How you strategically approach your own unique search marketing landscape may be the first of many decisions you make on your search marketing journey, but it is also the most important.  A difference of inches when aiming the arrow can translate to feet downrange.

SEOs can often approach selecting target keywords with a strict “I’m-going-to-focus-on-the-keywords-with-the-highest-search-volume” mentality, while others favor a ‘flavor-of-the-day’ mindset and center on the keywords their CMO cares about most at the moment.

An often overlooked strategy for keyword building is to focus on those keywords in striking distance position — keywords ranking on page two of the search results.

Moving striking distance keywords can be less challenging than those already on page one. And, keywords on page 2 are in prime position to move into high visibility positions, and unlike keywords on page 3 or higher, moderate upward movement of these keywords can mean substantial increases in traffic.

Not All Rank Movement Is Equally Impactful

Take the example of a keyword searched 500,000 times  per month for which you are ranking in position 11. By utilizing Slingshot SEO’s click-through curve, we were able to estimate the increases in search traffic experienced after rank movement: An improvement of 5 positions (from 11 to 6) resulted in a 273% increase in traffic while the same 5-position movement from 21 to 16 resulted in a marginal traffic increase of 50%.

This difference in traffic gains for the same rank movement is due to the uneven distribution in how users click on search results and becomes a phenomenon that savvy search marketers can leverage with a bit of focused analysis.

Of course, not all keywords are created equal, and it may be challenging to move dozens (to hundreds) of keywords from striking distance onto page one, so taking a bit of time to triage for striking distance keywords that matter most to you will be an important step before focusing on tactics.

Read the full Search Engine land article here, or read the follow up article Making The Case For Adding Keyword Segmentation To Your SEO Repertoire