SEO tip of the day: Using Secondary Keywords to support a Root Term

My SEO tip of the day:

If you want to rank for tough keywords, use secondary supporting terms that include the root term.

Example:

Let’s say I want to rank for “Shoes”. Unless I have a huge budget for links (and even then it`s going to be tough to outrank branded, authority sites with age and 1,000`s of indexed links) it`s better I select similar secondary phrases. So, rather than targeting “Shoes”, I should target niche phrases that: 1 – would be good for conversions 2 – still have a decent search volume but 3 – have a much lower level of competing sites.

Let`s say I decide “discount shoes” would be a niche for my market. It`s still a high searched term, but not nearly as competitive as “shoes” alone. I should than support my choice by optimizing my “discount shoes” landing page with 5-10 supporting keywords that include “discount shoes”, such as:

womens discount shoes
converse discount shoes
mephisto discount shoes
born discount shoes
skechers discount shoes

And, when deploying a link building campaign to rank my “discount shoes” page, I will randomize my link text with one of the above selections or “discount shoes” specially. This not only ensures my link efforts appear more natural to the search engines, but helps my site rank for these secondary terms that also bring in a decent amount of search volume. It may take a while (depending on my budget, current trust with the search engines, what my competition is doing, etc) to rank for “discount shoes”, but by selecting less competitive, longer tail keyword phrases, I am increasing my visibility and rankings for niche terms that are likely to be better for conversions and help me see a quicker ROI.

In a nutshell: If you want to rank for a competitive term and you are just getting started, it`s best to target similar secondary phrases instead. You will be supporting your ultimate, long term goal, but will achieve much quicker results, for a lot less money and effort!