First thing I would do would be to not focus on the keyword "advertising", but try to increase your natural search results for other terms that are not as competitive. I would suggest "outdoor advertising" and similar terms that someone may search for when they try to find outdoor advertising. Maybe also put this in conjunction with terms for your country, cities, regions, etc., to weed out those in other areas you don't serve.

After that, I would move to more offline marketing, particularly networking, as the way to grow your business.

BTW - I went to your website, and to be a bit blunt, found it confusing. Way too long, asks me for a userid and password, etc. Getting a high ranking will only be useful if the web site is able to work towards converting these visitors to clients for you.

I agree with Peter. In addition, I'd change the challenge. Achieving a high ranking for any keyword is only useful if it results in sales. So, a better challenge would be to increase your online sales or leads by 20% or 100% or whatever makes you feel challenged.

Using the keyword "advertising" is much too broad. You will get more sales if you target your keyword. A very low percentage of people who visit your site based on that keyword will actually want to do business with you.

So, not only are other keywords less competitive, they will result in more leads.

I also agree with Peter on the site design. In trying to visit, first I got a block for Avenue A. After I cancelled the request for a password several times, I ended up with a request to run an ActiveX control. Finally I was able to close the window your site was running in.

I'd also suggest making the site a bit more user friendly.

Hope this helps.

Kathleen

I'm going to take a completely contraian point of view. For a while now, I have come to believe that SEO is not as relevant to business as people think. Why? Well, to quote the old adage I used with a realtor who was showing me some commercial property. The realtor said: this location has 160,000 cars a day drive by. To which I replied, I don;t care how many drive by, it's how many the stop and buy that I care about.

Does ranking in the top ten mean sales? Does top ten ranking drive cash flow? I doubt it. I think its making sales that drives sales.

You can argue how traffic COULD translate into sales, and how you HAVE to be listed in order to be found...but frankly, POTENTIAL does not pay the bills, CASH from SALES does.

SEO, SEM to your heart's conent....I think investing efforts into making the sales process more efficient, improving close rates, improving your CONVERSION rates are where it's really at.

That's my view on it.

Darcy Moen
Customer Loyalty Network

Hi,

We need to answer this in a a structured way.

1. Why do you want a high rank on the keyword "Advertising". And if you achieve it, what will you achieve. Just think of the psycology of the potential customer. Why will he search advertising at first place. These days customers have a specific topic in mind - like "outdoor advertising" or "outdoor advertising in US" - because this give relevant search for him/her. If the customer is looking for fmcg advertising - he wont use advertising keyword. Other thing people in B Schools will only search for this keyword because they want to write a thesis on advertising .. but this is not going to help you in form of Sales Conversion.

2. I would suggest you that instead on focusing on keyword, please improve the looks of the website as it is in bad shape. Its better to design new pages, with information in a structured way, so that the customer who reach your website is forced to buy your offerings. SO even if 10000 people visit your website and you can have 10% conversion ratio, then 1000 customers are at your doorstep. But even if you achieve you get a higher ranking on advertising, out of 20000 visitors, with a conversion ratio of 2%, you will land up with just 400 customers. Remember first impression is the last impression.

3. Dont be narrow minded and focus on just advertising, make your website content rich with articles having relevant word repeated again and again. This will increase your ranking for many keywords and not only advertising.

4. Also Please remove the login box at the start of website. This can irraitate customers.

5. Make sure you dont have frames in your website as it reduce the ranking of your page.

6. Do relationship marketing. Ask your friends website to put a link of your website www.poweradvertising.com.au ... This is called Link Populariry method.

7. A theme (color combination) should be followed throughout your website.

8. Suppose if a customer is impressed with ur website, the contact details should be at the top .. so that he/she can inquire fast.

Let me know for more details.
Nitin Kochhar
Email address deleted by staff.