New Website or .co.uk/page?

[0james0]

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After discussions with various people, I'm slowly getting my head around SEO and how it works. (all be it very slowly! )

It seems attacking relatively often used words, that have little competition is the way forward.

My question is about how I'm going to implement it in my site.

For example a search of "plymouth shops" has 18,000 google searches each month and 3000 individual sites using a " " search in google.

If I wanted to target this market, obviously I would need a well written landing page for that keyword. Subtley littered with that word and similar related searches.

Am I right so far?

What I'm wondering is:

Would a new, small website, that would filter into my main site be much more effective than a page on my exisitng site. Assuming content was the same.

E.g-plymouthshops.com over site.com/plymouthshops

How much difference would it make?

Obviously a new page on my exisitng site, dedicated to that search term and content is far easier and more cost effective to implement. But I'm not sure just how much differnce a pages true sitename makes. Is it huge? More importantly, would it prevent me getting to number one in my plymouthshops example?

Cheers guys as always! :tup

[Barry]

Wow you've asked some crucial, important, interesting and hypothetical questions there

It sounds like your getting or have a firm grasp of what seo is and want to go about experimenting with it and gauging its results upon researched criteria.

My humble opinion would also need to know a few more variables, how long has your current site been running (if you added it as a sub-directory) and is it relevant to the sub-directory content. And is the domain you want to buy an exact match to the keywords your aiming for? - Along with a few other thoughts.....

Ta

Baz

[mikey_freedom]

Definitely on the right tracks for identifying niche areas to tackle via SEO and some of my reply may just be a rephrasing of Barry's questions.

Checking search volumes. Make sure you also select 'Exact' under the 'Match Type' dropdown box wihen using the Keyword Tool. I see 390 local searches for [plymouth shops] there for July and 480 Monthly Global. It's a handful but I do confess to owning undeveloped domain names for less than that. In most instances you'd need to look at the spread of those broad (18,100) and exact matches to assess the overall task and any potential returns.

Search Results. I'd also have a check on the search competition removing the " "s. The vast majority of non-industry internet users just never search like that. The practical competition is over 4 million results that the pages of your niche mini-site will be up against. That sounds like a lot of effort could be required unless you are going to be generating lots of other plymouth related content and traffic.

Money aspect. The niche has to be viable. The advertiser competition and CPC cost is relatively modest at first glance in this example. What is a reasonable estimate of the advertising revenue that traffic from your niche site can generate?

Maybe the best place for your content should be somewhere in between the two possibilities you show in the example, a URL structure like plymouthguide.com/shops

The niche in the example is geographic and you end up covering all sorts of local information, resource pages etc. You just can't replicate that over loads of sites down the chain like plymouthgarages, plymouthtaxis, plymouthsolicitors, plymouthchipshops dot whatever. Have a core repository for most of your information, not thinly spread between dozens of names. Remember too that Google itself would like to be the de-facto business directory for areas so for anything area specific you'll be up against them, the local paper's website, other established plymouth guides, directories etc.

If you're serious about doing your SEO right then don't interlink sites like mad, which is always the temptation when trying to move your traffic from various minisite domains to another of your sites. Your own heavily interlinked domains and rings / hubsites etc always flounder in the long run. Everyone does it to some extent for practical reasons but it's a big no-no in any large scale fashion. There are much more effective ways of advertising your sites on one another without the search engines thinking you are trying to bait them.

Your onpage SEO should really include at least:
Title, Description and Keywords. Keep them to the point and accurate.
Clean code and CSS remove the litter and make management of your pages easier.
Give your images a brief alt= as a matter of course.
Keep the navigation of your site logical and accessible for humans and search bots alike.

Offsite you want some good old fashioned in context links from topically similar pages at sites that don't belong to you but are well established and frequently spidered by the search bots. Your anchor text is crucial and, sticking to the example, it should be something like 'Plymouth Shops and Local Guide' and not 'click here' or some other similar blurb. Sometimes a handful of good links is all that's necessary to support a site with a fair amount of content in a specific niche.

Basically, don't go overboard on any apsect of your SEO. An image alt tag shouldn't be a paragraph and your keyword shouldn't be repeated in every breath in your articles. Content needs to be engaging to a reader. The search engines don't want to see a load of poor quality links suddenly appear pointing to your site. The number of quality links, your content and your rise up the results is all about it being organic and developing over time. Too fast, too contrived, too much repetition will just be interpreted as spammy.

[0james0]

OK, firstly thanks for the excellent responses. Every post I make, seems to make me a bigger and bigger fan of this place!

how long has your current site been running

About a month! -not very long. I'm now recognised by Google and co though.

And is the domain you want to buy an exact match to the keywords your aiming for?

It probably would, but after reading some things I think it's best if I stick with my current site and get the keywords and content up to scratch on each page first. Running before walking springs to mind!


Mikey- That all makes sense. Fantastic advice. I'm going to make a page for certian keywords I'm targetting via my site. So I'll have e.g-
hxxp://www.magic-offers.co.uk/plymouthshops (am I better to have plymouthshops or plymouth-shops or plymouth_shops? -does it make a difference?)

I'm going to spend the next few days optimising my main pages and the keywords on it. I feel I need to get this up to scratch before taking anything else on.

You've given me some top advice and I'll take it all onboard. Already you've stopped me making some major mistakes I was about to do!

Clean code and CSS

what does this mean?