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Christmas number 1

Guest post by: Jonathan

Article Overview: As impressive as it might sound being top 5 on Google or first page on Bing or Yahoo. If you're only there for being there's sake then really, what's the point?

Christmas number 1

The whole world (well Britain at least) seems obsessed with who's going to be No1 at Christmas. Will it be the winner of the X factor, Susan Boyle, what about St Winifred's School Choir? Rage Against The Machine are coming up on the outside though with their Facebook Rage Against the Machine For Christmas No 1 page already up to 450,000 members and counting. It seems to be in our blood. Everyone loves the idea of number one, top of the charts. The Christmas number one in particular. It's this kind of top of the list, king of the hill, a number one mentality that blinds website owners into trying to optimise their sites for maximum positioning often to the detriment of its conversion performance.

As impressive as it might sound being top 5 on Google or first page on Bing or Yahoo. If you're only there for being there's sake then really, what's the point? Ask yourself, are the keywords winning you these sorts of positions delivering you traffic that counts? Quality traffic that your proposition stands a fair chance of converting? Is your success results driven or a flight of fancy? Like an accountancy website hitting the Digg front page with a blog post about the ghost of Michael Jackson being interviewed by Oprah. What's the point? Do you honestly think any of that traffic clicking through to your site and probably crashing your server will ever buy your accountancy services? It's highly unlikely.

Let's get real about site visitors. We've all seen SEO and Internet marketing companies guaranteeing top positions and first page results. Big deal. It's not hard to rank high on irrelevant, uncompetitive terms.

It IS a popularity contest

Only compete on keywords that are relevant to your business. If you're an Web Development or Web Design company then top Google or Bing positions on the terms 'Web Design' or 'Webdev,' 'web marketing' or 'Website design' makes perfect sense. You will be in front of exactly the right sort of audience on highly competitive terms. Achieving a Google top 1 for 'anchovy' or 'paintballing' will win you precious little business as a web design company.

All you achieve with bad SEO is to interrupt the browsing of people most unlikely to be interested in who you are or what you do.

Focus your efforts on people who do care about what you have to offer - your target audience. There are plenty of online tools to help out with your keyword research or just ask your web developer for some advice.

And remember - It's not a competition for hits. This is business and the only statistic that really matters, when all is said and done, is your bottom line. The only way of boosting your bottom line? Conversions.

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Article Tags: Christmas number 1, seo, seo conversions



Related Forum Posts
Being generous has its rewards! - My friend wants to go around the streets on Christmas night giving homeless people $20 bills. Maybe I'll tell him to start a fundraiser, find a few sponsors and hold an event instead? It could be for everyone who don't have a families to be with during Christmas? They can all get together on Christmas day and have some fun and get to know each other. (sort of like a little family?) It probably sounds better in theory though, lol.
Re: Moderators on vacation - Off on my Christmas holidays with my family later today! Actually, we are flying to England and have been watching BBC World News reports about Heathrow struggling to cope with the snow... Hope the trains manage to run on Christmas Eve... I probably won't appear on the forum very often until around 5th January, DV... Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year everybody! David H
Re: What are reasons to stay in touch with your customers? - To remind them of a holiday for which they may want to buy a gift from your business and give to the person (such as Mother's day or Christmas). Although I've never done it, I've heard that off holidays (such as Memorial Day) for which we don't think of getting a card on, are the best ones to send them on so they don't get lost in all the other Christmas or Easter cards people are sending at the typical times. I don't know if that's what you're looking for or not. That's all I can think of right now.
Merry Christmas everyone! - I'm just waiting for my son to wake up to start our Christmas traditions and I wanted to drop a quick note here to thank everyone for your support of the forums. We've have an exciting year and hopefully we can reach and help even more entrepreneurs in 2011! I hope you enjoy your families and have a fantastic holiday break... and then get ready to kick some butt with your business in 2011! Merry Christmas everyone!
Favorite Christmas movies - Back when us kids were young (my parents had 3), my mom, sister and I would watch White Christmas every Christmas. (My dad and brother were never interested.) Now the rest of the family is scattered, and only I live close to my parents. We got away from the tradition, but now my mom and I watch [i:1h8kfk2v]White Christmas[/i:1h8kfk2v] again. (Just as every Halloween we watch Arsenic and Old Lace.) I also like the 1970 musical [i:1h8kfk2v]Scrooge[/i:1h8kfk2v], starring Albert Finney, much better than any version done since! I do have to say I've never liked[i:1h8kfk2v] It's A Wonderful Life[/i:1h8kfk2v]. He spends all his life having his hopes and dreams shattered, feeling miserable, and its only at the end of his life that he can look back and realize how many friends he has, etc. But that doesn't change the fact that up until that point he was miserable!


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