How to Get Your Keyword Focus Right

Picking the right keyword is only half the job done.

There’s a counter-intuitive knack to getting keyword focus right on your website. We all love our keywords, and we love rushing through choosing the best for the right concept. The truth at the end of the day is that although some see keyword research as being something that you can simply rush through, it is hands down one of the most important aspects of the development of any website concept, thus taking your time doing keyword research is absolutely of the most importance when creating a new website concept.

The ‘Ego Keyword”

For example, with every website, there is one main keyword that we like to focus our time and energy on, this is the main keyword that will bring in traffic and money, more affectionately referred to as our ‘ego keyword’. One mistake that a lot of webmasters tend to make early in their planning stages is that they go after their main ‘ego keyword’ too hard and too fast. You see, the problem here is that in almost all cases, your main keyword is going to take some work to attain decent rankings under.

A quick sidenote here: make sure you have your main ‘ego’ or ‘money’ keyword in your domain url so it is easier to rank for.

To put things into perspective here, site authority is one of those phrases that we hear a lot. This refers to the kind of site that you own, and how capable it is of being the largest source of information under your chosen keyword in your niche. If you provide the right amount of high quality information, then people will find themselves attracted to your site. Of course, under every single main keyword, there are always going to be many longer tail keywords, much more specific buying phrases that may not bring in large amounts of traffic, but as a collective, tend to focus on the real guts of the content that is contained within your niche.

Focus On Your ‘Ego Keyword’ Last!

When it comes to ranking for your chosen ‘ego keyword’, the best advice that I can give to you is to spend only the time that is absolutely necessary on ranking for that main keyword. This should only be around 20% of your time. Instead, spend time ranking for those easier to win long tail keywords. Let me explain how and why this works.

As I mentioned earlier about site authority, a site that contains a huge amount of information with regard to the main keyword and niche that you are targeting will attract traffic and return visitors. You will find selling products and ad space on these websites to be a much easier task as well.  So, one could naturally assume that if you have site authority under your main keyword, things are going to run a lot smoother for you, right? Of course! Any website that you look at that ranks #1 for any tough keyword will almost always have a large library of great content, and will have been built from the ground up content wise.

Of course we can always look at the scenario of the webmaster who tried to place focus on their main focus keyword from the start that managed to rank on the first page of Google, then was quickly knocked out of the rankings because they didn’t SEO their entire keyword list properly before going in for the kill. Personally, I know this story quite well. I tried and failed myself once before, and learned this lesson the hard way.

To summarize, here is a brief step by step process:

1.    Research your main keyword and all the sub niches under that keyword that you can rank for that are directly relevant to your concept. Take your time doing this.
2.    Start creating your content from the ground up. Place most of your focus on ranking for your easy wins, your longer tail keywords and buying phrases.
3.    Once you have comfortably dominated your long tail keywords, start investing more time in your main ‘ego keyword’. In most instances, this could happen automatically, but as defence against your competition, make sure that you have an SEO plan that is repeatable that will keep you one foot ahead at all times. Keyword research is not the kind of task that should be simplified, instead it should be comprehensive and cover all bases. Can you rank for your keywords? Do you have the resources and the time? And most importantly, can you rank for your keywords in the right order, as a means of creating a sustainable ranking for your main keywords?