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I am always learning about the moving beast that is SEO, and recently I came across a newish methodology that I thought I'd try out here in this article called SEO tier targeting. We are attempting to rank for the specific tier 1 keyword "Albury SEO", which has a volume of only 10 per month.
Let's first take a step back to look at how SEO services and SEO agencies may start out with a traditional SEO strategy.
The traditional SEO approach would be to rank your website on a search engine by picking keywords that they think you can rank for and also have good volume and have an easy enough keyword Difficulty.
As we know, there are hundreds of factors that Googe and other search engines consider when ranking your site this can add up to a Domain authority metric. I'll cover some of these factors below.
Our RWD website as an example | Some SEO metrics on this which affects my ability to rank for Albury SEO include:
About the keyword Albury SEO:
Yes, it's a bit of a sad analysis, but the site is only 12 months old and is regardless on its way to achieving its business goals through some other tactics.
The one thing that is most useful here in our list is that I can confirm I've got a successful rank for keywords that have a volume of 10 or fewer. It's pointless for me continuously targeting keywords with volumes of hundreds at least right now.
So how does search engine optimisation work with tier targeting if we know the data, then, can we be more purposeful in picking keywords we know we can rank for?
I intend on creating five articles between now and mid-December to see if we can move the needle and go from a DA of 7 to something else bigger, say 12 would be nice and in turn maybe even get into the tier 2 bracket for some of my local keywords.
Tier 2 will hopefully get some recognition by agencies that there's value to be had in getting backlinks from RWD and perhaps become members for that and a range of other reasons,
By no means should you forget about your overall goals to rank for the bigger volume keywords? This is where keyword clustering comes in handy where this article is of course, all about SEO for which I have some general targetted keywords of "SEO marketing strategy"(90) or "SEO digital marketing" (140). These are well above my pay grade or rank grade but one day just maybe I'll be in tier 4 or 5 and be able to rank for these.
Also don't forget it's also about being helpful with Google's search algorithm for its potential searches. I created an article hoping to get volume a few months back on this. Not a tier 5 site so tanked that attempt but not to say that it might be useful in the future..
Taking a step back, I did some training around what I should be targeting to get keywords that are low-hanging fruit essentially for my site's current ranking profile. Ok, so knowing that search engines use all sorts of metrics to figure out how to rank your site, I never really considered beyond domain authority how the actual average volume related to my own traffic.
Getting tier 1 and being able to target this area with confidence is the first step in knowing where your site profile sits and what to do next. It's a snowball approach by the time you get SEO tier 5 authority.
My overall site goal is to link a quality local digital agency with a customers looking for these services. Perhaps in the process, help other members to work together against dodgy options in cities or overseas that could waste regional business money and kill community growth.
Let's first understand what tiers there are and how they work.
According to SEO experts such SEO Journal there are 18 tiers as outlined below, affecting search engines ranking:
| Tier | Organic AVG Volume |
| 1 | 0-10 |
| 2 | Oct-20 |
| 3 | 20-50 |
| 4 | 50-100 |
| 5 | 100-200 |
| 6 | 200-500 |
| 7 | 500-1,000 |
| 8 | 1,000-1,500 |
| 9 | 1,500-2,000 |
| 10 | 2,000-3,000 |
| 11 | 3,000-4,000 |
| 12 | 4,000-5,000 |
| 13 | 5,000-7,500 |
| 14 | 7,500-10,000 |
| 15 | 10,000-12,500 |
| 16 | 12,500-15,000 |
| 17 | 15,000-25,000 |
| 18 | 25,000-50,000 |
From my avg a sad 0.75. Yep, I'm clearly in tier 1, therefore, with a bit. of keyword research we should be able to rank for Albury SEO top 10 without too much effort.
One other thing to consider before chasing it down just because it has low volume and fits the profile is keyword difficulty this keyword difficulty(KD) is only 20/100. I use a tool called RankTracker to get my KD.
We are set and good to go and so the next phase of getting ranked for this keyword is ensuring not only we hit relevant contextual related keywords but also tracking this keyword over the next two weeks.I've loaded this keyword to my RankTracker SEO app and also my Siteguru but you could simply use a spreadsheet and manually check over time.
But unfortunately, I have some competition for this keyword, and it's worthwhile having a look to see how they have approached the keyword difficult metric to achieve position 1-3.
Current positions (without linking to any of these):
I have no affiliation with any of these marketing businesses.
Maybe not what you expected above if you were to simply use the DA as a guide for ranking.
Let's look closer:
Source: keywords everywhere
Having an on-page difficulty of 75/100 is great but what would be better is 100/100 for this keyword. Our top rank doesn't even have exact match but has probably gone after something else related such as "SEO agency in Albury Wodonga" an interesting tactic if it was purposeful but probably more accidental because this keyword has zero volume. Similar to what we're doing here it's building a profile for tier 1 SEO while not really expecting too many people to find it the keywords establish some authority to start building towards tier 2 and 3 and own the Albury SEO rankings.
Rank no. 2 is an exact match 100/100 for all things Albury SEO. Everything from title, URL, meta description all includes Albury SEO in the wording. Their DA is even higher than that of the no. 1 ranking site. I feel like we're missing something here that gives us the answer on why they rank lower. I think maybe it's to do with the overall keyword density of Albury in general across the site ranking no.1 being much higher.
Source: keywords everywhere
Last month I did an analysis on Albury, which was really interesting, using the keyword "Albury website design". I've done the same thing for all 40 regional locations.
M!nk They have diverse SEO keyword profiles targeted at Albury SEO, swapping between this and Albury SEO and Albury SEO. They structure their page very similarly to how I would expect from a StoryBrand or lead page perspective. It's all good in love and war.
Source: keywords everywhere
Again not what you expect just from the numbers.
For our website Regional Web Developer, in case you missed it, we used a hyper-location page focus for SEO strategy to bring in customers organically with the goal of giving them great choices in their local areas for freelancers and agencies . This page also includes a list of digital services but no mention of SEO until today.
What I've done in the past to rank. I've chosen keywords with low enough keyword difficulty, high enough volume and put these on my location pages in titles and in headings primarily. I thought would rank while building up a stable list of white-label backlinks. Like a scatter gun hoping to hit something on Google that would give me a ranking and relying on my authority mainly from backlinks. Didn't work.
It's important to measure your SEO outcomes, I don't necessarily have goals at this point other than ranking these 40+ location keyword combinations into the top 10 positions. I know what the potential volume is for each of these could bring in via search engine organic traffic. I could, however, utilise some SEO services from a specialised SEO agency that could employ all sorts of SEO services to gain momentum quickly but that could also be volatile seeing fluctuations next month requiring an ongoing spend. No thankyou!
As of today, the 20th of November 2022 I have only been successful in ranking top 10 for a handful of locations. Some keywords Google identifies me for have a high volume but low click-through rate, including the keyword "population". Of course completely useless to me at this point.
I have, however learnt a valuable lesson today, and that is my attempt to rank RWD for Albury SEO may also completely fail given my business profile is in Wagga. I may see my ranking come in at position 4. 🙁
On the 20th of December, mark it in your diaries we're going to check our rankings and see if we've been successful in ranking using the tiered approach. I intend to use exact match to keep up with those already targeting this keyword and to score at least a 50/100. Let's see how we go.
Clearly, "Albury Wodonga" is a keyword location that I have targeted here in this article, but it's not actually the primary keyword I'm going after today is "Albury SEO". While the generic "Albury Wodonga" has a huge volume of search traffic, I'm hanging my head and saying I'm a "tier 1" site and require search engine optimisation (SEO) in this space first in order to move the needle and first prove that I can get into the top 3 for Albury SEO first. I've seen above how keywords like Albury population result in zero click-through and zero sales.
I'm not an SEO agency per-sa but I do want those agencies in Albury Wodonga to join RWD and deliver quality SEO services to local businesses in this area.
Albury SEO competition is usually a tier 2 ranking for most keywords. Digital marketing in this area is competitive, with pay-per-click being used by the evil Sydney-based and India-based SEO agencies to get leads. It can cost up to $30 for a single lead which may not qualify and is super expensive for the regional agency without the budget to waste.
At the very least, I hope that some city-based agencies be pushed down the list for this keyword.
Not knowing where a site is at with its ranking doesn't give us a baseline to measure against. If we know where we are and where competitor sites rank we can figure out the key differences before putting to work some Albury SEO tactics.
SEO is an expert area and while an agency might say they are "full stack" in regional Australian towns like Albury this is often not the case. Ask for examples of their work and make sure they have a clear plan that is in plain english.
I think it's obvious SEO is a shady area for people to engage with the online business. There are too many people out there practising "SEO" who move the dial a little bit initially, but from there nothing blaming Google as the corporate scapegoat for not listening to their improvements. Engage with an SEO professional locally you can trust and see their work.
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