SEO rocks and sucks at the same time. It rocks because if you choose the right keywords (relevant, action-oriented and with high search volume) and make it to the top, you don’t ever need to do any marketing again. Most companies I know that are at the top of Google get more clients that they can handle and even have waiting lists or have to refer people to other businesses.
But, at the same time, SEO sucks. Actually, let me rephrase that: SEO, done the way most people do it, sucks. Here’s why: who wants to wait 8-12 months to get to #1? (most industries are very competitive and it takes a while to outrank the big players).
Even if you do realize that waiting a year to have a constant stream of business coming your way makes sense, the main problem most business owners face is that they don’t have the resources to afford 12 months of marketing before seeing results.
So, What’s the Solution? How Can I Get Fast SEO Results?
I’m sure you’ve heard about “long tail keywords”. They’re the opposite of “broad” keywords.
Cars -> Extremely broad
Ford cars -> Still very broad
Ford dealership -> A lot more specific/relevant
Chicago Ford dealership -> Very specific (long tail)
The more you move down to the long tail, two things happen:
– Keywords get more specific (conversion rates get better)
– The search volume decreases drastically
– Ranking at the top of Google becomes a lot easier
What’s Best for Fast SEO Results? Broad or Long-Tail Keywords?
The answer is: both. And everything in between. You don’t want to go too broad (if you own a Ford dealership in Chicago, you don’t want to waste your money trying to rank for “cars”). But you don’t want to get too specific either (“1998 Ford Focus for Sale in Chicago” might be very specific, but nobody is searching for it. It’s not worth your time.)
The Secret for Fast SEO Results: “Serialize” Your Keywords
The average SEO campaign happens in this order:
- You fix architectural issues that might be affecting your site
- You optimize the content and tags for your pages
- You create optimized content to get more pages indexed, which will help you rank for more keywords and have more PageRank to pass to your “money pages”
- You build links (external and internal, for authority [links from authoritative sites and sites related to yours] and reputation [text links with your keywords in the links’ anchor texts])
The traditional way of doing SEO is to do all of the above at the same time for all the keywords. The way we do SEO is a little different: you start with the low-hanging fruit (which will start making you money fast) and then you move up to move competitive search terms (with higher search volumes).
The “Fast SEO Results” Formula
First you need to do the site architecture and on-page optimization at a site-level for all the keywords.
Once your website is completely optimized (go here for Search Engine Optimization tips) you’ll have two things left to do:
– Content creation
– Link building
They are both ongoing processes.
The idea behind the Fast SEO Results formula is to go after the long-tail (easy) keywords first while still doing some optimization for the harder keywords. So, work on the Easy, Medium and Hard keywords equally. Once you’ve reached the top for the Easy ones, continue with the Medium and Hard ones. Once all your Medium keywords are at the top, focus only on the Hard ones.
You should still monitor the keywords you got to the top just in case they drop and need a little push.
By doing SEO this way you’ll start seeing results right away, because long-tail keywords usually have very high conversion rates and they’re easy to rank for. But never keep moving up towards the broader keywords because they are the ones that will be writing you the big fat checks.
