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What is your SEO strategy missing with “one-way thinking”?

Written by: Joseph Franklyn McElroy

Article Overview: For you, the business owner or corporation looking to expand its online market, it’s time to get out of that one-way, vertical mode of thinking about SEO and expand your horizons with a complementary strategy that can eventually double the results of any vertical SEO strategy.

What is your SEO strategy missing with “one-way thinking”?

Many people in the SEM (Search Engine Marketing) business have gotten very good at implementing vertical marketing strategies for their clients. They know how to drill down and grab every keyword configuration uncovered by their keyword research. Even with all of their research, their organic optimization methods and their paid search techniques, it can still be difficult, if not impossible, to crack the ranks of the most used keywords because the competition is doing exactly what they are doing.

For you, the business owner or corporation looking to expand its online market, it’s time to get out of that one-way, vertical mode of thinking about SEO and expand your horizons with a complementary strategy that can eventually double the results of any vertical SEO strategy.

I’m talking about “Lateral Thinking.” Here’s how it can dramatically enhance results for your web properties:

Example: You have a web property which sells Opera CDs. So far, as a result of your vertical marketing mindset, you’ve concentrated on keywords connected to specific opera singers, opera titles and composers of operas. Unfortunately, every other SEM effort for selling opera CD’s is taking a similar approach.

Look what happens when you add “Lateral Thinking” to your strategy. Lateral thinking looks more closely at the whole person who buys opera CDs. Who are they? What does their lifestyle community look like? If they buy opera CDs, what else would they tend to buy?

How about tickets to the opera, books and movies on opera, books on Italy and the world-famous La Scala Opera House, opera collectibles and memorabilia, vacations to Italy, subscriptions to National Public Radio …and the list goes on. Once you look more closely at the buyer’s lifestyle, instead of just one specific purchase, you can begin optimizing for these much less competitive keywords. The added bonus: even paid search utilizing these lateral search terms will cost far less and will generate just as much revenue over a longer period of time.

Then watch how your web properties traffic begins to rise.

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Article Tags: keyword research, Lateral Thinking, search techniques, SEO, vertical marketing strategies



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