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We have not anticipated just how difficult it is to be seen...
Asked On: 03 June 2010
Background
We are a new company with a new web site and we are trying to elevate our web site to the top of the google ladder. We are prepared to pay per click and would like our site up there with our competitors. We are uk based selling Ski and Snowboard instructor training courses in Canada during the winter season. Our web site is www.wintersportscompany.com and we have not anticipated just how difficult it is to be seen.
We have managed the above courses on behalf of other companies for 5 years. We set up our own business 3 months ago and have had our web site live for 2 months.
Answer
In terms of natural search (non-ppc), for your particular niche you should be targeting the terms "ski instructor" and "snowboard instructor" with the words "courses", "course", "training", "certification" and "canada" attached e.g. "ski instructor courses canada" or "snowboard instructor training".
By targeting, I mean these terms need to be reflected within your on-page content and your page titles (the line that appears right at the top of your browser window) of the pages you would ideally like to rank for the particular term. As an example your homepage title could be "Snowboard and Ski Instructor Courses - Winter Sports Company."
With these terms mentioned in your titles, page content and throughout your site, search engines such as Google will be able to make a more educated assessment of what your site is about and therefore what it should rank for.
Once you have basic relevance sorted you will need to acquire links to your site to promote its importance. This will aid with where you should rank in relation to other sites competing in your niche. Ideally you want to be forming partnerships with equipment suppliers, snowboard and ski fan sites and other sites within your particular niche to generate a number of highly relevant links to your site. You could also promote your services via engaging people within blogs and forums dedicated to skiing and snowboarding.
You are also going to have to sort a few architecture issues on your site. If you perform the search site:www.wintersportscompany.com in Google you will see all the pages of your site Google has indexed. There are a lot of duplicates such as http://www.wintersportscompany.com/index.php/contact-us and http://www.wintersportscompany.com/contact-us.html which need looking at. Ideally only 1 URL would render any page and any others that search engines have already got hold of should either 301 redirect to the correct URL or pass back a 404 header response.
The final thing to remember is your site is still very new. Over time search engines will begin to trust it more and combined with the actions mentioned above and the continual additional of new content to the site you should start to see some really positive results in terms of natural rankings and traffic over the next 3 months.
PPC can and should be used to bring traffic to the site while your natural efforts are gaining traction and the data you can gain from an initial PPC campaign can be invaluable for working out exactly what converts best on your site and what you should be targeting as part of your natural efforts.
Good luck.