Niche and the Search Engine Optimization Game

If you've been trying to learn internet marketing for any length of time, you've probably seen those internet marketing "programs" that specialize in helping folks develop "niche web sites". The premise is to search out keywords and keyword combinations that get a lot of hits, but don't have many websites serving that niche. Viola', you've found a lucrative niche. Slap up a super-search-engine-optimized website and you're in business.

Although I may be in the minority, this approach makes me cringe. Why?

Because it relies on "gaming" the system...finding loopholes, as it were. And as is with most loopholes, they eventually get closed. Suddenly your $10K/mo. site drops to $500/mo. because Google changed their search algorithm. Or it could happen more gradually -- other "niche" marketers using the same strategy figure out that there is a lot of interest in "blue frog statues", and your share of the market dwindles.

In a lot of ways, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a game too, one where the rules keep changing. There are dozens of elements of your web pages that affect your search engine ranking. For most solo entrepreneurs, it's impossible to learn how to incorporate all these factors on our websites, and dauntingly expensive to hire a pro to do it for us.

My advice: Learn a little about search engine optimization, implement what you understand, and measure the results. If you find it to be successful, do a little more. Just don't go nuts and spend your entire marketing budget on it. What's more important is having intriguing titles (that make you want to know more), using the words and language of your target market, and providing the information that your customers want and will take action on -- not how frequently you repeat the keywords, or what you put in your meta

Google's mission is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Their methods and algorithms are just the mechanics of how they decide what is useful. Keep your eye on making your site useful, ask your customers for feedback to keep improving, and leave the SEO "game" to someone else.

Visit www.Solo-E.com for more tips for lifestyle-inspired solo entrepreneurs.

Comments

[steven davies]

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