Why targetting competitive keyterms could break your small business

If you are a small business looking for an SEO service it helps to do a bit of background reading to understand what ranking for those keyterms could really mean to your business.

When you contact an SEO provider you will discuss with them your aims, including what you desire to be ranking for. During the early stages your SEO will research keyterms which are relevant to your industry and present their findings. The list will vary in competitiveness (which in a nutshell will be potentially converting phrases that are searched the most). You will really need to think about what you want to target because even though a phrase has been identified as competitive and relevant to your industry, it may not actually be suitable for your business.

Remember that your SEO can only advise you but ultimately they will take YOUR instruction. So if you insist you want to target the most competitive terms that is what your SEO will do. And you can then expect to pay for their expertise, time and effort in targetting those terms. It will take time. It will cost you money. But is it going to be worth it?

Are you spending money to get out of your league?

• Is your business is truly relevant for that generic phrase?
• Can you business cope with the traffic that rank could bring?

If you rank for that generic phrase your traffic WILL increase. But rather than make you a millionaire it could break your business.

The traffic will be a mixture of visitors. There are the non customers (competitors, researchers, salespeople) who may generate a phone call or enquiry – which will take up your time to deal with. And then you have the percentage of visits from people who are looking for the  product or service that you provide. But not all of these are potential customers.

If you are based in Manchester and only serve Manchester the only relevant traffic is the visits from customers in Manchester. So all the traffic from London, Birmingham, US, Australia, etc is not relevant to you. But you will still have to deal with those enquiries. Shouldn’t you be targetting a Manchester term instead?

If you only sell Laptop batteries, your rank for ‘Buy Laptops‘ will bring you visits and enquiries from people wanting to buy a laptop. Shouldn’t you be targetting ‘Laptop Batteries’ instead?

If you only deliver organic food to wholesale customers, why spend time and money targeting ‘organic food” when that will attract individuals looking for a weekly home delivery at £10? Shouldn’t you be targetting terms that contain ‘wholesale’ which will be achieved quicker and with less expense?

If your intention IS to grow your business, you have made provision for the additional support and back up increased visitors will bring and you have the budget needed then of course, go right ahead and target those generic phrases if you want to.

But if you aren’t prepared for the increased traffic you probably won’t be able to cope. The increase in enquiries will grow from all types of visitors. Your provision of service may be hindered and you could damage existing relationships. And you still have your monthly SEO bill to pay. Could that break your business?