Up Against the Wall

by 4 replies
5
Hello community. I've spent the past few weeks assimilating as much SEO/SEM information as possible. The goal is to generate new leads for my local insurance agency by adding value to the online insurance community. We've been in business since 1983, but have never leveraged the power of the internets. The amount of information is overwhelming, yet I continue to read every resource I can.

I understand the importance of keyword research; targeting a niche; and developing good, unique content. The biggest challenge I am facing is committing to one particular direction. I believe that I should begin by selecting a few keywords, but from where? Each keyword tool looks nice and has its share of positive and negative reviews. If I enter a local insurance related keyword, I receive different results from each tool. Wordtracker may direct me towards a keyword that the Google tool or Market Samurai does not suggest; and vice versa. Furthermore, local search times often return very little data. I don't know what to believe.

So here I stand at the wall and I'm not sure how to get over it. Do I subscribe to one keyword tool and commit to mastering it? Should I buy one of the 92,065,365.266 "only SEO guide you will ever need!" books? Pick some generic keywords and dive in?

Thank you in advance for your input. Out of the hundreds of forums and sites that I have scoured in the past few weeks, this is the only one where I feel comfortable articulating my frustrations. I appreciate you all!

Mike
#search engine optimization #new guy #wall
  • Hello Mike,
    Welcome to the Warrior Forum and congratulations to your firm for choosing to expand to the internet and having the foresight to look into SEO. This was a wise decision.

    Some advice:

    (0) You needn't purchase a novel. Novels are not dynamic and they get old. You have the internet and you have this forum. Some of the advice here from senior Warriors will prove invaluable in the months to come.

    (1) Make sure your website is pretty. Remember, customers who convert tend to click on trendy, professional, business oriented design- especially considering what your company does.

    (2) When doing keyword research, you might not want to go for something too competitive. You're aiming for the top of the long tail!

    Does your company work in a particular city or limited geographic region?

    (3) When selecting a keyword, investigate your top competitors for that keyword. Check their backlinks and sort them by pagerank. You'll be stealing some of these later!

    (4) Once you have your site optimized on-page, remember building backlinks is key! And more importantly, it's more a matter of quality than quantity.

    (5) Consider getting a blog. You don't have to, but I would consider it regardless.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • Grabbing the initial set of keywords can be one of the toughest tasks to starting a site. Use multiple sources and the Wordstream suggestion tool as well. They can pull in a huge amount of keywords which couples well with Adwords/Wordtracker/Wonderwheel.

    It's not a bad idea to group the keywords after that. By grouping, it is easier (at least for me) to see how comprehensive each category/group is. AND if I'm missing something this is usually where I spot it.

    Then, use orvn's advice to find the initial set of keywords. Make sure your pages are optimized for these and starting getting acclimated in the SERPs. The SERPs of your primary keywords is your home away from home. Find the major players, their back link profiles, and monitor which ones are climbing & which ones are tanking. This way, when someone has a successful SEO campaign, you can see what they are doing to bring in positive results.

    Make sure you have Analytics & Webmaster tools involved as well.
    Good post orvn!
    • [1] reply
    • Thanks Brad! It seems I'm starting to catch on (:
  • Thanks for the advice. Great info-graphic too! It's perfect for a visual guy like myself.
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    Up Against the Wall

    Hello community. I've spent the past few weeks assimilating as much SEO/SEM information as possible. The goal is to generate new leads for my local insurance agency by adding value to the online insurance community. We've been in business since 1983, but have never leveraged the power of the internets. The amount of information is overwhelming, yet I continue to read every resource I can. I understand the importance of keyword research; targeting a niche; and developing good, unique content. The biggest challenge I am facing is committing to one particular direction. I believe that I should begin by selecting a few keywords, but from where? Each keyword tool looks nice and has its share of positive and negative reviews. If I enter a local insurance related keyword, I receive different results from each tool. Wordtracker may direct me towards a keyword that the Google tool or Market Samurai does not suggest; and vice versa. Furthermore, local search times often return very little data. I don't know what to believe.