogging are all great starts.

If you need any further info/help - feel free to give me a shout.

John