Keyword research is certainly the most important phase in Search Engine
Optimization process. Whether you hire a SEO company to do the job or you
are doing the SEO process in-house, take your time during this process.
You should not be a spectator, but you should be an active part of the
decision making process.
Try to think as a customer
Before to start the keywords analysis & research process, be sure that you
know how you should perform this process. Try to think about your keywords
as a customer. How would you search for your product or service? Which
keyword or key phrase would you use? Think about which words or phrases
describe best your product or service.
Generic keywords vs. highly targeted key phrases
Surprisingly many companies still believe that increased traffic will
necessary lead to increased sales. Unfortunately this is very far from the
truth. If traffic is not well targeted, visitors will not found what they
are looking for, and they won’t order anything.
Many companies still make the mistake to attempt to get ranked for generic
keywords. This is often costly mistake. You will simply loose your time,
money and resources to get ranked for generic keyword. Chances are that if
you are in competitive industry you won’t succeed to achieve top ranking.
In many cases, even if you succeed to get high ranking for generic keyword
you won’t benefit much from that. Let’s elaborate this with an example.
Key phrase “shoes manufacturers” will return worldwide results, and your
competition will be very strong. Even if you manage to rank high,
“conversion to sales rate” will be fairly low. Some of the people would
actually search for “shoes manufacturers” which are located in Asia. They
might enter on your site, and they will leave without to order anything.
You will get more traffic, and you want increase your sales or establish
new business contacts. None of your goals will be achieved.
That is because your product or service is not exactly what the people are
searching for. Key phrases like “UK shoes manufacturers” or “EU shoes
manufacturers” will have better conversion and you will get high ranking
faster. Why? It’s easier to get ranked for these key phrases because of
smaller number of competitors. From the other side, because of better
targeting your conversion rate would be higher, because your traffic is
better targeted.
Best approach to do find right keywords and key phrases is to get your
generic keyword, and add a specific word to it. Using this approach you
will be able to find yours most important key phrases, and target your
traffic much better. Key phrases are usually two to five words long.
Think global
In different countries people use different terminology for same product
or service. Be sure that you check your terminology for your main
keywords. Different terminology for your keyword might be used in Canada,
or in Australia. Follow your site statistic, and if some country is
missing, something might be wrong with your terminology.
How many keywords do you need
Number of the key phrases for which you will optimize your pages will
depend from your budget of course. But be sure to create long list to
select from. Initial keyword research should end with at least 70 -100
keywords or key phrases.
Your first thought here might be how you will find so many keywords.
Creativity and well knowing your industry will do half of the work. The
tools will do the other half. Wordtracker has free trial which will tell
you how many times the key phrase was searched for last month. Full
version (you can pay for one day only if you want to use this tool once)
is much more powerful tool of course. Overture has also free tool for
keyword research which will give you useful suggestions. These tools will
give you suggestions which you might not come to your mind, and tell you
how many competitors you have for every keyword.
Next phase should be customizing some of these suggestions and make the
re-check after that. After establishing the main list, start the
elimination. Have in mind that your chances are bigger if you select
bigger number of keywords. It is always best strategy to optimize each
page for one primary and one secondary keyword. Optimize your main page
for your most important key phrase.
Final selection will depend from your budget. You can always optimize more
pages later, so keep the initial keyword list. Best option is to start to
optimize your pages for less competitive key phrases first. When you
achieve high ranking for these key phrases, then go after more competitive
key phrases.
KEYWORDS IMPORTANCE AND USES
The first step in the area of search engine marketing (SEM) is to
understand the relevance & importance of keywords. Keywords are the
starting blocks of a successful SEM campaign.
So lets dig into this section of SEM (or specifically SEO, search engine
optimization) by defining keywords & keyphrases.
KEYWORDS and KEYPHARASES Definition : site words or phrases which/that
are matched with the search words or phrases of target audience using
search engines are known as keywords and key phrases.
Importance of KEYWORDS and KEYPHARASES : Keywords and Keypharases are
used to promote and market a website by improving search engine
rankings.
Where to use KEYWORDS and KEYPHARASES for Offpage Optimization : The
Keywords and keypharases are used as the anchor text to link to the
site. Search engines specially google attach lot of importance to the
anchor text hence if there is a keyword in it, the site gets promoted
for that keyword.
The Keywords and keypharases are also used to advertise, promote and
market site with PPC (pay per click) and PPI(pay per impression)
Where to use KEYWORDS and KEYPHARASES for Onpage Optimization : KEYWORDS
and KEYPHARASES are generally used with HTML tags ( title tag, meta
description tag, meta keywords tags, body tag , anchor tags, comment
tags, heading tags, alt tags, table tags, form tags, list tags,
formatting tags, frame tags, map tags, applet tags, etc.) and in url
itself. Apart from this the keywords & key phrases are used in the text
matter of the page.
These are also used to create KRPs (Keyword Rich Pages – where a
specific KEYWORD and KEYPHARASE is repeated to get top ranking for that
particular web page for a particular KEYWORD).
The strategy is to target one keyword or at maximum two, per page. Once
these KRPs are produced it is easier to get these pages ranked with
search engines. These pages then have links to other pages in the site &
hence serve as the passage way for inviting in the surfer to investigate
the site deeply. These Keyword rich optimized pages are also called
‘Doorway Pages.’
So lets start to introduce the keywords where they belong:
KEYWORDS and KEYPHARASES uses in THE PAGE TITLE
------------------------------------------------------------
Page title is the first element that search spiders’ find on a web page
and hence it stands to reason that the title of each page should be
carefully crafted.
THE PAGE TITLE text is displayed by using tags in the title bar of the
web browser. As it is one of the most important element of the webpage
therefore most important and essential KEYWORD AND KEYPHARASE (S) must
be included in it. KEYWORDS and KEYPHARASES which are used in page title
are used by search engines in their result listing and they are then
used by the target audience as the hyperlink to access the website from
the search engine results page(SERP).
Keywords in a title is generally upto 60 characters or less including
spaces. Google cutsoff title text after 60 characters when it is
displayed in the SERPs. To achieve high ranking on the search engines
the main keyword or phrase for the web page should appear should appear
in the beginning of the title on the page. The page title tag carries
significant weight in most search engine algorithms.
Example:
The page title “ keyword & kyphrases tutorial for search engine
marketing “ uses keywords ( keyword , keyphrases, tutorial, search
engine marketing)
These keywords and keypharases are dependent upon the domain, nature and
objective of the web site.
KEYWORDS and KEYPHARASES uses in THE META TAGS
------------------------------------------------------------
Meta Tags : Meta Tags are html text which describe information about the
web page. In other words they provide data about data(web page content).
Meta tags are invisible on the web page. They do not appear in browser
window. To access them one has to select View menu and then select
sourcece option from menu bar of browser Each meta tag has both a 'name'
and a 'content' attribute.
In fact Meta tags are one of the first elements I look at, while
assessing a competitor web site.
Meta tags are placed after the
Types Of
Keywords
Keyword can be classified into three categories :
-Single word Keyword
-Multiple word Keyword
-Keywords based on Theme
Keyword(s) are basic raw material used in Search Engine Optimization
(SEO). Keyword selection must be done using Keyword Research where we use
special tools to find out a list of Keywords (search terms) searched by
targeted audience, recently. Keyword can be single word, two or three
words, multiple words and theme based.
Lets detail each of these one by one . Understanding these categories of
keywords would also help one to decide as to their targeting on specific
pages.
Keyword of Single word
---------------------------
Keyword of Single word is used to target a large traffic but leads to
highly competition category of sites. Keyword of Single word are known as
generic Keyword(s) where we target general audience. Keyword of Single
word does not help to target a specific page for a specific audience.
Although, Keyword of Single word helps in bringing huge traffic but these
terms are mostly not relevant these days, as, searchers mostly use two or
three keyword to find out their required information.
Instead single word keywords are good theme keywords.
We can use these primary keyword 5 to 7 times in a web page for good
theming according of a site. The inside pages of the site can qualify
these themes into product or service categories by adding qualifiers to
these theming keywords.
Example:
Keyword “Services” will produce result of all the web sites related to
Services which can be United States Department of Health and Human
Services, The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services, direct Services,
online Services, offline Services, Indian Services, American Services,
food Services, agricultural Services, business Services, free Services,
paid Services, etc.
Keyword of Multiple words
------------------------------
Keyword of Multiple words is used to target a specific traffic, which
leads to high sale, top position in search result listing as well as
improves page rank competition. Keyword of Multiple words are known as
Specific Keyword(s) where we target a specific audience & not general
searcher. Keyword of Multiple words helps to target a specific page for a
specific audience.
Keyword of Multiple words, more often than not are location specific and
related to geographic area of your intended services or products.
Keywords based on Theme
-------------------------------
Keyword based on Theme are used to target a highly targeted audience,
which leads to quick high sale, top position in search result listing as
well as boosts page rank. Keywords based on Theme are known as Conceptual
Keyword(s).
Keywords based on Theme consists all possible primary Keywords related to
the web site therefore attracts high traffic of targeted audience.
Keywords based on Theme add quality by providing Keyword Rich Text to
search engines, which improve results and provide targeted search result
listings.
Keywords based on Theme are used in each page of web site to focus on a
specific topic correlated to a targeted topic or idea (theme). Keywords
based on Theme effectively contribute in growth of informative pages for
its site focusing on different related topics.
Keywords Targeting Strategy is a tactic, which guides in placing primary
keywords like Keyword of Single word, Keyword of Multiple words and
Keyword based on Theme according to their importance for successful
optimizations of the site.
For me personally,
Wordtracker.com is not just a tool for looking
up keywords. Sure, that's one good use for it, but what I want to
distinguish is another influential and exciting use for
Wordtracker as an SEO resource.
"Keywords" for use in your Meta tags are probably the least
influential element in search engine optimization these days.
However, hunting for keywords still seems the most popular use
for Wordtracker. After all, it contains over 336 million queries
within its database, which is no older than 60 days. An SEO can
spend long periods of time doing research and hunting for
keywords. But let's really try and get our minds around the
keyword hunting issue for a minute, and I'll explain a few other
tips for using
Wordtracker.
Identify your target audience's "surfing behavior" Is there any
greater discovery than having an understanding of a target
audience's "surfing behavior?" It's like a light coming on in
your mind. It's like flipping on a switch to an idea generator!
Wordtracker will give you absolutely AMAZING detail if you take
time to think about it laterally and outside of the context of
just a "keyword hunt."
Later in this article, I'll explain how you can use
WordTracker
to identify your audience's surfing behavior.
Move beyond the "keyword universe" function.
In speaking with many search engine optimizers, I have learned
that so many seem to get stuck in the "Keyword Universe" feature.
The ability to generate lists of keyword phrases using the built
in thesaurus is nice, but you must not get stuck there and let it
do all the thinking for you. As you move on to discover other
features within
Wordtracker, you will also have the opportunity
to perform a "comprehensive search" or an "exact search" or
utilize the "top 1000" report.
Tips to identify human behavior?
Where you'll find most of your "revelations" or "insights" are in
the "comprehensive search" feature of Wordtracker. Try entering
one part of a search phrase and letting "comprehensive search"
figure out the best "full use" of the phrase. Another technique I
like to use is to examine the top reports for a "high
performance" keyword or topic related to my client and then cut
and paste it into comprehensive search to get streams of
currently "hot topics." I define a hot topic as a popular topic
in high demand, which may also have lists of related keyword
phrases also in high demand.
Let's study a real life example . . .
Now let me give you a recent example of understanding behaviors.
I wanted to pull additional traffic into a site selling baby
furniture. The site sells strollers, baby furniture, cribs and
other baby products. The client explained that they wanted me to
find ways to pull in their true audience. Sometimes you'll
discover the true audience is not what it first may seem. By true
audience....I mean "targeted audience" or the folks most likely
to "BUY" or "respond" to the Web site.
If you just think only in "keywords" mode, you may miss this.
Performing a comprehensive search within Wordtracker by typing in
the word "baby," Wordtracker returns interesting results. Do you
know what I learned? The target audience for baby strollers is
NOT people who have babies! You heard correct. The "true
audience" for those buying strollers and baby cribs ARE NOT" folks who have NEWBORN BABIES!" Here is the catch....if you are
targeting folks with newborns, to sell them a stroller....you're
too late! The true audience are people who are "soon to become
parents."
Once Mom and Dad know a new family member is on the way, they
start buying BEFORE the baby arrives. Better yet...often it's not
even the parents who are buying...it's the grandparents. Perhaps
you have pages scoring tremendously well for things like babies,
strollers, cribs and baby furniture...... but now your client
wants even more.
Here's an example strategy:
One behavior of the true target audience which I discovered by
using Wordtracker was as follows. As I entered the term "baby"
into "comprehensive search," the first thing I noticed was the
top phrase "baby names" which had been requested on major search
engines over 34,350 times in the last 60 days. It became very
obvious when I noticed the incredibly high demands on major
search engines for the phrase "baby names," or how about
"meanings of baby names."
This was indeed like a light coming on! I thought, imagine this,
"soon to be parents" are researching their unborn child's name by
using the Internet. What better time to connect with folks than
before the baby is born.
Finally, build a strategy based on the identified behavior
Suppose we were to build a little library of themed pages right
into your client's site to attract the TARGET audience. They are
searching for baby names so it is essential that this is what you
MUST give them. Give them lists of baby names to choose from,right? Don't ever trick your audience or they will simply never
buy. Give them exactly what they are looking right up front. In
this example, you could create pages that offer baby names and
meanings of baby names AND subtly offer a few product listings orlinks to your client's store front. It is essential that youalways provide content related to their search first, and thenyou might offer some links to other appropriate products withinyour client's site.
Test these unique ways for using
Wordtracker yourself, and learnhow effective they can be.
Keyword
Research - The Lifeblood of your Website!
So, you know what your prospective customers search for when looking for
your products or services? Do you? Get it wrong and your website marketing
will be in vain, get it right and you signpost prospective clients
straight to your door.
So why do we get it wrong?
When a client comes to me and we start to discuss keywords and keyword
phrases, they automatically assume they know what they should be because,
quite rightly, they know their own business inside out. But that is the
key, their prospective clients do NOT know their business inside out, and
so therefore do not have the same understanding of what things are called,
and what they can do. You need to step outside of your business and look
at it through the eyes of a customer, better still, ask them.
KEYWORD RESEARCH
Keyword research is a vital part of website marketing. This exercise
should be performed prior the website content being written. It is through
this exercise, that we are able to find out exactly how many surfers
searched for which keywords and phrases and how many other web pages are
competing for the same phrase. In the short term it is not a sensible idea
to target one word keywords that have over 200,000 pages competing for
them. In the long term, maybe but if you want to get your website seen and
start to build up some traffic, then you need to concentrate on 2-3
keyword phrases that have less than 200,000 pages competing for them.
THE PROCESS
Step 1- Preliminary keyword list
The client needs to produce a list of keywords that they feel are
applicable to their business. Keywords can also be lifted from any company
literature. It is also useful if the client can tell the website marketing
consultant who their main competitors are, and their web addresses. You
need to think ‘outside of the box’ and also think laterally.
Step 2 – What keywords are searched for
Armed with a list of keywords, the website marketing consultant should now
perform research with a tool such as WordTracker™ to ascertain:
•Whether these listed keywords are in fact being searched for
•What other related keywords are also being searched for
•Whether there are any synonyms that are relevant and being searched for
•How many other web pages are competing for the same keyword phrases
These results are taken from a database of searched carried out over the
last 60 days within all of the major search engines, directories and Pay
Per Click directories.
This list should highlight some keyword phrases that are being searched
for, but that are not being overly competed for, these are the keyword
phrases that you should be looking for.
Now some more in-depth research can be carried out which will tell the
consultant, out of those pages said to be competing for a given keyword
phrase, how many of them are actively competing rather than incidentally.
Step 3 – Final Draft
Now it is time to go back to the client with the detailed list of actual
search phrases used, and decide which of those are relevant to the type of
visitor you want to attract to your website.
Step 4 – Focus your content
Armed with this final list, the content can now be written using relevant,
searched for keyword phrases.
THE EFFECT
Getting it wrong
You can have the most professional website in the world, with the most
user friendly interface, but if you are targeting the wrong keywords then
you are targeting the wrong people. Therefore, your objective (to get more
business, sell more products etc) cannot be met. All of your hard work
will have been in vain as it will fall upon deaf ears (so to speak).
Getting it right
However, target the right keyword phrases will attract in exactly those
people that are looking for precisely what you are offering. Of course,
when they find you, you will need to make sure you have also fulfilled the
rest of the criteria of professional design and user-friendly interface!
CONCLUSION
As with all marketing campaigns, you need to know your target audience,
know what they want and then meet their demands. The internet offers the
opportunity for you to get up to date marketing research data that means
you can effectively achieve this quickly and cost-effectively. So make the
most of it.
How to Conduct Keyword Research
One of the questions I’m most often asked is how I perform keyword
research.
In this article, I will explain how I personally perform my own keyword
research as well as some alternative methods.
Let’s begin with an explanation how most people do it and why this is a
BAD idea.
First, most people use the Overture suggestion tool. This is a free
solution which does give some useful info… if you know how to find it. I
will explain this in a moment.
I do want to stress why I don’t personally care for this.
Keyword research is the foundation for your search engine optimization
efforts. These are the VERY WORDS you are trying to have the engines rank
you highly for. In my mind, this leaves little room for error, and by
using the Overture suggestion tool, you are certainly leaving room for
error.
Let me explain…
Overture assigns a search count to each one of the terms in their
database. Unfortunately, these numbers are skewed. When ANY automated
keyword search tool is used to query their DB for keywords, their numbers
for that search term also increase. By inflating these numbers, it’s
giving the keyword searcher false data. You see, the goal is to get the
data on searched terms from the search engines, not by people researching
them.
Another downfall to the Overture system is that the search terms are
often mixed up from the originally searched term. For instance, if I were
to search for ’24 hour fitness’, I may actually get a result that shows
‘hour fitness 24’. If you optimized a page for the mixed up term, and you
wonder why you’re getting little traffic (but have a number 1 ranking on
that term), it’s because that term is very rarely searched for, despite
what Overture may show.
There are other negatives associated with the Overture keyword search
tool, but the two I presented should be sufficient to warrant you to look
for alternatives.
Before I proceed, I do want to tell you that some innovative
entrepreneurs have come up with solutions that use the Overture database
in a fashion that’s MUCH better than using the database directly.
I’ve listed them below. I suggest you check them out for yourself. I
own them, and have used them in the past.
For my most common use, I will use the ‘Keyword Universe’ feature.
Note… there are occasions where the best starting point is the
‘Comprehensive Search’. Start there if you have a very generic starting
keyword.
Here’s what I do…
I input my starting keyword into the Keyword Universe search box. I
then drill down in the results that appear below this box and find the top
3-5 terms that best fits what I’m looking for. I then click on the first
of those 3-5. All terms that are actually search on are presented in a
results column on the right hand side of the screen. Beginning at the top,
I navigate through each of the resulting terms and add any to my list that
I find will be potentially beneficial to me. Wordtracker allows you to put
these keywords in a ‘basket’ in order to use them for additional research.
Once I’ve completed going though each list (for my 3-5 terms). I will
continue to the competition search function within Wordtracker. I use
Google and Yahoo as my market gauge. These are the primary two search
engines I generally focus on, so I want to know how I may fair in their
indexes.
Now, most people stop here, I don’t. I use the export to email function
of Wordtracker and email myself the results. Once I receive the email, I
import them into a program called ‘Keyword Results Analyzer’ which can be
found here:
http://kra.ez-search-engine-optimization.com/.
Once I have these imported and sorted through this software, I extract
any and all keywords with a KEI score over 10.
Now, I have a list of keywords to work with.
If you follow my method, you will consistently find yourself using
keywords that have the greatest probability for being highly ranked in the
search engines.
Finding
Keywords Straight From The Bank
I still remember the day I read about this strategy in an excellent
newsletter and was blown away. I went straight to my computer and started
using what I learned and I was amazed at how much money I made!
I had found golden keywords straight from the bank – or at least ones that
went straight TO my bank!
What keywords? MISspelled keywords. That’s right – I actually found profit
in something people are doing “wrong.” Any time someone spells a word
wrong on the internet, I stand to make a hefty profit!
What are misspelled keywords?
Misspelled keywords are words that are frequently misspelled by searchers
on search engines. An example would be to type "intrenet" instead of
"internet" - you would be surprised as to how many times misspelled
keywords appear.
Why to use them?
Misspelled keywords can be very profitable because there is little
competition against them and they still bring very targeted traffic.
Optimize for them because others likely are not. Also, use pay per click
with them because most other are not!
What are some of the advantages?
There are many advantages of using misspelled keywords, here are a few:
1. Little competition - most are focusing on the competitive "correct
spelling."
2. High searches - most make the same spelling mistake and many make the
mistake so you still have a high number of searches.
3. Easier to work with - because of less competition these words are
easier to optimize for.
4. Cheaper - you can buy pay per click traffic on these keywords for far
less (more on this later).
5. Still targeted traffic - you are still getting highly targeted traffic.
Where and how to find them?
One of the best ways is to just sit down with your list of keywords and to
think of any possible misspelling possible. Also, you can go to keyword
search tools like the one at Overture, http://www.content.overture.com/d/USm/ac/index.jhtml
and see what the most common errors are repeating themselves. We also
suggest a program called Wordtracker,
http://www.AffiliateClassroom.com/Keywords. This is a far better tool than
the one offered by Overture.
How to optimize for them?
The same way you do for any normal keyword. Make sure that the keyword
appears in it is misspelled form through your content, in your meta tags
and in incoming links to your website. Optimizing for a misspelled keyword
is no different than optimizing for regular keywords - just easier :)
Using Pay Per Click with misspelled keywords
Make sure to add as many misspellings as you can possibly find into your
pay per click campaigns. For a keyword that costs you over a dollar or
more per click, you may very well pay 5-10 cents a click for the
misspelling.
Although more and more people are discovering this strategy and bidding up
the misspelled keywords as well, there are still some golden nuggets
there.
If you’re one of those affiliates who makes their money by running Google
Adword campaigns – I have just told you something that can seriously
double your income by tomorrow. Take all of your campaigns, one at a time
and find all the possible misspelled keywords you can find. Test them like
you do with everything else…
Keywords
Finalization Methodology
To arrive at the set of keywords that:
Describe business correctly (are relevant)
Attract traffic (are popular & are searched for)
Have less competition (are relatively un-optimized for )
Steps
Step I:
Lets start by saying that the for the keyword finalization of a web site
the first step is to device the theme of the web site. The keywords then
should be generated which are in sync with the themeing structure of the
site. The home pages & the other higher level pages should target more
general(main theme)keywords. The deeper pages (embedded in subdirectories
or sub domains) should target more specific & qualified keywords.
Once the sites themes & sub-themes are done, lets start by looking for the
keywords
StepII:
The finalization of the keywords for any given site can be done in the
following way:
Generation of the seed keywords for the site (theme keywords).
Expansion of the seed keywords into key-phrases by adding qualifiers (sub
theme keywords)
Generating a larger set of keywords by word play on the key-phrases
generated in step II.(sub theme targeting)
Lets take them one by one:
SEED Keywords/Primary keywords:
The seed keywords can be generated by either of the ways mentioned below:
The client provides the terms he feels are relevant to his business.
The SEO firm generates the seed words by understanding the business domain
& the business model of the client.
Some outside domain consultant provides them.
Another way of generating seed keywords is to look for the meta tags of
the competition web sites.
WARNING: do not place any unnecessary emphasis on these tags. Use them
just to generate you seed keywords list.
If one has certain set of keywords then tools like WT & Overture can also
be used to arrive at the other relevant seed keywords.
Typically seed keywords are single word.
A good number of seed Keywords is between 10-12.
SUB theme Keywords (add Qualifiers)
Now to these seed keywords add qualifiers.
These qualifiers can be anything location/sub-product/color/part
no/activity/singular etc.
By utilizing these qualifiers one can expand the list of the seed
keywords.
Say a good number would be anywhere between 20-30.
Typicaly a sub theme key phrase could be of 2-3 -4 word length.
One recent study suggests that
The typical searcher often uses longer queries. Many contain more than
three words. Within three different search engines, keyword distribution
data tells a compelling story:
LookSmart does not report beyond 5 search terms, instead grouping five or
more terms into one category.
Approximately 40 percent of queries in LookSmart have three or more words.
About 32 percent in Teoma have three or more. Ask Jeeves has an even
higher skew, nearly 62 percent, because of its natural language focus.
Within FAST, the database that powers Lycos and others, the average is 2.5
terms. That suggests a similar frequency distribution to LookSmart and
Teoma.
Hence we can keep the average length of sub theme keywords at around 3.
Keyword
Popularity Check
Before using keywords for your site, it is always better to check for the
popularity of these sub theme keywords. Some or all of the tools mentioned
in the keywords tools section could be utilized to measure the popularity
of these keywords.
Based on the popularity count of these tools we should come up with a
descending order listing of our most unused but good key phrase. These are
our good target keywords. As the competition increases on the keywords,
deeper optimization then just building keyword specific pages will have to
be done.
Variations on sub- theme words:
This is the word- play to get into the mind of the user.
Now our set of 25 to 30 keywords will be expanded to include
singular-plural word combinations, juxtaposing the same words in a
different combination, using synonyms, building on the list of words using
Thesaurus & a good dictionary.
The ideal set of keywords/ key phrases is to come up with around 70-100
possible ways of looking for that web site on the search engines (our
keyphrases)
Research on these variations of the sub theme keywords for actually
combing up with the combinations that are relatively un optimized for yet
popular.
At the end of this exercise we will have the ranked list of keywords,
which we can start optimizing for.
General observations & other nuggets:
When using google to check for the competing pages through the SERP house
the keyphrase in quotes. This will do the exact phrase searching for the
phrase that we are optimizing for. Now to have a real feel of the actual
competition on this phrase use the adword tool.
Typically offline competition for the business & online competition are
not equivalent. The client needs to be driven out of this mindset. Online
the competition for us depends on the key-phrases that we choose rather
then the industry or the competition chosen keywords.
Another useful tip is to watch out for the ranking of the subpages on the
SERPS page.
A higher occurenec of a sub- page suggests a lesser competitive key-
phrase.
Keep excel sheets handy to work out on your key words
Here is a benchmark:
If the site is fairly well optimized, and has a focused theme, then the
combined total number of visitors from secondary variations of the main
keyword phrase, should be higher than the number of visitors from your
main phrase by itself.
Another yardstick can be that 20% of your search traffic reach you through
your primary theme words. Another 20% through the sub theme words & their
combos & the remaining 60% is fractional. A true pyramid.
Keep the keyword density on your pages in between 5-20% while optimizing.
The latest talking optimization based on keywords is that almost none of
the things mentioned above might apply as it is. You create text based on
the end user perspective & optimize for 5-6 keywords per page. Check your
referrer stats & fine tune optimization.
Free Keyword Tools:
The first tool that can be used is Overture.
One trick is to check the keywords on all the Overture tools, US, UK, DE,
FR and even JP. You would be surprised at the ideas you can come up with
on the other O Tools that do not appear on the US one. Also, the
de-pluralizing and match-drive-alphabetization some times does not appear
on the other tools.
Second tool of course is the word tracker.
Use Google adwords to check on the competition for the chosen phrases
using the CPC barometer. Higher the CPC more the competition.
Another tool is at:
http://espotting.com/popups/keywordgenbox.asp
Yet another tool is Alta Vista “PRISMA”
One can use Refine search option of Teoma to arrive at more
generic/Primary keywords. Another way of doing that could be through the
DMOZ subcategory study.
Refining of key words can be done using the Server side data or the
referrs log.
7Search.com's Keyword Suggestion Tool
http://conversion.7search.com/scripts/ advertisertools/keywordsuggestion.aspx
Once the keywords have been finalized lets look at the places where we can
utilize them.
How to Build a
Website Around Keywords
Everyone wants more traffic to their website. More website traffic means a
larger audience of potential customers, which will equate to an increase
in sales. A simple way to get better listings in major search engines and
drive more traffic to your website is to build your site around highly
specific keywords and keyphrases.
A very hot topic right now is poker. You decide to start up a site that
offers free poker tips and poker articles, hoping that visitors to your
site will signup for the poker affiliate program that you have just
joined. The obvious keyword here is poker. Many webmasters will try and
build their sites around the term "poker" and hope to get a decent search
engine ranking, ignoring other keywords and keyphrases. Unfortunately, on
a popular search engine there are over 35 million webpages containing the
search term "poker". Even a search engine expert will have difficulty
ranking well for such a broad term.
The answer to this problem lies in building sites with pages containing
highly specific keyphrases, such as "Omaha High Low Strategies". (Omaha
High Low is a type of poker.) There are less than 500,000 webpages
containing the search term "Omaha High Low Strategies." That's still a
large number of pages to compete against, but it's much more likely that
you will eventually be able to rank on the first page of search engines.
Here is how to begin building your themed website around keyword phrases :
1. Start a keyword tree. Begin with the trunk, the most basic theme of
your website. Branch out, come up with about 10 words that describe the
original theme of your site. These main branches will have smaller
branches and leaves, each containing keywords, keyword phrases, and other
terms such as plurals and spelling variations.
3. Once you have done keyword research on all of your search terms, it is
a good idea to select about 15-20 words (that you can compete with and
will deliver the type of traffic you want) and begin to build individual
webpages that include the targeted keyword in the title and description of
that page. Include the chosen keyword as many times as possible in your
page, while keeping relevant, interesting content.
4. Use links to relevant websites (such as your affiliate program) and
include the selected keyword in your link descriptions.
5. You will begin to see a significant increase in the amount of visitors
to your site within a couple of months. You should periodically check your
websites stats and determine where your traffic is coming from and more
importantly, why.
6. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Follow these steps over and over, while
concentrating on adding new keywords. You may eventually break into the
top page on broad search terms, like "poker".
Keywords usage
in the Meta Tags
Once the sites keywords have been finalized it is now time to start using
them to optimize the site.The first & most obvious place to start using
them is the meta tags of the site.
There are three metatags that we can start to use them with.
Header
Description
Keywords
Lets look at them one by one:
KEYWORDS and KEYPHARASES uses in THE META DESCRIPTION TAG :
The Meta Description text is used to display a short description of the
web page which is listed in the search result by search engines. The Meta
Description text should be attractive and meaningful so that it could give
exact information about site services. It is very important from keywords
inclusion angle as well for the SE tend to index it first & perform a
keyword matching with it. Also bear in mind that this text is displayed
along with the site title in the SERPs. Hence it is the first introduction
that visitors will read about you.
Example:
KEYWORDS and KEYPHARASES uses in THE META KEYWORDS TAG :
Without Meta Keywords tag we can get top ranking as Meta Keywords tag is
less important, as far as search engine optimization is concerned. Still,
it won't hurt to include it. Meta keyword tag is used to include all the
keywords for which you would like search engines to rank your site. Meta
keyword tag is not supported by all search engines now as it has been
flagrantly spammed. Keyword meta tag contains keywords and key phrases
separated by comma's that users may search. Keyword must not be repeated
in the Meta Keywords tag more than three times (rule of thumb) and one must
not repeat any keyword one after the other.
Example:
Keywords should be listed in order of importance. Size preferences for
meta keyword tags are not same for all Search engines. For example, MSN,
will accept a meta keyword tag up to 1024 characters long, while HotBot
indicates 75 characters . However, some top-ranking pages of Hotbot's in
various categories used meta keyword tags much larger than 75 characters.
So, 1024 characters can be used as guideline.
KEYWORDS and KEYPHARASES usage in Header Tags
KEYWORDS and KEYPHARASES usage in header tags is very powerful in
SEO (search engine optimization) . As headlines makes a page easier to read
and helps in rapidly finding required information, it saves time.
Headlines should be short and descriptive. Headline tag text should never
have more than one full line of text. It is preferred to use header tags
text H2 or H3 tags to gain additional points with search engines.
Header tags text (headline) provides the right kind of keyword and key
phrase information to the search engines which helps in better indexing of
the website in their database. Header tags text also helps to rapidly
inform what the page is all about. So, we should integrate KEYWORDS and
KEYPHARASES into header tags text (headlines). Heading should start with
the keywords that are being targeted.. We should use the standard headline
tags (
,
).Also better control over the layout of web pages can be achieved by
using cascading style sheets in combination with the headline tags.
For example :
KEYWORDS and KEYPHARASES usage in Header Tags
KEYWORDS and KEYPHARASES useage in THE PAGE TITLE
KEYWORDS and KEYPHARASES useage in THE META TAGS
Keywords usage
in the Body Text
Once the sites keywords have been
finalized it is now time to start using them to optimize the site. Once
the title & meta tags of the site have been optimized its time to start
with optimizing the content of the site with keywords.
KEYWORDS and KEYPHARASES usage in Body text :
Body text is a gist of web page which represents overall information of
the web page in a precise way. We should use Keywords and Keyphrases in
body text in standard and natural way as it is read by the targeted
audience. This practice is also rewarded by search engines.
Body may consist of headings , pictures , tables, frames, forms and of
text paragraphs. Therefore, we can include Keywords and Keyphrases within
…
…
,
…
etc.
In case of tables , frames , forms we can include Keywords and Keyphrases
in their respective headings.
One thing to consider is that Keywords and Keyphrases must be included in
descending order of their importance. It is recommended (thumb of rule)
that at least four or five informative paragraphs (including important
Keywords and Keyphrases) should be included on each page totaling to at
least 100 – 250 or above words.
Remember, to include targeted Keywords and Keyphrases in the first
paragraph of the body text since some search engines access the first few
lines of web page to show as description in the search result listing.
Therefore, it is normally recommended that at least first 25 words in the
first paragraph should by Keyword rich.
Starting the body of page with an image is also not a good idea, since
most search engines can’t read images although some engines can read Alt
text of that image.
Bold and large font of Keywords and Keyphrases may help in improving
search result listing.
Example : We can write a paragraph showing the gist of the web page
including targeted Keywords and Keyphrases.
First Paragraph :
Keywords and Keyphrases should be used in page Title Tag, Meta Tags (Meta
keywords tag, Meta Description tags, Meta Robots tags) , Header Tags(
,
,
,
,
,
), Body text (in paragraphs-
, headings of forms, frames, list,
etc.), Alt tag, Anchor tags, Domain name , Urls of directory pages ,
Comment tags, etc. “
“Keywords and Keypharases used in different part of the web page body text
is a very important method of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). As search
engines boost the search result listing on the basis of Keywords and
Keypharases included in Domain name , Urls of directory pages, Page Title,
Body text, Meta tags, Header tags, Anchor Tags, Alt Tags,etc. Therefore,
we can safely say that one of the main components of Search Engine
Optimization (SEO) is Keywords and Keypharases.”
KEYWORDS and KEYPHARASES usage in Alt tag :
Keywords and keyphrases use in alt tag is also a very important factor in
boosting page rank used by spiders .The main reason behind altimage tag
keyword usage is that usually search engines can’t read images . To
overcome this problem we can use alt tag which describes image (.gif) or
graphic (.jpg). The text in the alt tags is indexed by the search engines.
It also used to describe the contents of the picture or graphic while
downloading that image or picture or while moving on to other page.
Sometime, Alt tag is also used to describe the contents of the image when
the browser is using graphic – off mode.
Alt tag should start with Keyword or Keypharases . Alt text can be used
with image or clickable image or text. Alt tag text should be simple
,short, meaningful sentence with target Keyword or Keypharases because it
is read by the audience.
In case of linked images we can use set of keywords with little
description of the coming page and border property or attribute should be
set to zero (0) and name of images should be relevant which helps to
improve validity of the web page.
Example : Alt tag text for image without link.
Page
Rank in Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Google has started to attach lot of importance to the anchor text in the
anchor tags. In fact the usage of keyword in the anchor tags merits such a
high place in google ranking algorithm that a phenomenon called google
bombing started.
In this, huge number of people linked to one particular page using a
particular text. The text had no relevance to the content on that page.
However when the text that was used as the linking text was used as a
search query, the page that all these tags were pointing to appeared tops.
As an example if everyone links to this page using classical music as the
hyperlinking text, then this page has a chance of appearing on a top rank
for the keyword classical music in google.
KEYWORDS and KEYPHRASES usage in Comment Tag :
Keywords and Keyphrases used in Comment tag also contribute in raising
page rank by increasing Keyword frequency of the web page. We can use
targeted Keywords and Keyphrases in comment text instead of simple text to
describe the page content.
Comment Tag can be used after title , description ,or robot tag in header
section. We can use Comment Tag after header if the opening body does not
contain Keyword Rich Text and before the starting of important content
like before flash content, programming in javascript, ASP or Applet ,
images and for those sections we need to identify for easy access.
Although only Inktomi uses this factor to boost page rank but it is
advisable to use comment tags with keywords to organize page content which
helps in easy editing and review.
Example:
<!--Keywords and Keyphrases can be used in Comment Tag to boost ranking of
the of the web page -->
