SEO Confidence Lacking? Turn Up Your Competition – Calling Out Courtney Tuttle
January 18, 2008 - Written by Gyutae Park
Are you looking to start a new site? Many webmasters struggle with the task of coming up with a topic to theme their new creations on. In most cases they want to make as much money as possible and will target extremely competitive niches where they are at a huge disadvantage from the start.
In an attempt to prevent this common practice, Courtney Tuttle writes an article urging his readers to limit competition in the search engines by avoiding overly competitive keywords when they are just starting out. Basically, he suggests that it’s important to build confidence by dominating the search engine results pages for obscure keywords that no one really searches for. While I respect Courtney and agree with many of his Internet marketing teachings, I am disturbed that he would recommend such a thing.
Build confidence? I don’t know about you, but I would not be very proud of myself if I attained a #1 ranking in Google for “supercalifragilisticexpialidosious”. That’s like saying if I want to play professional basketball in the NBA I have to first dominate a bunch of 6 year olds on a 5 foot hoop. I’m sorry but that’s just unreasonable thinking.
In this article, I’ll lay out my main arguments against Courtney’s theory and then show you the real process you should be using when determining the keywords for your site.
1. Your passions, interests, and knowledge are most important
Are you passionate about Internet marketing? Do you know a lot about finance and investing? Great, so then why shouldn’t you create a site on it and be involved in what you do best? In the end, it doesn’t matter how competitive or uncompetitive a niche is. If you are passionate about your topic and enjoy it, your site will shine above the others and the money will come. Passion, interests, and knowledge are first. Worry about search engine rankings later.
2. A big challenge is the best way to learn
Courtney states that “it’s pretty easy to get ranked for most keywords”. Fine, then why should I spend time doing something that I can already easily do? I’m not going to open a 4th grade math book and start solving basic addition problems just because I can and because it will supposedly build my confidence. It just doesn’t work that way. Will I learn anything? Probably not. If you want to learn the real way, you have to put yourself in a tough situation and force yourself to grow and adapt. I’ve heard from countless ski instructors that their beginning students learn faster when they are brought up to a more difficult slope. Sure, they stumble and they fall, but that’s what makes them learn and become better, more confident skiers. In the same way, you can’t stay on the bunny slopes of SEO forever.
3. If you want to be a big boy, play with the big boys
Courtney asks the question, “If you want to become a decent tennis player do you really think it would be in your best interest to play Roger Federer every day?” Although he doesn’t think so, I think it would be great to play Roger everyday. Sure, I might not be able to get the racket on the ball every time, but Courtney fails to realize that humans learn, adapt, and change their behavior according to their surroundings. By playing with the best, over time I become one of the best. I’m able to observe them, emulate them, and one day potentially overtake them. The same goes for SEO and search engine rankings. Work with competitive keywords and you’ll see first hand what the best are doing and what tactics are making them successful. You’ll then be able to emulate and improve upon what they are doing to get you high rankings. Don’t sell yourself short by limiting the competitiveness of your keywords.
4. Time is not on your side
So say that you’re avoiding a set of keywords because they’re just too competitive right now. Your plan is to target something where rankings are “easy” and then come back to your original niche later on when you are older and wiser. What makes you think that it won’t be competitive then? In fact, the industry will be even more saturated and you will have wasted precious time that you could have been using to grow your site and develop rankings for. Start off in a competitive field and you’ll grow with your site. The earlier you get in, the better chance you have of success.
5. It’s not all about SEO
Courtney does not do a good job of reflecting this, but your website is not just all about SEO and search engine rankings. There are other ways to attract users and do well even if the rankings aren’t there. In fact, when a site is just beginning, it’s important to use other marketing methods such as buying advertising, using guerilla marketing tactics, and generating buzz via social media. Search engines simply strive to follow where real people are going.
6. How to build an unbreakable confidence
If you really want to build your confidence, play with the best and keep up. What greater confidence can you earn than by having a top ranking for a competitive keyword? I don’t know about you, but dominating an obscure niche only makes me anxious because I’m missing out on the truth of how SEO really works. It’s a competitive industry out there so stop complaining, dig your feet in, and get going.
So who do you agree with now? I’m calling Courtney out on this issue.
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Exactly. I’m going directly for challenging keywords in the internet marketing niche (OK, I know it’s not really a ‘niche’), simply because I believe I can evolve to be smarter and shrewder than those at the top and that’s exactly where I plan to be.
Sick, twisted…a bit over the top, no?
I read Tuttles posts, and I don’t agree with focusing on search engines the way he does. I think you should keep an eye on your SEO related topics but focus more on social networking if your looking to gain traffic. Even in the case of Shoemoney dot com only 10 % at most of his traffic comes from search engines and he is in the top 3 blogs. John Chow almost hates Google and search engines, and he pulls in almost 30k a month.
My moto is do what you can for search engines and go out and just make some new friends.
I have to admit when I read Tuttles post the other day I thought it was sort of a wuss way to approach things myself. I don’t claim to be any sort of SEO guru, but I’m definitely not a afraid of fighting an uphill battle for who knows how long? Great rebuttle! Bottom line is if you create great content and an excellent brand then people WILL COME! Of course you have to promote, but don’t be afraid to roll up your sleeves and dig in either!
I also read Tuttle’s posts and I think that you’re right to point out that SEO isn’t everything. There are so many ways to get traffic without Google that worrying too much about SEO is a waste of time. However, when it comes to getting traffic at the search engines, Tuttle is absolutely right – she just didn’t do a good job of acknowledging that google isn’t the only way to market your site. Statistically, 70% of all traffic at any search engine comes from those 2 top spots in search engine results – even if you’re on page 2 or 3, you probably wont see any traffic. So building pages around keywords that don’t get you onto those top spots, if gaining search engine traffic is your goal, is a waste of time. It IS, however, a good idea to use a few uncontested keywords in your posts and meta tags as they will bring you extra traffic. You’re point is a good one though, SEO isn’t everything.
Thanks for writing about me!
No problem Courtney, but is that all you have to say?
Excellent post, couldn’t agree more.
For the record, your on page 2 for supercalifragilisticexpialidosious. I am sure you are swimming in confidence because of it! =p
I couldn’t agree with you more. When I read the post I must have sat here for a few minutes with a frown on my face. It didn’t make sense to me.
Frankly, I’d rather jump in both feet first rather than test the waters with something that ultimately isn’t going to do what I want.
Great rebuttal.
Way to call out Courtney w/ the solid post. Very well stated, nice content.
Gee, I dunno. If you just broaden your niche the tiniest bit, you could get every one of the 61 searches for “supercalifragilistic” (according to wordtracker).
Actually, while I planned to focus on tiny niches, I decided to practice in a much broader market. I figured that I wouldn’t even get noticed in those huge markets and therefore not have to worry about my mistakes. Surprise surprise- one of my broadest markets is performing the best. Though not for the keywords I’d intended it for. I’m in the process of optimizing it now.
Gyutae you have quite an interesting approach to blogging here. Pick a post, counter it with some good points and bam – instant link bait.
And not only link bait – but you continue the dialog with your rebuttals.
I thought it was good when you did it to me – and I continue to be impressed.
Gyutae,
I agree with you 100% – sounds to me like Courtney is trying to say “if you don’t know SEO, just don’t even try”. You bring out some good points that humans are able to adapt, but the challenge I see in SEO is that it’s not a physical competition and often times it is difficult for us mere mortals to know what we need to do to improve…and figuring that out is a time and effort intensive process.
Good writeup!
Nick
A lot of people make the mistake of focusing exclusively on SEO and neglecting the very foundation of their project: content. Sure, SEO should never be overlooked but people have to understand that it is not everything and that they should never put all of their eggs in one basket as far as traffic is concerned.
Alan Johnson
Dude! What happened to the sexy car?
great points on why you should have confidence in your market. however, i read courtney’s article and i didn’t get the drift that he said not to go for competitive keywords. my impression is he’s telling newbies to do their homework and find out what it takes to get a #1 ranking and go from there. to me, i see both sides, only because i was mentored by an seo expert who won’t dare to take on *certain* competitive keywords (but mostly because he doesn’t have the time!)…although he dominates in one of the most competitive markets online. either way, good points!
You can have all the confidence in the world and you can be passionate about not making the sun rise tomorrow but it’s going to.
You are taking a small part of Court’s strategy and twisting it. Your average niche site builder or blogger is never going to be able to rank #1 for the most popular terms.
Won’t happen.
Court is offering alternatives, that are dead on and will allow your average schmo to get ranked well in a profitable niche.
Niche sites are all about being nichey…and making money online is hardly nichy.
My 2 cents.
My humble advice to the newbie blogger is – “To find out how much competition this keyword has, I want you to search for the keyword in Google with quotation marks around it: “your keyword here”. You will only go after a keyword if it has less than 5,000 results in Google.” what do you think?
nice tips, thanks