HN Explorer

Top of the list on all search engines, now what?

3 points by juanc ↗ HN
Is that a good thing? Considering 300+ million in the USA, 3 Billion people on the planet. The site's concept is based on a fictional artist. What should one do with this awesome positioning? What possibilities or opportunities are there? Juan Corbett.

9 comments

[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 28.9 ms ] thread
pbhjpbhj
That depends on what keywords you're on the top of the list for. Also whether you deserve to be ranked highly for those words and whether when your current QDF slips you can maintain your position and make the use of it that you want.

So what's your website, what keywords and what's your goal?

juanc
Not sure if it is deserving either. Thank you for any insight. I'm a newbie to SEO and was thinking the positioning was a good thing. I've been lurking around sites like these trying to learn how this crazy World Web operates.

The website is juancorbett.com. Keywords? I plug in the name into the browser search and it comes up #1. Goals?, Like most of here, to work on projects that are fun and make a little bank. jc, I am an Artist/Designer.

dminor
Given that this hacker news thread is the 5th result for "Juan Corbett", I'm not sure you had much competition for your name as a keyword in the first place.
pbhjpbhj
OK, I wonder if I can rank higher by tomorrow?
juancorbett
Maybe I can rank higher for juan corbett's name? http://alicious.com/2010/juan-corbett-name/
pbhjpbhj
Yahoo:2, Bing:-, Google:4 (slipped a place overnight).

So, no then. But I did manage to rank above HaneyArt though, which isn't bad for overnight and considering the lack of domain keywords.

terra_t
It's not hard to rank high for a neologism, particularly if you own the domain name and practice SEO basics.

The profitability of a site depends on a lot of factors.

For one thing, traffic. How many people care about your keyword?

#1 for a high-traffic keyword can get you thousands or hundreds of thousands of visits a day. #1 for a low-traffic keyword can get you two or three visitors a month.

Then the other issue is, how much money potential is in your keyword? Advertising isn't the only way to make money, but it applies widely, doesn't take a lot of thought (maybe you're more interested in making content) and sometimes pays well.

How much you get from advertising depends on supply and demand. There are certain topics where there's a huge amount of content out there, so much that it dwarfs the advertising spend, so that it's hard to get a good eCPM. (Programming blogs and sites about cars in this category.) There are also areas where I think current advertising networks can't really discover products and services that certain audiences would really dig.

On the other hand, there are other areas where the supply of content is small compared to the advertising spend, some areas where the advertising spend is preposterously high (ambulance chasing lawyers, hotels in certain certains) and advertising can be lucrative there.

If your site is supported by advertising there's an inverse relation between click-thru and user engagement; Facebook ads are cheap because Facebookers are so sucked into what they're doing on the site that they don't look at the ads.

----

Now, maybe that's not feasible for you, or you need something more. Perhaps you'd like to develop "Juan Corbett" into a brand - you need to get his name into people's consciousness. That's a problem in marketing that goes beyond SEO; social media operations is a worthwhile path for you, but you'll also need to develop the arts of PR.

If you want to monetize the "Juan Corbett" brand there are many choices beyond advertising. Perhaps you can sell his art, either in the form of expensive things (original paintings to hang on the wall), moderately priced things ($100 prints to hang on the wall; i see Warhols going on eBay for about that much all the time...), and cheap thing s (mugs, refrigerator magnets.)

Past that there's the whole world of book deals, TV deals, movie deals, and generally turning "Juan Corbett" into a celebrity. You ought to find somebody who knows that world.

juanc
Thank you, each and everyone of you. I really do appreciate all insight. Long time reader of Hacker News, first time poster on any forum. I have learned a great deal from lurking around here, ever mindful there is much, much more to learn.

The concept for the character " Juan Corbett " website grew out of an art project. As a graduating dual major in Communication Design and Studio Painting, I am familiar with the fine arts, and the design of marketing. SEO and how the Worldwide Web operates are skills/knowledge I am currently acquiring.

Right on the "competition keyword". We did a lot think'n & drink'n to come up with it. Thanks to Terra with those insightful words. Developing a "Brand" is worthy of exploration. I refuse to put a bunch of ads on the site, (unless they are ours, (grn).

Again, thanks to all ya'll. jc ...