Divine Write Copywriting Forum

Hi there,
I was just wondering, I have a client who wants some SEO applied to her site. She has a communications firm that is getting a lot of indigenous communication work. But she does not want to let go of other types of communication contracts. Would it be wise to select a generic keyword phrase for her homepage (like communications firm) and then have a separate page that is optimized for 'indigenous communications'. Or should the home page have two keyword phrases, one being say 'communications firm' and the other being 'indigenous communications'? OR! Could I optimize the home-page for 'indigenous communications firm' which would work for people typing either?
-thanks!

Hi Trisha. Thanks for your post. Sorry for taking so long to get back to you. Heaps on at the moment. New site on its way.

This is a tricky one. I'm tempted to say you're right with your last suggestion (target "indigenous communications firm" and you'll net both types of searchers), but not sure if the high incidence of "indigenous" might confuse the search engines.

If "indigenous" was more closely related in meaning to "communications firm", I'd say definitely. But because it's unrelated, it may throw the search engines off the scent?

I'm gonna chat with some pure SEOs and cone back.

Cheers.

Hi Trisha,

I'm not sure you're going to love this answer as it only raises more questions!

It really depends...

Firstly, if the page is especially strong (i.e. it has highly relevant links pointing to it, the site structure is strong, etc compared to your competitors), then there is no reason for your site not to rank prominently.

If, on the other hand you are competing in a tough online market and don't rank at all, then one primary / short-tail keyword / phrase is the way to go in my opinion. But this does not mean to say that you can't rank for long-tail (less competitive, lower search volume) terms too.

It also depends on how closely (semantically) related the keywords / phrases are. e.g. blue cows and blue farm animals are fairly closely related so you could potentially rank for them.

Another point is how far away from ranking on the first page are you? if you are a long way off, then you could make your name by strictly working your way through a long list of niche, long-tail terms, which, don't forget, are typically more converting too.

Make sure you put the time to check-out the competition - see how competitive the SERPs are, why they're ranking (on and off-site factors) and go from there. That should help to inform your decision.

As you can tell, it's beginning to open up a can of worms and without knowing your site and the industry it's in, it would be difficult to say exactly what would be the best approach...but work done now will ensure you know your efforts are being focused in the right direction at least.

I hope that helps, just a little....

Ben

Thanks Ben. Much appreciated.

I agree with all of your points. The main thing I was concerned about was the possible issue posed by LSI. But I don't know enough to answer.

My concern: is "indigenous" too unrelated to "communications"? And thus, is it not possible that it might throw the SEs off the scent, so to speak? e.g. Let's say Trisha first targeted just "communications firm", and the search engines indexed her fine and ranked her well. Then she threw "indigenous" into the mix (without diluting keyword density or link popularity). Is it possible that the SEs might think her site wasn't as much about communications as they first thought? And thus possible that her ranking might be impacted?

I think that there is no reason why indigenous could not be used if we're talking semantics - it simply acts as an excellent modifier for an otherwise very competitive phrase too. You might want to look at alternatives / additions to the use of that term, such as "local communication" / "local communication services" which has a great deal more traffic and is more semantically related. Use of each of these terms in anchor text pointing at the point might go some way in communicating the semantic relationship of these keywords too.

Indigenous communication(s), doesn't really have much search volume for one thing using a quick search on Google's keyword tool...but should be easily ranked for...From doing a very quick competitiveness check using the query we can see how many sites are trying to rank for those terms:

allintitle: "Indigenous communication" (125 directly competing)
allintitle: "Indigenous communications" (488 directly competing)

...results from the UK so please check where you are.

These are just quick thoughts, but I hope they help!

Ben

Wow Ben! Now I owe you 27 beers! We're gonna have a big night when next you visit Australia!

I'm going to go back over your responses to devise my plan of attack, but I think the gist is this: In Canada, there is only one company that comes up at all when you Google anything to do with indigenous communications. I really think because of this my client should be focussing on this brand of work and it will be really easy to optimize for that term. I'm sure if she also includes a paragraph on her home page stating that she takes on other kinds of communications work, and maybe has a couple pages devoted to (and optimized for) her other types of communications work, she should be good to go.

Thanks so much for your help. I'm just branching into this kind of work and think that it might be my niche here in British Columbia, Canada. There is only one other SEO copywriter that comes up in Google for BC last time I checked. It's a pretty big province. There are also a plethora of web design firms in this little artsy town I live in, that I can probably pair up with.

Thanks again!
-Trisha

For the record, I asked around on Twitter (you can follow me at and Ben at ), and the consensus was that you should target whatever makes the most sense to your target readers. Design and structure your site around that, then optimise.

Yeah, the problem with the "target readers" is that she's not sure yet. She's in the initial stages (first couple years) of her business. I guess I'll just try different variations and keep track.

I looked into Twitter, but you know, though I'm in "communications" , I'm kinda putting my foot down with more communications, so I don't think I will join twitter but thanks for the invite. I already have yahoo, facebook, this forum, my company email, and a couple phones and that's enough to drive me to drink (though it's a short drive)!
-cheers!

Hi Glenn,
I was just reading over your post about the SodaHouse call for copywriters. I'm assuming I'm too late to apply, but I didn't see a closing date so I just thought I'd ask....

Do you usually like to outsource work to Australians or does PayPal level the playing field for us Canadians?

-Trisha

Hi Trisha. Yeah, the whole project has been significantly delayed (difficulty extracting info from end clients). So you're definitely not too late to send your stuff through!

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