Why your SEO shouldn’t be limited by keywords

The number one question I get asked is about how much my SEO services cost.

SEO is and probably always will be something that is measured almost entirely on price. It’s unfortunate because the industry is classic case of ‘get what you pay for’.

What stands out when I get compared with other SEO service providers is how there’s always a keyword limit for each package. Like people get sucked into the concept of being limited by keywords and then come along to me asking how much for X amount of keywords.

That’s not how it works. And it’s not how you should be comparing SEO packages and SEO providers.

I never limit clients by keywords.

The whole idea is ridiculous.

There’s only so many keywords to describe what you do or what you sell. And there’s this thing called the long tail.

Long tail keywords are multi word combinations (usually 3–4 and sometimes more) that are very specific and usually the most relevant to a user’s query.

“Hotels” and “Dubai hotels” are not long tail keywords.

“Cheap Dubai hotel close to beach” is long tail.

Only a fool will limit you to a handful of obvious keywords whilst neglecting the long tail and some of the ‘less popular but not quite long tail’ keywords that you could go for.

When I take on clients, I’m usually running their site through Screaming Frog and ahrefs while simultaneously combing their site for keywords, putting together combinations in keywordmixer and then getting traffic volumes.

I like to know what I’m up against and how people search.

For example, in Dubai, it’s common for people to search for things like ‘apartments for rent in Dubai Marina’ but in a place like Morocco, they’d opt for something like ‘apartments rent marrakech’ (they’d do this in French but I’m making your life easy in English).

In Arabic, people spell out Dubai Marina in a literal way, as opposed to using the official Arabic word which is Marsa Dubai.

You gotta know what people search for — this is as basic as it gets with SEO!

And with this there are a handful of keyword combinations you can come up with but are you targeting each and every single one one? no.

You go after the high volume keywords that are relevant to your website because that’s where the audience is.

And then you up the ante with your content by diversifying your keyword usage in your content to go after the other variants.

Take a look at this page on Dubicars.com (car portal in the UAE):

It’s all about: “used toyota corolla for sale in Dubai”

But if you know the Toyota Corolla, they release a new model every year. And if you understand how people search, you’ll know that used car = secondhand car = pre owned car. And if you know cars, you’ll know people get specific about models from certain years. I have a 2007 Toyota Camry and I know that was a dramatic design change from the models before it and I wouldn’t go near the earlier models. I’m no fanboy but I know what I like! And I also digress.

So how does Dubicars tackle “used toyota corolla for sale in Dubai” whilst also going after each model year and variations for how to say ‘used car’?