High Search Engine Rankings Do Not Automatically Equal Profits
Rankings Vs Profits One of the biggest mistakes I see people making when they talk about their websites is they focus on all their top 10 rankings, but they don't pay any attention to if those rankings are actually making any money.
The one and only time I hired an SEO company to work on a sunglasses site I built, they had a guarantee that said they'd get me over 100 top ten rankings.
And you know what, they did.
While there were plenty of problems with that company, the big thing was that only about 8 of those phrases ever got searched for and made me money.
Are your rankings actually making you money or are they just there to stroke your ego? I've seen this frequently where people will post about how well their website is ranked for really obscure phrases and just one look at their web stats will indicate that it brings in just one or two visitors a month.
It takes a heck of a lot of top ten rankings for obscure (long tail) phrases like that to add it.
However, having keywords that people actually search for is only one part of the puzzle.
Search Intent The other part is keywords that turn convert into buyers (or clicks).
And this is a bit more complicated because you're trying to understand the intent behind a keyword.
Gigantic companies like Google have spent a fortune trying to solve intent algorithmically and they're still trying.
It's not easy for a computer to do because it involves using comprehension and intuition.
It's not too hard for a humans to do, but computers not so much.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and give you a crash course on intent.
There are $2,000 courses and extremely intense seminars that cover this topic in great depth, but the basics of this "stuff" will be more than enough to get you started.
Let's say you sell a course on real estate investing by buying foreclosures.
A lot of people would want to target the keyword "real estate".
But is that really a good idea? If somebody is searching for "real estate," what are they searching for? What is their intent? Well, they could be looking to buy a home, maybe they want to sell their home.
Perhaps they're just browsing.
Maybe they're looking to invest.
The point is you don't necessarily know.
The searcher hasn't tipped their hand yet.
However, a lot of people target these keywords because there is a lot of traffic to that type of keyword.
The problem is that it's highly competitive and it converts horribly into revenue.
(Go check out the sponsored ads and you'll likely see only big corporations with massive advertising budgets there - and they're more concerned with branding, no ROI so we don't want to copy them.
) Now let's say this person comes back a day later and searches for "how to buy bank foreclosures.
" Do you think you'd have a better chance of getting that person to buy your course? Of course you would.
So just remember that when you're targeting keywords for your website to think about what their intent is.
Personally, I like to get as close as I can get to the person actually opening up their wallet and spending money as I can.
The one and only time I hired an SEO company to work on a sunglasses site I built, they had a guarantee that said they'd get me over 100 top ten rankings.
And you know what, they did.
While there were plenty of problems with that company, the big thing was that only about 8 of those phrases ever got searched for and made me money.
Are your rankings actually making you money or are they just there to stroke your ego? I've seen this frequently where people will post about how well their website is ranked for really obscure phrases and just one look at their web stats will indicate that it brings in just one or two visitors a month.
It takes a heck of a lot of top ten rankings for obscure (long tail) phrases like that to add it.
However, having keywords that people actually search for is only one part of the puzzle.
Search Intent The other part is keywords that turn convert into buyers (or clicks).
And this is a bit more complicated because you're trying to understand the intent behind a keyword.
Gigantic companies like Google have spent a fortune trying to solve intent algorithmically and they're still trying.
It's not easy for a computer to do because it involves using comprehension and intuition.
It's not too hard for a humans to do, but computers not so much.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and give you a crash course on intent.
There are $2,000 courses and extremely intense seminars that cover this topic in great depth, but the basics of this "stuff" will be more than enough to get you started.
Let's say you sell a course on real estate investing by buying foreclosures.
A lot of people would want to target the keyword "real estate".
But is that really a good idea? If somebody is searching for "real estate," what are they searching for? What is their intent? Well, they could be looking to buy a home, maybe they want to sell their home.
Perhaps they're just browsing.
Maybe they're looking to invest.
The point is you don't necessarily know.
The searcher hasn't tipped their hand yet.
However, a lot of people target these keywords because there is a lot of traffic to that type of keyword.
The problem is that it's highly competitive and it converts horribly into revenue.
(Go check out the sponsored ads and you'll likely see only big corporations with massive advertising budgets there - and they're more concerned with branding, no ROI so we don't want to copy them.
) Now let's say this person comes back a day later and searches for "how to buy bank foreclosures.
" Do you think you'd have a better chance of getting that person to buy your course? Of course you would.
So just remember that when you're targeting keywords for your website to think about what their intent is.
Personally, I like to get as close as I can get to the person actually opening up their wallet and spending money as I can.
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