There are many reasons why a website may rank lower for a particular keyword, but it’s important to know that your search engine positions for specific keywords are not important, as long as you have a general presence for a wide range of words and phrases. This is because you can’t accurately guess the exact phrases people will search for.

Take the phrase ‘Jobs in Manchester’ as an example. If you were looking for a job in Manchester, this is probably not the exact phrase you would use. You are likely to be more specific about the industry or location you want to work in, by searching for ‘sales jobs in Manchester’ or ‘contract engineering jobs in Altrincham’, for example. When you consider these regional and sector variations, there are literally thousands of phrases that people might enter into Google when looking for a job in Manchester.

Successful search engine optimisation campaigns are built around a theory called ‘The Long Tail of Search’. Have a look at the chart on our website, www.andlight.co.uk - you will see that this example website was found a few times for its main targeted search phrase, but that there have also been a large number of visits to other, more varied search phrases. In general, the number of searches made for more specific variations hugely outnumber those for general, non-specific key phrases.

By targeting different variations of a main phrase you can attract far more visitors than the main phrase alone could provide. I have seen many website reports where there have been less than 1,000 visits for a main search term and over 15,000 for others. The website might not appear in the top 10 for one search phrase, but it could appear in the top 20 for thousands of others..

As web developers, we’ve learned to focus on increasing traffic, not massaging keyword egos!