The right SEO tactic for low and high competition

Depending on the keywords for which you want to get high rankings, you have to employ different tactics. Keywords with less competition require different tactics than keywords with high competition.

The effect of different SEO tactics on the position of your website in the search results

If you target long keyword phrases with little competition, then the relative value of on-page optimisation is very high.

For example, if you want to be listed for the search term “buy black Adidas Samba sneakers in Melbourne” then it is enough to optimise one of your web pages for that search term because the competition for that search term is not high. You don’t need many inbound links to get high rankings for that keyphrase.

The more competitive the targeted keyword is, the higher is the effect of inbound links on the position of your website in the search results:

Diagram: the effect of the tactic on your search engine position

The importance of an SEO tactic is not the same as its relative effect on your search engine positions

By taking a look at the chart above you might get the impression that web page optimisation is not important to get high rankings for very competitive keywords. That is not the case. Optimising the content of a web page is the essential basis for high search engine rankings.

By optimising a web page for a keyphrase, you tell search engines that the web page is relevant to that keyphrase. If more than one web page has been optimised for that keyphrase (which is usually the case) then the web page with the best inbound links will get the highest position in the search results.

For example, the website www.cnn.com has 46,600 inbound links according to Google. Although CNN.com has so many inbound links, they do not rank for the keyword “buy black Aadidas Samba sneaker in Melbourne” because the website has not been optimised for that keyphrase.

If you want to get high rankings for a keyphrase, the first step is to optimise one of your web pages for that keyphrase. Then work on the links that point to the optimised web page to outrank other websites that have been optimised for the same keyword:

Diagram: the importance of different SEO tactics

Which tactic should you use for your website?

1. The best web page optimisation tactic:

When you optimise your website, optimise different pages of your website for different keyphrases. Start with longer keyword phrases that don’t have much competition and then proceed with more competitive keywords.

For example, start with the keywords “buy sneakers in Melbourne”, “buy cowboy boots in Brisbane”, “buy sandals in Sydney”, etc. When you have managed to get high rankings for many of these keyphrases, Google will know that your website is relevant to the topic “shoes”.

As soon as Google knows that your website is relevant to the topic, it will be much easier to get high rankings for more competitive keywords such as “buy shoes” or even “shoes”.

The more pages of your website you optimise for different but related keywords, the better.

2. The best link building tactic:

It’s not always necessary that you have more links than your competitors. You need better links.

Try to get links to your website that use the targeted keyphrase as the link text (also called anchor text) and that point to the web page on your website that has been optimised for that keyphrase.

Don’t focus on quantity, focus on quality. Getting hundreds of links from a link farm won’t help your website as much a few dozen links from relevant web pages with authority.