How difficult is it to get into the first page of Google?
This is a question I hear all the time. Ok, usually, it is “how difficult is it to get ranked #1 on Google”. How long is a piece of string?
There is an easy answer. Go to Google, search for your keyword you are trying to rank for and analyse the competition. Could it be easier? Fine, that’s not quiet so simple…
The most important thing you are looking for is how many of those top sites ARE actually in competition with you for that keyword? If you were to search for “news”, you would pretty much stand the same chance of ranking in the organic listings as a snowflake would have in hell. CNN, NBC, ABC, etc are so incredibly strong in that market.
On the other hand, one of the keywords I am going for (as a kind cool way to showcase my emerging talents to my friends) is World Cheese Toast Champions. If you do a search for that, you will find that there is no one in direct competition. There are some quality sites there, but none of them are trying to rank for that exact phrase.
In the middle ground, I am trying to rank for the keyword Aesop Fable. If you do a Google search for that, you will find there are a lot of sites that seem to be trying to rank for that keyword. Aesop’s Fables is a prime example of a market with a lot of competition depth. Even on page 10, there are a lot of sites with “Aesop’s Fables” in the title. As a result, I have been going after ranking for the individual fables, as opposed to the major keywords. There are a lot less searches for it, but I have got some very good traffic from people who want to use a particular fable in their story, post or article.
My point is that a lot depends on the keyword you are looking for. It is great to rank high for the keywords that get lots of traffic, but it is not essential.
Spend your time trying to increase your rank for keywords that are three or more words long. The benefit of this is that you aren’t going to have as much competition. Another added bonus is that if people are using three or more keywords, they are usually looking for something specific. If one of the pages that they go to after that deals with what they were searching for, they will tend to stay longer on your site, and possibly buy from you, or check out another product, etc.
I can’t stress this enough: test what works for you. It’s just a simple matter of Einstein’s definition of stupidity – don’t do the same thing over and over trying to get a different result.
Be confident, test, and you will succeed.
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