Optimizing for a Question

April 3rd, 2006 by Chris

You do not need to dominate generic keywords to have a successful website. The website simply has to make more money than you put into it (or more than what your time is worth if all you put into it is time). A website that only makes $100 a month is successful if it requires no ongoing work.

So, that being said, it might make sense to aim low with a website. Yes, I said it, aim low.

To use an example, with a new site on debt consolidation you’d face tremendous competition when optimizing for the obvious keywords of “debt consolidation.” Now sure, the payoff if you were successful could be huge, but your chances of success are awfully slim. So instead, optimize for a less popular keyword with less competition. The overall traffic ceiling of your site will be lower, but you’ll get more traffic as #1 on an obscure term than #234 on a popular term.

So, what keywords do you want to optimize for? Well, what about questions?

Not everyone conducts Boolean searches on search engines, some simply type in a question such as “How do I fry bacon?” and expect the search engine to spit out an answer. The people who do this tend to be less Internet savvy (the same type of people who are more apt to click on ads, a good demographic to attract). So consider optimizing for questions or similar phrases instead of keywords.

The simplest way to do this is in naming your articles or content pages. People will most often link to a page using it’s title, and by titling your articles as questions you’ll assuredly get that text in it’s title tags, anchor text, and any applicable H header tags.

Aiming low like this isn’t going to give you the #1 site in your niche, but it can still be very profitable.

3 Responses to “Optimizing for a Question”

  1. James  Says:

    Hmmm that’s actually a very good idea I’d never thought of: using questions as article names…though it is a bit of a tangent from what I believe was your primary point that aiming low can mean just as much success as aiming big.

  2. Website Publisher Blog » Website Promotion, Generating Revenue, Website Management  Says:

    [...] I also like this site because it is an example of something I posted about previously, optimizing for a question. [...]

  3. Reseller Hosting  Says:

    Instead of targeting a generic and highly competitive keyword you should target less competitive and descriptive keywords to get more traffic. For example targetting a keyword like ‘web hosting’ is not gonna get you on top very soon as there is already an awful lot of competition for that keyword. Instead target more descriptive and specific keywords like ‘business web site hosting’ or ‘web hosting php mysql’

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