Supply & Demand, Keywords And SEO

SEO is a long run thing, no site can just set up shop and instantly rocket to the top of the search engines, it doesn’t work like that. However, search engines are businesses and like any other business they are ruled by supply and demand.

That’s right, even Google itself has to bend to the laws of economics if it wants to remain as successful as it currently is. So if we want to fully understand how we can leverage supply and demand to catapult ourselves up the results pages, we first need to look at how Google works as a business.

How Google responds to Demand

Basically, Google supplies content to it’s users (or customers if you will). The user requests content about a certain phrase and Google looks through it’s stock list and gives the user a list of all the content that it thinks might be helpful.

And Supply…

In order to do this, it needs content, which is diligently supplied by the likes of you and I. So we write fantastic blog posts like this one :) and various web pages etc, and Google adds all of that to it’s stock list, to be considered next time one it’s users makes a request.

So already you can see how Google is simply connecting supply with demand. Without us content suppliers Google would not work as a business. Fortunately, there are millions of people creating content, so Google really does have it’s pick.

This is a classic case of over supply, and as a result it is difficult to get your content to the top of the ranks. How many suppliers of content about cats there are (for example)? Supply outstrips demand in the vast majority of subjects now a days.

Filling the void

Fortunately for us, there are a near infinite number of niches. If we drill down further, into more specific categories, we can find those “niche keywords” that you often hear about. This is the real reason that targeting keywords works.

When you create content about the Bolivian long haired cat (I would just like to apologise for these bizarre examples), you are filling a gap in the market. Whether you realise it or not, you are simply leveraging supply and demand. You know that there is a demand for content about this type of cat, and you know that content is under supplied.

Google has far more need for this content than it does for content about cats in general. In fact it is probably perfectly happy with it’s stock of “cat” content, so it is going to be slow to add new stock. But when you supply content that it needs, that content is going to get “snapped up”.

Summary

So there you go, I hope that this post has helped you to gain a fuller understanding of how targeting keywords can help you to build your SEO muscle. By understanding better the process of supply and demand, you will be better placed to spot gaps and build traffic.

About the author

Mark Johnson is an internet marketer and entrepreneur and is the founder of The Business Nomad, a blog about how to make money online and starting your own e-business. Topics covered include; Blogging, SEO and strategic internet marketing.