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My pal James (Duthie)is gest posting on the Scoop - striking a blow for the little fella.

SNIP - There’s no doubt about it… trying to optimize a web site in an ultra competitive industry these days is a daunting task! With the commercial reality that top rankings equal big bucks, large organizations are throwing mega dollars into SEO. But that doesn’t mean the little guys can’t still win. In fact, this case study shows how one blogger applied some smart SEO tactics and landed on the first page of Google within 4 months.
Comments7 Comments  

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from bwelford 1430 Days ago #
Votes: 0

A good post that shows it’s not rocket science.  Intelligent hard work will do the trick.

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from emanuelh 1430 Days ago #
Votes: 1

SEO in highly competitive arenas is for the big boys. SEM Australia and Australian SEO are obviously not very competitive.

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from JamesDuthie 1430 Days ago #
Votes: 0

Thanks for the submission Dave. @ EmanualH - I agree that Fortune 500 SEO is the domain of the big boys. I’ve seen small time SEO’s struggle in corporate environments. And while SEO Australia isn’t as competitive as the US and European markets, it is still a highly competitive environment.  Australia has one of the highest Internet penetration rates in the world, so we’re not exactly third world down here... :)

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from smallbiztrends 1430 Days ago #
Votes: 0

Nice well-written case study that’s understandable by non-technical folks.  It shows that picking a niche and focusing on it matters.

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from emanuelh 1430 Days ago #
Votes: -1

@JamesDuthie - the competitiveness of an arena has nothing to do with the size of the firms who own the websites that show up in the top rankings for the search phrase that identifies that arena. It only has to do with the relevance score of the website that now occupies your targeted ranking - usually # 10 - versus the relevance scores of the websites that occupy the same ranking in other arenas.The terms SEM Australia and Australian SEO are not popular. One way to get an impression (though not reliable data) is to compare them with other search phrases in Google Trends. These two phrases are reported as having insufficient search traffic - which is probably why other SEO firms don’t bother to optimize their websites for them, and the few who do didn’t invest enough work to get high relevance scores.

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from JamesDuthie 1430 Days ago #
Votes: 2

I think we’re going to have to agree to disagree Emanuel :)I’m not surprised that the keyword ’SEO Australia’ doesn’t show up within Google Trends. After all, we are but a nation of 20 million, and Google Trends is a global tool. But within Australia these terms do attract regional traffic. Indeed, the blog at the centre of the case study accumulates a good amount of organic traffic via these keywords every day.Perhaps the distinction comes in the word popular. The terms SEM Australia and SEO Australia are relevant to every search marketing firm in Australia, of which there are plenty. They are competitive regionally. They may not be popular on a global scale, but this is indeed part of the long-tail targeting strategy (as referenced in the article). Thanks for the Stumble Joy.

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from Burgo 1430 Days ago #
Votes: 0

+1 JamesDuthie. I hardly think that using Google Trends is a reliable method of gauging the "popularity" of a term like "SEO Australia" :P

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