I’ve done it myself on numerous occasions when I first got into the affiliate marketing industry and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen my own clients and prospective clients make this mistake…
The two biggest mistakes I see when regular folks start to optimize their own websites or blogs for the search engines is they
- target keywords that are too competitive
- optimize their website for their company name
Now anybody can rank for any term in the major search engines but what you have to realize is that when you target terms like “credit card” or “mortgage” is that you’re competing with the likes of Bank of America, Chase and Citibank and as we all know these businesses have an endless amount of resources. So what do you do if you’re a mortgage broker?
What I usually recommend for mortgage brokers is going after long tail keyword phrases or local keyword phrases.
This means instead of targeting and optimizing for the term mortgage, which would be virtually impossible to rank for, you would optimize and target something like Los Angeles mortgage instead which you would have a much better chance of ranking for.
The second mistake is just as bad however…
I can understand wanting to brand your company name on the internet but what you have to understand is that the search engines don’t work that way.
Also what you have to ask yourself is how many people are going to Google and doing a search for your company name?
Probably not too many and that’s why it’s a better idea to target keywords and phrases based on the product or service that you sell because there are most likely people that are searching for that and more importantly optimizing for these terms will deliver targeted traffic and be a more effective use of your time and money.
These little intricacies of search engine optimization and internet marketing are why it’s a great idea to speak to a professional seo before you venture into the world of marketing and promoting your business online.
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