SEO best practice to rank for Keyword

12 replies
Hey Folks.

I have a question, first time posting so apologies if this is the wrong section.

I have a website which gets around 3000 unique views daily, we have dropped a lot of oragnic traffic over the past 6 months, the last google update in April did not do us many favours, even though on paper we have a very SEO friendly website both off site and on site

My question is, we are looking to rank for 1 specific keyword ideally at the top of google!

Currently we rank about 20th which is awful! The keyword does not have a massive amount of competition but has a high search volume

We are looking initially to rank in the UK for this search term

As well as our own website we own the keyword domain we are looking to rank for, so lets say we are looking to rank for Brown Shoes, we own brownshoes.com and shoes.com

My question is, in order to rank for this, what would be the best step forward for these domains?

Forward them to my blog on my 3000+ views website
Create a mini website with unique content linking to my main website?
Create a completely unique ecom website for this keyword which handles payments / orders

Looking forward to your replies
#keyword #practice #rank #seo
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  • Profile picture of the author blairquane
    Assuming you're blog is about the same or similar topic to the keyword you want to rank for, I would be using the power of the 3000+ views as Google is already seeing this authority and sending you traffic. Starting a new website or ecom store would not be my preferred approach because you are starting from scratch with no traffic. Take advantage of the existing traffic and add specific content focused around the keyword, to the existing site.
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    • Profile picture of the author Supplementboss
      Thank you for the reply.

      In your opinion would directing the brown shoes . com ( using as an example ) to the blog on my main site, or the actual product on my main site hold much SEO value for that keyword?
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  • Profile picture of the author Frank Donovan
    Originally Posted by Supplementboss View Post

    Currently we rank about 20th which is awful! The keyword does not have a massive amount of competition but has a high search volume
    I'm assuming you're talking about an ecommerce site. If so, what's your conversion rate for the 3000 daily visitors? If they're arriving via a search engine, what keyword(s) are they using?

    The conversion rate matters because you might be targeting the wrong keywords, or at least not the optimal ones. I realise that "brown shoes" is just an example, but it's not the most buyer-focused keyword so a high search volume wouldn't necessarily translate into high sales.

    And why just one keyword? There must be several you could target for any page or item featured on the site.
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    • Profile picture of the author Supplementboss
      Thanks for the reply Frank, conversion rate is currently just over 4%

      The site has been online since 2012, we have built up a large following 1/4 of daily sales come from email 1/2 comes from ads, 1/4 comes from organic, so we are looking to improve organic and decrease ad spend,

      As mentioned 6-12 months ago 3/4 was coming from organic, but we have really taken a bit of an organic beating, and we are not 100% sure why

      kind of done everything we could think of to put ourselves in the best possible position

      We do not want to just target one keyword, its simply the top seller, with the most interest but with the least amount of competition.

      And one where by if we did achieve top spot on google would likely double our daily turnover
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      • Profile picture of the author FizaAli
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        • Profile picture of the author savidge4
          Originally Posted by FizaAli View Post

          You should need to do some web 2.0 posting and get some backlinks for that keyword which one you want to rank higher.
          This is a very very common suggestion. I personally dont think it works. I would rather spend my time and energy placing ALL of my content on the primary URL and not waste my time and money building out low PA DA pages pointing to my "Money Site"

          If in the Registration of the site the name is the same for the primary site and say 10 web 2.0 sites, dont you think Google will see this? its a BAD practice on a good day, and a huge penalty on a bad day.
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  • Profile picture of the author nitudseo
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    • Profile picture of the author WF- Enzo
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      Better use the search box for similar discussions. This has already been discussed loads of times here.

      Originally Posted by nitudseo View Post

      Hey Everyone,

      I have a question, first time posting so apologies if this is the wrong section.
      I want to know what are the best building strategies?

      Thanks in advance!!
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  • Profile picture of the author Supplementboss
    I did, i could not find what i was looking for, maybe i was being blind though!
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    • Profile picture of the author Frank Donovan
      Originally Posted by Supplementboss View Post

      I did, i could not find what i was looking for, maybe i was being blind though!
      Enzo was responding to another member whose post has since been removed.

      By the way, if you haven't done so already, hover over your user name in the black toolbar at the top and click on "View Classic". Then you'll be able to use the quote function and experience the forum as it was originally intended.
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  • Profile picture of the author savidge4
    Originally Posted by Supplementboss View Post

    Forward them to my blog on my 3000+ views website
    Create a mini website with unique content linking to my main website?
    Create a completely unique ecom website for this keyword which handles payments / orders
    So that would be 3 options... and to be honest none of the 3 options are optimal - far from it actually.

    #1 forward to the blog... I think you want the traffic to go the other way correct? from the Blog to the commerce site?

    #2 Create a mini site that does what? your existing blog is already doing this.

    #3 Create another e-com site? again what does this solve?

    Answer #4 e-com sites in general are notoriously weak at getting traffic - and it comes down to content. You have a commerce site and a blog site that are separated. IDEALLY you want the blog AND the commerce site on the same domain.

    Instead of wasting time with creating a new commerce site or creating a new content ( blog ) site, I would be adding a blog to your existing e-com domain that is getting all the traffic.

    You have focused ( I would say ) to an extreme, with off page SEO and you are lacking in the on-page aspect. I would argue - that the on-page SEO is F A R more important.

    This has been played out with by many high profile Internet guru types over and over for years. E-com and blog on the same domain. You DO NOT want to use "Sub-Domains" ( blog/domain ) you want to use sub-folders ( domain/blog ) and THIS optimizes your SEO efforts.

    The idea here is to have content that draws the traffic, and then link within the domain ( on-site linking ) to the item in the shop the content is related to. THIS would be best SEO practices.

    Hope that Helps!
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    • Profile picture of the author Supplementboss
      Thank you for the in depth reply.

      Maybe I was not very clear with my first post.

      So my blog is On my main website it's a section of the website my site/blog etc rather than it being a standalone blog - I am confident we have good on site SEO.

      I agree driving as much traffic to my website is the ultimate goal.

      So my question is ( again apologies if this was not clear enough )

      Would there be more value in redirecting the URL I have purchased ( the url is the name of the keyword I am trying to rank for ) to my main website...a simple re direct.

      Or would there be more value in creating another blog ( like a landing page ) and linking this to my main website?

      Or would neither options provide much value

      Thanks for the replies to far this is a good forum
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      • Profile picture of the author savidge4
        Originally Posted by Supplementboss View Post

        Thank you for the in depth reply.

        Maybe I was not very clear with my first post.

        So my blog is On my main website it's a section of the website my site/blog etc rather than it being a standalone blog - I am confident we have good on site SEO.

        I agree driving as much traffic to my website is the ultimate goal.

        So my question is ( again apologies if this was not clear enough )

        Would there be more value in redirecting the URL I have purchased ( the url is the name of the keyword I am trying to rank for ) to my main website...a simple re direct.

        Or would there be more value in creating another blog ( like a landing page ) and linking this to my main website?

        Or would neither options provide much value

        Thanks for the replies to far this is a good forum
        In regards to URL's, there is little to no difference between keyword .com and brand .com/keyword

        If the sites are both registered to YOU... it would not be "best" practices to create another blog and link back to the original one - this would give signals of a linking structure that Google slightly frowns apon. You are better off just redirecting the keyword URL and calling it a day.

        In regard to building traffic... look here ( https://seochatter.com/how-to-see-ke...gle-analytics/ ) so what you want to look for is "Impressions" AND what page in Serps a page is listed on - make sense? So "Brown Shoes" is getting say 140 impressions on Page 2. If you start paying attention you will find content that is on page 9 getting 80 impressions - THIS is the content you want to start targeting.

        I find time and time and time again keywords like this that get maybe 8 to 10 visits per month... i have a site right now that has 10 of these terms that get very little traffic say 10 a month, BUT convert 80% the time. More sales from these pages than from my pages that get 1000 views a month.

        As much as you are getting traffic ( SEO ) you have to start thinking of CRO ( conversion Rate Optimization ). Traffic alone does not make sales... Traffic that is laser focused gets you sales. Understanding how to create content that finds those people just itching to give you money ( in SEO this might be considered a "buyers term/keyword" ).

        The Data in Google Analytics will start getting you in that direction. Anytime once the site is up, that you are "thinking" I need to get term X ( Brown Shoes ) to rank better - you will more than often find that the return of the effort to do so is not worth it.

        Let Google Analytics show you the terms that you should be shooting for.. there is a reason back on page 9 in the serps there is content getting 80 impressions - all of the other content sucks - and its usually super easy to create a piece of content that will take you right to page 1 in the top few positions.

        Lets look at this another way, so maybe this process makes a bit more sense. You have the term Brown Shoes and you are ranked 20th and thats the best you can get. If you believe it or not.. this is Google's way of saying thats as good as your site is. Google wont rank you higher, because the site as a whole wont allow it to.

        What i strive for is low low comp terms that have really really low competition based on the Data from Google Analytics ( page 9 with 80 impressions ) and rank those well. the more terms you can rank well for - and I would argue regardless of traffic count, over time page 1 listing after page 1 listing after page 1 listing.. Google is then going to look at your site as a whole and say that page for Brown Shoes ranked 20th needs to get bumped up - this site has authority ( AKA a bunch of terms with page 1 listings )

        This is how I see.. this is how I practice SEO.

        Hope that Helps!
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  • Profile picture of the author Yashu Kambhra
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