In a Town
Called Google The Keyword Is Real Estate
by: David Ferrers
The late Conrad Hilton who built a chain of hotels
across the world, was firmly of the belief that if he
built a hotel in the right location it would make money.
“Location, Location, Location” was his motto. Never
build a hotel where there ain’t no traffic.
The same rule applies on
the Internet. Build your site in the right location and
it will succeed.
So the question is: “how
do I find the right plot of Internet real estate on
which to build my site?”
For the purposes of this
exercise I would like you to imagine a smart seaside
town called Google.
Along the sea front and
around the marina, where the luxury yachts are parked,
are smart hotels, casinos and apartment blocks. At
street level in each of these buildings there are
international shops like Tiffany, Gucci and Prada
selling luxury goods.
In the next block back
from the front are really nice houses owned by wealthy
citizens. And behind them are not-quite-so-nice houses
and apartments. So it goes, as you walk away from the
sea front the houses and shops become less and less
expensive. Until, just on the outskirts of the town of
Google, there is a trailer park where the least wealthy
citizens stay.
In the town of Google it
costs a lot of money to rent one of the shops on the
seafront because they are seen by large numbers of
passers-by. These will be both the wealthy people
staying in the town and day-trippers who are just
sight-seeing. However, you can rent a shop in the
trailer park for much less money. Here you will still
get valuable passing traffic but the competition will
not be nearly so great.
The mistake that most
people make when they build their web sites is to build
around keywords which all the powerful multi-nationals
are using for their seafront stores. These organizations
are spending mega bucks to get their web sites to the
top positions on the search engines. Your chances of
competing with them and achieving a top search engine
ranking are very slim.
Much better to build
your web site around the ‘trailer park’ keywords. Where
you can still get masses of valuable traffic, but you’re
not competing with the mega-buck budgets of the
multi-national corporations
