Ranking for competitive keywords
-
Hi Folks,
I am relatively new to SEO and I was hoping folks here could give me some guidance/tips on ranking in a competitive keyword space. My client is a health care provider and they wish to rank for terms like 'heart attack' which I believe will be quite difficult due to it being a short tail keyword and it is a very competitive space. Any an all advice and input is greatly appreciated.
Regards,
Dave
-
Ciaran,
Starting from scratch to rank for a term like "heart attack" would be quite an endeavor for a seasoned SEO with a client who had a fairly substantial budget, let alone for someone new to the discipline. Not that it can't be done, but knowing enough to inform the client what it will take and what might be more productive options for their practice is part of being and SEO. It sounds like you're working on coming to grips with that knowledge at this very point.
Starting out, I'd recommend a couple of things: Do an advanced Open Site Explorer report on your client's site and then do a comparative OSE report against some of the other sites that rank on page one for that term. Then do another report comparing your client with other sites even further down in the results to get a sense of where the client might be starting from and what they would need to do to get to the top. Installing the Mozbar can be helpful too.
Moz has another tool that you might find handy--it the keyword difficulty tool and be sure that you've read through their How To Do Keyword Research guide, as well.
-
So your goal is:
to rank on high competitive short-term keywords in a stable position and over a longer periode, right?
There are 3 possibilities (which you won`t like):
1. your client has a fortune to spend for SEO and SEA
2. you can use black hat techniques
3. your client has patience (a lot of)
The last one is the most realistic and MAYBE (there is no guarantee!) the most effective way. You have to do a lot of on-page and off-page work to establish the authority of a new domain for a few of keywords. You have to prove that your site has the relevance to be an authority for e.g. "heart attack" - this process takes some time.
We needed several years to make clear that our website is the authority for the keyword "guitar" (the german word for it) within Google Germany - the result is a stable and constant high position for years as well (no.1)... but the list to (maybe) be successful with that is long...
I would always recommend to optimize a long-term keyword which is not so competitive. If you are successful to establish to be an authority for such keywords will help you for your next step: to become an authority fpr high competitive keywords ... try to make your customer clear that you can bring them on top very fast but that they will also fall down much more faster then!
It`s just like buidling up a good reputation or to establish a good credit history - but I believe you already know that!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Does a loading homepage animation effect rankings?
Our website ( panphoenix dot com) has a Javascript animation when you load it for the first time which takes just over 2 seconds to load. Does having this animation effect rankings negatively? Would appreciate your thoughts!Thanks Rob
Web Design | | roberthseo0 -
How many keywords is too many?
Since it seems it takes so long for Google to revisit a changed page, we sort of loose track of changes made trying to optimize a specific URL for a keyword. Any sense of how many times is the optimum number of times to use a single keyword on a single page? I'm referring to the total including Title, Description, Content, Alt=. The whole shooting match. I have seen our Google results improve after we have removed several iterations of a keyword Thank You
Web Design | | Davenport-Tractor0 -
Why do site links appear under one keyword and not another? Any ideas?
Hi everyone, I have a client whose website is doing the strangest thing. When I search the branded keyword (the company name), Google doesn't show any site links under the result. However, when I search for the company name plus Inc., I do get site links. Now, the website is ranking first in both searches, so that's not the issue. And, as near as I can tell, the site only contains one or two uses of the company name plus the word "inc." Most of the text on the page and all of the meta data only uses the company name, and most of the links that connect to the site use only the company name as well. Even the Who Is for the site doesn't use the term "inc." And ideas what might be going on? I know Google says that the process is still automated but for the life of me I can't figure out what kind of automated process would result in these results. Thanks! Megan (Rebecca's minion)
Web Design | | RebeccaRalston0 -
Is it common to have some of error/warning(currency duplicate,redirect, etc...) in most website that rank well?
Hi could any body could give me some idea on 'on page optimisation' Currently in my campaign I have around 3000+ errors, 14,000+ warning, 7000+ notices for the following reasons: Overly-Dynamic URL
Web Design | | LauraHT
Temporary Redirect
Title Element Too Long (> 70 Characters)
Duplicate Page Title
etc... First of all I know these have negative effect on SEO. Now to fix towards those issues it involve lots of works and times. At the same time most of our important keywords/url rank position have not changed over the last 12 months. Does that mean the above has only limited negative effect? I just want to know is it worthy to invest the man/hour/money to clean those issues. As it involves decent development time. Is it common to have some of error/warning in most website that rank well? (e.g. I 've seem may big website have duplicate title/meta-desc on their currency variant page)0 -
Are links from main page to inner pages will affect on ranking?
About 3 weeks ago I converted index.html to index.php. Both are 301 redirect to main url. Also I have about 70 links on main page pointing to internal pages. The Website is about 11 years old,and was on active link building . Is this conversion from html to php and also 70 links pointing to inner pages will affect on ranking?Since all links are passing juice to inner pages.
Web Design | | LosAngelesLimo0 -
For a varied product type or keywords group is it best to have several sites?
Hello everyone... Question: I have 7-8 generic keywords that I would like to rank for, is it possible for one site to rank highly for all these different keywords, or would this be best achieved by making 2 or 3 websites in total targeting different keywords (product sectors)? More info: We are in a niche industry & would like to know if it would be beneficial to have several websites made for specific product types rather than one main site? Although these sub classifications of products are nice, they are competitive as they have a high search volume Would it be better to build specific websites that only do that one type of product and have related keyword in domain, content & blogs on the site to that effect to increase relevance and positions as a result? Thanks
Web Design | | Ray_UK0 -
What is the current thought how/if cufon affects keywords?
What is the final opinion about how (and if) cufon affects keywords in H1 tags?
Web Design | | Court_LOQUA0 -
How would restructuring the navigation of my website affect my rankings?
I want to restructure the navigation of my website for a few reasons: 1. It isn't intuitive/clear to the user 2. It is way too big, it has too many links and thus causes the number of links on many pages to be >100. 3. I want to get rid of file extensions as part of the URLs (.html, .php) 4. I want to achieve a "tree"-like navigation system, with categories, subcategories and so on. In the process of cleaning up my website, I had to 301 redirect a lot of duplicate pages, fix broken links, etc. I have a lot of 301 redirects already, and in the process of restructuring the navigation of my website I know I'm going to get more. Will the addition of new 301 redirects have an effect on my rankings? (I'm basically going to be changing all of the URLs) What kind of SEO effect will restructuring the navigation at the top of the page (reducing the # of links on the main menu) have on my site? What is the best strategy to implement in this situation?
Web Design | | deuce1s0