Search Volume and Keyword Competition

Using basic SEO tools, you can see that there are going to be a couple main factors that yield the worth of any targeted term: search volume and keyword competition. As you begin to choose industry keywords you want to target for your SEO strategy, you’ll see that you often have to choose between the high volume of a keyword, and the high competition level that comes with those keywords. Sometimes, you’ll get lucky with a perfect industry keyword that is both high in traffic and low in competition – but this is rare.In this post you will also learn how to manage search volume and keyword competition.Take a look, and see how you can manage the difficult choice between competitive high traffic terms, and low competition / low traffic term

Middle Ground :
If you’re wondering what the best approach to choosing between these two strategies, a great classic method is to simply meet in the middle. For example, the Google Keyword Tool will return both the monthly traffic for a term, and a competition level of “low”, “medium”, or “high.” Depending on the amount of time and money you have available, it could be a waste of your time to even attempt to rank your website for “high” competition keywords – but also a waste to go only for “low.” A nice solution is to shoot for the middle. Take a range of different product terms and start working the related keywords that are at that “medium” competition and traffic level. If you are getting nowhere with a certain product keyword, move to another one for the same product that is of “low” competition. If you are doing totally awesome with a product keyword – move up to an even more competitive keyword for that product. The best way to get your bearings is to meet in the middle.It will help you to manage search volume and keyword competition.

Leveraging Success :
A great way to build traffic is to expand long-tail keyword campaigns for keyword groups you already rank well for. Remember, when you’re expanding these terms – you need to leverage your existing strength. You should never expand a keyword group with the same strategy that you would create a brand new keyword group for traction testing. Know your own strength! This means you can afford to target the highest traffic, highest competition terms. You know you did well for this product category and keyword group before – and so do the search engines. Leverage this success with more aggressive moves going forward, it will serve you in the long run.

Think Small, Convert High :
For some unique industries getting the right eyes on a website simply causes conversions – period. If you think that you represent one of these unique industries, you’re in luck; this means you don’t need that much traffic for a given term to generate conversions! Go ahead and target relevant industry keywords that have a very low amount of traffic and low level of competition. A small amount of SEO effort will rank you well; and even if you get only 23 monthly searches, if they convert well, you could get 18 customers.

Respect the Big Boys :
Just as you should grab easy traffic for small terms, unless you have thousands of dollars for a large SEO team – you should probably not target all the biggest most competitive keywords; at least to start. Think about it, if you have no chance of ranking for a super competitive keyword like Catalog Printing – your 10 monthly links aren’t going to crack the shell… and any hardworking SEO knows that getting 10 links to your website isn’t effortless when you haven’t yet built the necessary relationships and channels to gain links rapidly. It’s going to be much more worthwhile to put your efforts into less competitive terms where your 10 links will make a difference. As you start to grow the amount of relationships you have for link building, you can move onto more competitive terms – since you’ll be able to get more links faster than you could before.