 Local vs. National Keyphrase Searches.
When trying to determine what are the best key phrases for your industry, one of the most important and overlooked questions is, "Should I focus nationally or locally?" Sure, we all want to be the big fish in the big pond, but let's face it most businesses are still wandering around looking for the water's edge! Why try and go after the largest key phrases possible, for instance "Site Design" returns over 2.5 Billion pages on Google, and over 250 million pages on MSN. These are HUGE numbers (granted Websight.org ranks #8 on MSN) and are nearly impossible to garner top results. Try going after business in your local are, for us Orange County Calif, where on "Website Design Orange County" (A very specific and focused key phrase that returns ~2 million web page results) we rank in the top ten on all the major search eninges.
The reality is that your particular product is going to determine the best and most cost-effective path you should take. If, for instance, you are selling dog food supplements, then it would be safe to assume you have a universal audience. If, however, your business is to provide specialty haircuts from the 1980s, you might want to focus on a much smaller geographic region (let's say Huber Heights, Ohio, for instance).
There will be a large percentage of businesses that have products and/or services that cover both a regional and national customer base. Let's use our dog food supplement company again. It will obviously have a strong customer base unilaterally across the city, state, and country. Therefore, it should be going after both the regional (usually easier to garner top ranking), and national key phrases to attract new customers.
Sure, it's great having a shiny new web site - great design, flash-elements, well-written content, clean coding, and Websight.org's stamp of approval! But if no one knows you're there, it's just money in the wind. Remember, just because you built it doesn't mean they will come!
With such huge numbers of potential customers out there why not put your business in front of as many as possible? Once again, if this crazy internet thing keeps going, and you don't have a presence you might as well set up shop on the beach selling "high-quality" sand!
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