1. Home
  2. Computing & Technology
  3. Web Design / HTML

Step 3: How Did Your Guess Do?

From Jennifer Kyrnin, About.com

Use Overture to see how popular the term isScreen shot by J Kyrnin
Use Overture to see how popular the term is

The term "internet safety" doesn't get a lot of searches - only 5419. I can optimize for that phrase, but there might be one that gets more searches.

There are two schools of thought when it comes to SEO:

Optimize for the Most Searched Terms

This is where you are just trying to get a slice of the pie. And if the pie is really big (in other words, lots of searches for the term) even if you only get a small percentage of the pageviews, you're going to get a lot.

Terms with a large number of searches can get very competitive. Chances are, if you're thinking of optimizing on that term, then so are hundreds or thousands of other people.

Get to Number 1 For a Smaller Term

This is where you work on getting your page to the number 1 slot for a term with a smaller number of searches. In this case, if I optimized for "Internet safety" I would want to get at least to the top 10 of search engines for the term. That way I would capture a large share of a small number of searches.

This method isn't as competitive, but there isn't as much to get.

  1. Home
  2. Computing & Technology
  3. Web Design / HTML
  4. Web Marketing
  5. SEO
  6. Search Engine Optimization Step-by-Step - Step 3: How Did Your Guess Do?

©2008 About.com, a part of The New York Times Company.

All rights reserved.