Your site is optimized, now what?

Michael Jackson (via last.fm)

So you’ve done it. The checklist is done;
1. site is in all the directories.
2. Everything on the page is looking good; canonical domains, H1’s et al ()
3. you’ve got a load of inlinks

time to sit back and watch the traffic pour in, right? Nope, now its time to start optimizing. The first thing you need to do get a good perspective of all the possible words in your area, and the potential volume on them. Put yourself in the shoes of your audience and look at what terms they would be using. Google Insights and your own PPC search campaigns can help in determining volumes.

Once you have the list you need to start prioritizing;
1) what is the volume of searches on each term
2) how much competition is on each term
3) what data do you have from PPC to assist (CTR and conversion)

The ideal scenario is that you find words with a hell of a lot of people looking for them, which no one else is optimized for and you know that people will buy loads from you as a result of it. Lets assume you have a dental health website. All of a sudden Michael Jackson sings the praises of plastic toothpicks and it becomes a hot trend. The searches for “plastic toothpick” are going crazy on your paid search campaign, and you can see them going off the chart in Google Insights too. With each successive picture of MJ sucking a toothpick, more and more people are looking for this must-have summer accessory. You would want your product page for plastic toothpicks to rank well for this, because you know (from your PPC campaigns) that people who search for plastic toothpicks usually end up buying them, and you make a fortune on each toothpick

Start tweaking your site accordingly. You’ll need to change your domain structure to account for this, e.g. create a page that has plastic toothpicks in the domain name, as close as possible to the root (e.g. dentalhealth.com/plastictoothpick) or even better, buy platictoothpick.com and put up a site there. Ensure that the content that you write has a high keyword density around plastic toothpicks, this means that you have a couple of paragraphs that talk exclusively about the teeth cleaning benefits of these toothpicks and mention the words “plastic toothpick” as often as possible. Then you need to get some links into the domain and you will be printing money. Show celebrity magazines where to buy these lovely toothpicks, and ask people to link to your cool content. Link building for this page is not too difficult when it is within your own domain, because your other links will do the heavy lifting.

Now you’ve increased traffic to your site of more relevant people who spend lots. Just hope that Michael doesn’t bring out his own brand of floss.

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