Wednesday 20 July 2011

SEO and keyword research

or anyone that has looked into online marketing for they will already know that this can be a pretty tough nut to crack. If it were only that there are 100s of sites chasing the most popular search phrases then this would be no different to your average campaign. However, with premium rate numbers from the 0871, 0844, 0845 and 0800 number ranges there are a couple of curved balls to consider.

One of the main ones here is targetting your search traffic in order to get the buying terms. Search terms such as rates, prices, costs etc are swamped by private individuals looking for information on what it costs them to make a call with only a tiny fraction of these looking to make a purchase. So the first pitfall is that of ending up with mountains of traffic and no customers.


This is further complicated by the fact that if you then drill down to more intuitive buying terms which appear to be a fair bet, such as buy 0844 numbers, 0800 numbers you find that barely anyone is searching for these.


Most successful 08 number sites take one of two strategies in order to get around this. One is to go with higly focussed sites which just go for the top terms, and getting a domain name to prop this up on, such as for example 0800numbers.co.uk, 0871numbersuk.net etc etc. The other, which over 90% go for is to focus on volume, with content rich webpages and over 100 web pages on the site, as well as their link building of course.


Both methods can be very effective; however, they can be further boosted by highly detailed competitor and keyword research, aimed at targeting and prioritising chosen keywords as precisely as possible and using this to redirect the focus of existing web pages in order to maximise their potential.