SEO Services What-E-ver -New SEOs Note - Chasing SEO + Location Searches is Fun but Ultimately Pointless

Anyone who takes an interest in SEO hubs on this site has likely come across all the SEO Services Ibiza stuff lately, and maybe even wondered just exactly what was going on..?

So let's summarise the situation for the benefit of the confused and then move onto the point of this hub because it highlights an important fundamental SEO error.

It all started back in June when Peter Hoggan and I had a disagreement in the hubpages forum one Sunday afternoon, regarding use of the allintitle: advanced search operator to research target searches. Peter responded with a hub, which was answered with another one in reply, involving a real time case study to prove our assertions.

In the forum thread Peter decided that he was going to come and outrank us for a particular SEO term our site has been #1 on Google.co.uk for quite a while, "Business SEO" with his SEO Scotland site.

We told him that the allintitle: searches for "Business SEO" meant that even though this is not super-tough in the grand scheme of things, it would be quite competitive for him from a standing start and thought it unlikely he'd be taking it off us any time soon.

>>Try Google search "Business SEO"<< - note little change at the top ;)

In the meantime we had responded with a joke SEO Scotland page in our site, which er, was mildly successful in penetrating it's intended SERP.

To which Peter has since responded by several "SEO Services Ibiza" hubs, rebuilding and re-branded another site of his, specifically targeting "SEO services Ibiza" and declared his intention of opening an office and moving here :)

Well of course nobody can blame anybody for wanting to escape Scotland and move to Ibiza, however we will of course be vigorously defending the SERP from pale and possibly drunken invaders, but through pride alone, because, and here's the important point of this hub, no potential customers ever search for those keywords, like ever...

The five hits in 3 years of being ~#1 for "SEO services Ibiza" on Google Analytics would undoubtedly be us a couple of years ago, and Peter recently.

Now we hope Peter knows better than this, his SEO Scotland pedigree certainly suggests he should understand this, and indeed we think he probably does grasp this most basic tenet of SEO.

The plain facts are that the only searches done for SEO services + place, are other SEOs and automated ranking scanners.

We are able to state this with a reasonable degree of certainty, because over time, because we could and as ongoing experimentation (much like the SEO Scotland invasion) we have had a top 5 presence in several other SEO + location & SEO services + Location searches for several years now including:

• SEO Services Spain
• SEO Switzerland
• SEO Mallorca
• SEO Malta
• SEO Gozo
• SEO services Scotland (for the last 3 months or so)

And on our other tongue-in-cheek blog

• SEO Iraq / Baghdad
• SEO Afganistan
• SEO Yemen

And we run Woopra real-time web surveillance and so can see in clear detail exactly what the keyword searches are live, and visitor motivation, and can state confidently that the commercial intent and viability of "SEO services + Location" searches is effectively zero.

According to the Google Adwords tool the term "SEO services" itself does show a reasonable level of searches done per month, but this only shows the amount of times Google saw that query, NOT the amount of potential customers who did that search, and with SEO terms especially, this is an entirely different thing.

A good example of this is the second highlighted example:

" Small Business SEO services "

According to Google we should be seeing approximately 40% of 260 searches per month for this? In actual fact approximately 3-5 times per month another SEO checking his rankings might click into the site, NOBODY ELSE EVER DOES.

**Please note as of Dec 28th 2010 this page was moved internally via 301 redirection and the ranking has dropped, would expect it return in due course.

• Your customers probably do not know your business like you do.
• They probably do not know and use your tech jargon, nor buzzwords.
• They will not use one of your favourite SEO phrases and add a Location to it.

Because whilst it is great fun for pro SEOs such as Peter & the SEO Ibiza crew (who should and do know better, respectively) to joust over these phrases in a macho chest-banging display of SEO Alpha Doggedness and firepower, we would hate to see any newbie SEOs get wrong-footed by watching this and thinking all they have to do is rank their blog for "SEO services Grimsville" and the work will come flooding in, because it definitely won't.

Of course, with SEO as with most markets, there are effective "selling" keywords worth concentrating on too, but their searchers are far fewer and further between than the hordes of SEOs all trying desperately to rank for "SEO services something" and the Google figures might indicate.

So the lesson for new SEOs here is not to follow the herd and try and rank for all the obvious SEO terms just because everyone else is, so in the case of "SEO Services + whatever" you'd be much better off doing as we say, and not as we do.

Here's a shot of the top 20 or so keywords from the business part of our site (not the blog) over a 6 month period from earlier in the year, within this list are several keywords that do generate business, and especially so the various longtail combinations below (not on the image) that bring in real customers, and the only clue as to which are the good ones is that apart from the "brand" ie people looking for the company, "SEO Ibiza" specifically via word of mouth etc, it's not the "Ibiza" stuff ;)