…

A very simplistic example could be:
If you had a $10 per day budget, you might have the choice between:

- Targeting “Australian Campervan hire” and getting 4 clicks per day @ $2.50 a click

or

- Targeting “OZ Campervan hire” and getting 20 clicks per day @ $0.50 a click

Naturally there are many other factors at play here including whether you can actually spend your entire budget on the cheaper words and most importantly - which choice brings better overall ROI.

However - for me this drastically different to an SEO strategy, in which you vigorously go after the more competitive keywords - while covering your bases by having the less competitive ones ranking as well (once again just a simplistic example).

Anyway - look forwards to your post re: Sydney.

I actually think this is an error of basing phrase selection on Analytics and not looking at what people would actually use.

If that sounds like an oxymoron - it’s not, as Analytics is only as good as the historical information that it has.

Also dismissing a keyword because it doesn’t convert well is rash - the first place to focus on is the usability and information architecture of the site.

While it’s a given that you wouldn’t target a phrase that has nothing to do with your product or target market - that doesn’t mean you tighten your keywords/phrases so severely that you lose sight of the diversity of your market.

The first thing you learn in SEO is that you need to think like your customers.

For us:
- Even if our vehicles aren’t strictly ‘campervans’ - thats what our customers search for.
- Even if we don’t like the phrase ‘bus tour’ to describe our service - thats what our customers search for.

Looking at the site you are writing about:
- Nothing, from the photos of the 20 something year olds taking surf lessons to the tour descriptions suggest it is 35+ only

- If describing the tours as “catering for the active budget traveller, backpackers… ” and for “the fit and adventurous who want to get off the beaten track ” doesn’t warrant the targeting of the phrase ‘backpacker’ I don’t know what does.

- As does showing photos of “buses on tour” - and then not targeting the phrase ‘bus’ on the site.

I just can’t understand why you would say that this company doesn’t warrant the term ‘backpacker’ in its SEO strategy? Or ‘bus tours’?
Why would you turn people away who are searching for this?

Yes - the bounce rate ‘might’ be higher (though this isn’t necessarily to do with the keywords - could be the site structure) - however that group is very close to your assumed target that even at 50% of normal conversion it would be worth it (not to mention the word of mouth and other social networking advantage it could have).

At the end of the day you can easily target a number of groups - without compromising your sites message in any way.

It’s not like it has to be an either/or scenario - which is what your example of “if Xebidy reduced the overall number of visitors to your site but doubled the number of people booking…” seems to suggest.

Why in the world would you have to reduce the overall number of visitors to increase bookings?

While compromises do occur in terms of keywords/phrases selection - these should only ever be at the lower end - not on relevant phrases that bring in traffic.

The strategy you mention above actually sounds more like the refinement of individual adword campaigns than SEO.

BTW: Any SEO pro can quickly define the keyword targeted on any given site - there is nothing secret about that.
The only thing that is secret is what someone is actually ‘trying’ to target.