Narrow your keywords and pinpoint your category to rank higher in search results
I got an email today from Dug Lee, a Seattle psychotherapist, who asked me to review her Biznik profile and suggest ways that she could rank higher in search engine results. I’d like to share what I discovered in my investigation, because it’s a common mistake that I see happening on lots of otherwise great Biznik profiles. The good news is, with a little work, Dug can fix this, and so can you.
Dug’s profile looks pretty good on first glance – it’s immediately clear what she does. She’s got just one word, “Psychotherapist” in her profile’s “your job” field. I love the clarity of that. However, there are a lot of psychotherapists in Seattle.
Biznik provides you with two ways to approach the problem of standing out: the “your job” field, and categories. Here’s the rule of thumb: For terms that are highly competitive, you should make sure that you belong to a category that exactly matches that term. So in her case, she should belong to a category called “psychotherapist.” No one has created that category yet! To create a category, you have to be a supporting member – it’s one of the perks we provide top members. For example, if you Google “seattle speaker,” a very broad term that could include speaking on a huge variety of topics, you’ll find the Biznik speaker category comes up #1 on the first page of results. Not bad. If you’re a public speaker in Seattle, you’d likely want to be on that page.
Secondly, the “your job” field should contain a narrower definition of your keywords. Narrowing means adding another, qualifying term. For example, another Biznik member, Michelle Bales, has put “licensed psychotherapist” as her job title. If you google for “Seattle licensed psychotherapist” today, you’ll discover she comes up #3.
I think Dug can come up with a much better narrowing keyword than “licensed.” Think like someone looking for your services, and ask yourself: what term would they likely enter into a search engine to find me? In Dug’s case, I’d consider adding “family,” “individual,” “group” or “LGBT” to what you have now. Then sit back and watch yourself soar in the search results.
Final thought: On Biznik, participation = marketing. The more active you are, the more “food” the spiders have, and the higher you’ll appear.
November 30th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
Thank you, Dan. I have understood some of those basics and helped others with more straightforward business categories when they joined biz nik, and yet not fully employed them myself. What a great thing to know that supporting members can create their own category. I just upgraded today, so I am off to create a new category. I love biz nik and all of the personal and yet professional support that you and Lara and the biz nik community give. Co-creation and mutualism is such a joy.