Pointless number one keyword rankings

If I really wanted to, I could go out today and try to rank at the top of all the search engines for the term “blue shotgun widgets” if I really wanted to. And whenever anyone was in the market for blue shotgun widgets, then I’m the guy to hook it up.  And I would be so rich (see sarcasm).
A part of my job is to help my clients rank as high as possible for the keywords that represent their company’s public offering best, and can also produce as much traffic as possible.  That’s just part of what I do, but for a great deal of companies out there, they believe that’s all it takes to start raking in cash from the website. Don’t I wish that was true.

Unexpected Rankings

Ranking number one happens allot more than you think. However, it could be totally useless key-phrases that don’t do anything to help you in the long run. Odds are, it was a search query that has nothing to do with your web site’s message at all. For example, I optimized a blog about 3 years ago I was working on and started noticing the keywords I was being found for. One day I saw that I came up #1 in Google for “bad neighborhoods Honolulu”. It was linked to a blog post I wrote about linking to “bad neighborhoods” (aka unsavory websites) and the word Honolulu was contained on my website in other spots. Pretty pointless traffic.

The point to all of this is that obsessing over ranking as high as possible for your desired keywords won’t always happen, but you will rank for unrelated or unplanned keywords regardless. It’s a curse in one way, but it’s a goldmine in another.

Uninvited Guests?

I have a client site that was getting hammered month after month for the term “c6h14″ which is a gas named Hexane. Now my client does sell this in canister form, but nearly 86% of the visitors we’re just looking for something different instead of a canister full of the stuff. I had a feeling they were seeking scientific information on it, and I wanted to see if I was right.

I dropped a wikipedia link to the hexane page with the anchor text “Hexane Compound Overview” and monitored the outbound clicks in Google Analytics. 73% of these people headed off that direction over a month’s worth of time. They may have not been customers, but I helped them get to where they would probably prefer to be in the long run. Who knows, maybe they’ll come back and buy a canister after they learn what it is.

The Bottom Line on Keywords

You can chase whatever keywords and phrases you like, but at the end of the day it’s all about those conversions. If the keywords they found your site under never take them to the point of sale or contact, then it really doesn’t matter. So when a conversion does happen, it’s vital to take note of what keyword they found you under and see if it happens again. The time you put into optimizing a page or two for that keyword will pay for itself if it converts consistently.

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