OPTIMIZING WEBSITES FOR HIGHLY COMPETIVE INDUSTRIES

A common misconception regarding anticipated time and costs for SEO is when the client's target market is extremely saturated with competition. While some SEO companies may tell you it will cost more and take longer to achieve ranking gains, in truth the competitiveness of the industry is not all that relevant when SEO is done properly.

In some ways, a competitive market can actually make SEO easier for gaining ranking grounds since many keyword combinations become more obvious for targeting. More important, however, is gaining strength for higher listing placements in the abundance of market targets that the rest of the competitors have neglected.

Since so many [most] sites in a highly competitive industry make the mistake of all going after the same search phrases that their neighbor wants, they often tell the search engines they want certain phrases, whether their content is relevant or not. They also miss the broader marketing potential their content could have supported.

The reason many have held their rankings for so long is because nobody really came along with properly targeted [relevancy present] SEO for the search engines to index. Many long standing business sites haven’t bothered fully optimizing their sites because they thought their rankings would just stay at the top of the listings -- that neglect often makes it easier to bump them down to claim some strong rank positioning.

For marketing strategies, there are actually times when it's better to place below a competitor rather than above them. This is a particularly useful tactic if that competitor is spending an exceptionally large budget towards PPC placements.

The purpose of SEO in a highly competitive market industry shouldn't be about claiming position on the few search targets all the competition are trying to get, but rather on dominating listings for the other 90% of valuable search targets they've all missed.

Proper targeting will not only gain new client customers, it will also help boost rank positions in the main industry searches as well. Going after new search markets missed by others can really deliver a huge ROI value for the client's website.

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