Do you ever sit in front of Google searching for your web site listing under your favorite key terms?  Do you feel a sense of anxiety when you notice your competitor ranked ahead of you on those key terms?  You do?  Great. Now STOP doing that!

I have encountered countless customers who create unending angst for themselves by indulging in the competitive SEO search.  There is nothing wrong with being competitive as long as it makes sense.  The problem is the search “strategy” that results from the “competitive search” often doesn’t make sense.

I recently had a customer tell me that key term X was a term they needed to be found on because their competitor was on that page and that they knew, for a fact, that their customers search on this term.  Although, both of these assertions might partially be true, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you should do something about it.

Here are some questions one should ask themselves before acting on such an anecdotal theory:

• What does my keyword research tell me?  Is there high search engine traffic with low competition?
• Is the key term something I actually sell (i.e. “fringed tulip bulbs”) or is it a broad term that has cross-industry meanings (i.e. “Bulbs”, flower or light?) that has a low probability of converting (sale)?
• Do I have a good understanding of the key term traffic that is already coming to my site?  Am I doing everything I can to make sure that the content on my site helps that traffic convert or is it bouncing off my site? Most of my customer’s sites generate over 3/4 of their traffic and online sales from long-tailed key terms (i.e. “tulip flower bulbs”)
• If I do find a broad key term that is relevant to my business and I think I can compete for it do I really have an understanding of what my competition is doing to drive traffic and gain rank for their site? (i.e. ad spend, direct mail, email marketing, etc.)  It may seem like you are comparing apples to apples but really you might be competing with someone who is outspending you 10:1.  That could possibly be why they have a crappy looking web site but get “good rank”.

What most don’t realize is that they already have a large amount of qualified traffic coming to their site but they do little to make sure it converts. Some of the reasons visitors “bounce” off pages on your site are:

• Not enough information to make a decision.
• No call to action. “How to Buy”
• Price or Shipping is not competitive.
• Content is not relevant to their search. (I want light bulbs not flower bulbs)

What have we learned in today’s blog post?  Go with what you know, not what you think you know. What are my web site analytics telling me?  If you follow the competitive SEO siren song thinking you can OPTIMIZE your site to get ahead of your competition on a couple broad key terms, I can promise you, you will be disappointed. Be smart about where you want to rank in the search engines, develop a plan to convert your existing traffic, then execute your plan.

We’ve been at this specialty small business online marketing game for the better part of 10 years now, and we have hundreds of successful specialty small business customers, for whom we generate literally tens of millions of dollars in new revenue from the web…

So here’s what really chaps my set-upon; I would have to say that every customer (to a one) that we’ve gotten (and still have by the way) over the years, has had at least one (if not several) bad experience with another web development company or so-called guru or expert, before we’ve had the pleasure of their business.

In most cases this has cost them tens of thousands of dollars in fees for a mediocre website and whatnot, plus the loss of revenues, i.e., the money they should have made but didn’t. This can easily get into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Being completely objective, which is difficult for me to do in this particular case, this is a blessing and a curse:

The Blessing — There are an ever increasing number of hucksters out there putting out an incessant commentary on the virtues (not that they would know virtue if it bit them) of Internet Marketing, in all of its varied forms and functions.

That’s good, because whether they realize it or not, they are advancing the cause, so-to-speak, by raising the awareness of the relatively uninitiated small business owner or entrepreneur for all things Internet. If there is anything we can use more of it’s awareness.

The Curse — These maleficent marketers who shill, bait and switch, sell a pig in a poke, have no concern for the bad faith and jaundice they create in the industry as a whole. I can’t tell you the number of times we hear things like, “You guys are all the same.” Or, “I just talked to a group that does exactly what you do.” Or, “I spent 2o grand with the company who did my website and now they want even more money to fix it. Why should I trust you?”