» Don’t Try To Be Something For Everyone When It Comes To the Search Engines

Let’s suppose for a minute that you’re hungry (maybe you are now that I’ve mentioned it?). You want something new and different to eat. So you connect to the internet and type in the word “recipes” at Google. Your search result will include millions of websites all related to recipes.

But let’s say you had a specific type of recipe in mind; maybe a dessert dish or a Mexican recipe. So you don’t want to search through all the random recipes you found using a vague search term like “recipes”. You want to narrow the playing field. So let’s get more specific. You now type in “Mexican dessert recipe” and the search engine finds far fewer possibilities. Now the results are geared more toward what you really wanted.

I’m sure you already realize all this, but let’s think about it for a minute from the stand point of your business. We already know that most people only look through the first few pages of any search result.

Realistically, that’s only about the first 30 listings per search. Therefore, you need to get listed on the first few pages of the results for keywords related to your site. How much harder do you think it would be to get listed in the top 10 for a search result of 10,000,000 (like recipes) than one with only 50,000 results (like Mexican dessert recipes)? You do the math! Based on that, which goal do you think is the most realistic to set?

One common misunderstanding with search engines and web site optimization is to try to be something for everyone. Many people think this will be the key to more sales. So they optimize their website for keywords that are most frequently searched. These are usually really general keywords that may be difficult to get a higher ranking for.

Alas, as you can see, this just doesn’t pan out on the internet. Broad sites tend to get lost in the shuffle.

If your site revolves around a general topic, it will be buried within the 10,000,000 other related sites.

No one will ever find it.

And no one will ever buy your product no matter how wonderful it is if they can’t find it.

Worse yet, the people searching using these really broad terms usually aren’t out to buy anything. Now this is just a generalization, but it tends to hold true. The more specific searchers tend to be the people looking for something specific to buy and the general searchers tend to be looking for info and nothing else. Remember, this isn’t always the case, but it seems to be a trend.

So rather than building a site revolving around general topics like “recipes”, “cooking” and “food”, you should build one around a tightly focused niche. The less competition, the easier it will be to find your site.

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Technorati Tags: keywords, search engines, web site optimization