Many times you’ll have a website with 50 unique content pages, some decent top level domain links and maybe a few internal links. All pages are decently interlinked and monetized.
Then out of nowhere a single page starts getting a ton of traffic because it starts ranking for a keyword. When this happens you have two options. Leave it alone and hope it keeps getting traffic, or work that page and try to increase traffic.
The pessimist in me tries to stick to the first option, just leave it. It’s already making money, so leave it and move on.
The optimist in me sees that I’m not ranked #1 for the big money keywords, but I am ranked in the top 10 for decent keywords.
This usually looks like this:
Widgets – Ranked #20
Blue widgets – Ranked #4
So instead of just being content with your #4 ranking for that decent keyword, do you go after that big dollar keyword?
For me it really depends on how much money that #4 ranking is making. If it is making enough for me to just leave it alone, I do that. If it is less than $30 a day, I will usually try to either focus on moving that keyword to the #1 spot, or working on that high dollar keyword.
Tomorrow I’ll give you a few hints on how to move your keywords from top 20 to top 10 rankings!
My temptation in this situation would be to focus on moving “blue widgets” to the number one spot. Even if it’s not as big a money-maker as “widgets,” there’s a lot better chance to make it to the top spot.
And if the bigger keyword is encompassed *within* the other keyword (“widgets” is in “blue widgets”), you’ll still be working on its ranking as well. Or maybe I missed something.
Andrew, going for the long tail keywords has always been a priority for me. Recently I had a site jump from 50 to 9 for the primary keyword and it makes about 4x what all of the long tail keywords combined were making. Sometimes a little real world examples make me change my mind on what is best!