If you’re new to SEO, you may not know that targeted keywords are incredibly important to the success of your online marketing efforts. Now, depending on how valuable the keywords you’re trying to target are, it can be very hard or nearly impossible to rank for those words on a limited budget. Corporate giants often have a handle on many highly-searched keywords, the result being that you have to throw a lot (and we do mean a lot) of money toward those words if you want your business to rank highly for those searches.
But what if you didn’t have to beat every entrenched corporation you come across that’s targeting the same keywords you want? What if there was a way to boost your SEO marketing by making use of the big guy’s ready audience to show off your business? That’s where barnacle search engine optimization comes in.
Barnacle SEO is a technique in which you work to associate your business with a bigger name, so that both of you can profit. To get a better idea of what this means, it helps to dig into the comparison a bit more and figure out exactly what a barnacle is. Follow along with our search engine optimization experts at Big Red SEO as we explain how this technique can give your small business a leg up against the competition!
What’s a Barnacle and Why is It Important to SEO Marketing?
Barnacles are ocean creatures that stick themselves onto larger objects (whales in particular) in order to feed on nutrients that pass by. Think of it as hitching a ride and you’ll understand what we’re going for. Now this is a symbiotic relationship, meaning that each party benefits from the attachment–the smaller organism benefits by not having to do much work to get its food, and the larger organism benefits by getting a kind of armor plating in return (because barnacles produce a rocky shell).
Now what this means in search engine optimization marketing is that there are certain competitive keywords that are just too far out of your budget to try and target by yourself–you’d never get any traction with them going it alone, so what we have to do is try to find a way to work with the big whale to get some easy food!
How Does Barnacle SEO Work?
The first step to effective barnacle SEO marketing is figuring out what high-value, high-difficulty keywords you’d like to target if you had an unlimited budget. You’ll likely come up with a pretty sizeable list of very expensive keywords you’d like to rank for, those broad terms that people regularly use to search for your products or services.
We at Big Red SEO want to note that it’s important to have professional keyword research performed at this point to see if the words you think you want to target are actually the ones that will yield the best ROI. Often you’ll find that the words you thought best described your business don’t actually get much (if any) traffic. Professional keyword research, like what we do at our SEO marketing company, is the only way to know if the words you think are best will actually get you the results you’re looking for.
Identify the Best Whales – “Qualified High-Value” Keywords
Once you have this list of qualified high-value keywords to target, do a bit of research and see what pages already rank highly for these terms. Are these pages other businesses, organizations, forums, or other types of pages? Write these down and identify which of them would be good for you to associate your business with.
Remember, these shouldn’t be your direct competitors–rather, they should be businesses, organizations, or other websites that relate to your business and would benefit from association with you!
Symbiotic SEO Marketing Needs Partnerships
Once you’ve figured out who on your list of high-traffic sites you want to establish a barnacle relationship with, you need to brainstorm different ways to make that happen. Barnacles are extremely sticky, rocky, and hard to remove once they’re on, so you need to make sure that your barnacle SEO strategy works to build long-term relationships.
Whether you’re interested in direct links, content sharing, or maybe even advertising on their pages, all these things can make your business more visible to their built-in audiences who already have an interest in what you sell!
Contact Big Red SEO Today at (402) 522-6468!
Our search engine optimization team here at Big Red SEO thinks that barnacle SEO can be a real asset to your overall SEO marketing strategy. If you want to know more about how you can increase your website traffic with barnacle SEO, give us a call today at (402) 522-6468. We specialize in creating search engine optimization strategies that work to get our clients to the top of search engine rankings!