One of the first bits of advice I give to those who are new to search engine optimization is to stop trying to rank for highly competitive phrases and to focus on the long tail of search. Hamlet Batista disagrees. In fact, he wrote a post yesterday explaining exactly why he feels the suggestion to aim for less competitive phrases is a bad one. I understand what he's trying to say, but he's missing the point.

Hamlet writes:

It usually took more than a year of link building effort to get to page one or two of the search results for the most competitive ones, but it was definitely a rewarding experience. I had decided to take the risk of working on several sites for so long because I was confident in my ability to reach my goals. The more successes you have under your belt, the more confident you get about your decision-making abilities and the better you are at judging risk.

If I had followed the experts' advice, I would probably still be a work-from-home affiliate, earning a good commission every month and switching links as merchants went out of business or as markets saturated. Fortunately, that was not how I envisioned my future.

But he over simplifies things and he misses the point.

Hamlet seems to think people like myself suggest starting "low" because we either don't believe someone can rank for a highly competitive phrase on their own or because we simply want to stifle the competition. While I'm sure it's possible some SEOs would feed bad information to readers because they don't want to compete again them, I'm fairly certain that's not the goal of most of the folks offering this advice.

I also don't think anyone would tell a site owner they should never go after competitive phrases, they simply suggest not STARTING with the goal of ranking for them. Obviously the idea is to start low and work your way up to aiming high. That's part of why people like myself encourage this progression of competitive targeting. With this in mind, I thought I'd toss out the top five reasons I believe site owners should start low when it comes to targeting keyword phrases.

1. You'll build rankings and traffic faster

There's no denying well trafficked phrases are hard to rank for. Obviously the more traffic a phrase produces, the more sites will want to target it. (Likely because the majority of site owners still think in terms of traffic rather than sales.) The most people there are trying to rank for a phrase, the more likely it is that at least some of them have a lot of search engine optimization experience under their belts. Thus, it can be next to impossible to crack the top ten when you're just learning about things like title tags and anchor text.

By targeting less competitive terms at the start of your campaign, you stand a better chance of ranking and driving traffic to your site quickly. While it's true these rankings will send less traffic than rankings for more competitive phrases would have, the reality is you probably wouldn't be ranking for those more competitive phrases yet anyway. Thus, a little bit of traffic is better than none.

2.) You take advantage of the Search Buying Cycle

I've written about the concept of the search buying cycle in past Search Engine Guide articles.

The basic idea is people tend to conduct multiple searches on a single concept before they make a purchase decision. In fact, studies have shown the average searcher tends to search up to a dozen times over the course of several weeks before they make a purchase (either online or offline.) It's important to understand we're not talking about people running the same search over and over again and then finally buying. We're talking about a user running multiple searches on the same topic before they make their purchase. This process of refining a search over time is what's known as the search buying cycle.

As a general rule, people begin their search in the "interest" phase by searching for fairly generic and general terms. As they begin to learn more about what they're looking for, they fine tune their searches to gather more information. This is what's known as the "research" phase. Finally, they complete the search buying cycle by conducting "purchase" searches that tend to be very specific.

A quick example of this progression might be:

Interest - "car insurance"
Research - "sports car insurance"
Research - "california car insurance"
Research - "best car insurance company"
Purchase - "car insurance instant online quote"

It's fairly easy to see that as people move through the search buying cycle, they often make use of phrases that fall into the keyword long tail. By leveraging these less competitive, but highly relevant phrases, you increase your chances at getting your site in front of them at one (or many) points of this cycle. Choose the right phrases and deliver a good experience, and it's likely the user will bookmark your site and return to it when they're ready to make a purchase decision.

3.) You'll increase conversions and sales faster

Building off the points I made about the keyword buying cycle in point number two, it seems family obvious you'll start to see your wallet fill up sooner if you target long tail phrases. In fact, one of the strongest selling points to targeting long tail keywords no matter what your experience level is that these phrases tend to convert better.

While a phrase like "auto insurance" may get three quarters of a million searches a month, searchers who type that phrase in are likely looking for information about car insurance. In other words, they're not very likely to convert to a buyer. On the other hand, the phrase "oregon car insurance quote" only gets a few hundred searches a month, but probably has a very strong conversion rate.

While there's no doubt high volume, low conversion phrases can ultimately earn you more money, there's also no doubt lower volume, high conversion phrases will help you see profits sooner. For a site just getting started, those quick rewards can mean the difference between feeding the coffers enough to keep going and crashing early on due to lack of sales.

4.) You gain experience

All skilled search engine optimization specialists learned by doing. Trial and error and continual testing is hands down the best way to learn enough to target those highly competitive phrases.

By starting off aiming at lower phrases, you will have the opportunity to do a little bit of tweaking on your site to find out what works and what doesn't work. Since phrases are less competitive, you'll probably also see ranking changes more quickly. This can give you the perfect playground for perfecting your skills and building up your search engine optimization knowledge.

You'll have the chance to see how title tag changes, link text and content structure can impact your rankings and you'll gain a "feel" for what works and what doesn't work. Over time, you'll learn more about what works and you'll be able to apply that knowledge toward more competitive phrases.

5.) Long tail phrases build the foundation for targeting highly competitive phrases

Perhaps the biggest advantage of targeting less competitive phrases is those phrases usually contain more competitive phrases.

Search engines don't view keyword phrases the same way humans do. In fact, they don't think in terms of keyword phrases at all. Google doesn't come visit your web site and count up the number of times you use "phrase x" on your site. Instead, they analyze patterns. Any text on your page could be considered a keyword phrase. (For all Google knows, the text "for all Google knows" is a keyword phrase.)

So, while you may be targeting "oregon car insurance quote," Google can also see the phrases "oregon car insurance," "car insurance quote," "car insurance," and "insurance quote." (Or any other combination of those words.) That means every time you optimize your site for "oregon car insurance quote" you're also actually optimizing it for those other phrases as well. Score a link from a great authority site using the text "oregon car insurance quote?" Guess what? You also just scored a link from a great authority site that uses the phrase "car insurance quote."

If you are building a solid site with good content that attracts quality links, you'll find it becomes easier over time to rank for more competitive phrases because you've actually been optimizing for them all along. Sure, you'll need to do some tweaking down the road to better optimize for those phrases, but the fact remains the work you do now can set the stage for a leap to even better rankings.

Starting Small is Smart

Aiming low may seem like a cop out to those who already have a strong SEO skill set, but for small businesses and site owners just learning the SEO ropes, it's smart. Dave Thomas didn't launch Wendy's by building restaurants in every city in every state and country in the world. He started with one lone store on Broad Street in Columbus, Ohio. As he perfected his skills and built up an audience, he gradually expanded with the goal of conquering bigger and bigger markets. It worked pretty well for him. Why shouldn't starting small and building up steam work for you as well?

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