Past blogs have discussed simple usability testing, web design, and a basic SEO Review. Today I'm going to look at another SEO issue: Selecting Keywords. Choosing keywords is one of the easiest things to do and yet picking the correct keywords is one of the hardest.
This article assumes that you are new to SEO or just starting out, and have not given much thought to how potential clients find your site using Google searches.
What are Keywords?
There are several definitions of keywords depending on their use, for example: pay-per-click advertising, SEO optimization, information architecture. This blog entry will pertain to SEO optimization.I’m defining keywords as words or phrases placed into the content of a web page, in the hope that it will match the words or phrases used by prospects when searching the internet for something.
Goal of Keywords
The goal of keywords is to attract qualified traffic to your site. This is accomplished by having your website’s page(s) show up in search results of prospects or potential clients. You want your keywords to match the words used when people search the web for your product or service. Keywords should generate traffic, which lead to sales.
How to Use of Keywords
They should be a natural part of the content on your website’s pages. You do not want to stuff them everywhere. You can also include these words or phrases in your pages “Title” tag and HTML headlines. If you have an image related to a keyword, it can be placed in the “alt text” attribute for that image. Next weeks blog will talk more about how to use your keywords.The Best Keywords
Finding the best keywords to use on your site is a never ending quest. It could consume all of the hours in your day, or money in your marketing budget if you let it. I want to suggest that you don’t need to find the best keywords or phrases when you build or update your website.OK Keywords
When you first get started, don’t spend all your time and resources trying to identify the best keywords. Identify a set of good keywords and start from there. The law of diminishing returns will set in if you are on holy quest looking for the best keywords. I’m not suggesting that you pick any set of words. You want to identify good (or great) keywords, but you don’t need the best.Verb Satisfice - decide on and pursue a course of action satisfying the minimum requirements to achieve a goal. - http://www.thefreedictionary.com/satisfice
To determine if your keywords are working, you need to know what they are and be able to measure how much traffic they are generating. Google Analytics is a free tool that will tell you what search terms people used who found your site. Over time tracking how much traffic comes from various keywords is a good way to determine if your keywords are affective.
Once you know what words / phrases are working you can look at adding more content, or improving your existing content to get better keywords.
You Already Have Keywords
If you have an existing web site, then you already have words that help people find your site when they search on Google, Yahoo or other search engines. Those words are all the text on your website’s pages. If you are in charge of your web site, then you want to know what words and phrases can generate more traffic and sales.Getting Started
Step Zero:Before you start picking your words / phrases make sure you have a tool that measures which search terms are feeding traffic into your site. Google Analytics is a great tool and it is free.
Step One: Build Keyword List
Are you ready to build your list of words or phrases? Here are my top four ideas to keep in mind when building that list.
- Your Audience - What words or phrases does your target audience use?
- Your Business – What words or phrases do you use in your business? What about your competitors?
- Relative Strength – What is the relative strength of the keywords you are using? If you are a manufacturer, are more searches performed with the phrase “natural rubber tubing” or “latex rubber tubing”?
- Popularity - How many search results are returned when someone searches for a word phrase. Searching for “screws” returns over 4 million results on Google, “drywall screws” returns 400,000 results.
1) Your audience.
Hopefully you know your clients, and how they think. Check with your sales team or customer support, they interact with clients all the time. Find out what words they think people would use to search for your products / services.
If you have Google Analytics or some other method of tracking traffic to you site, see what words people use when they search for your site.
2) Your Business
Look at your business, what words or phrases would you use to find your business? Look at your competitors. What words can you search for to find them? (Hint: Look at their website's page titles and headlines.)
Place the list of words / phrases on an Excel spread sheet.
Need help finding keywords?
Google's Keyword Tool and a Keyword mapping tool (http://www.kwmap.net/) are useful if you are looking for help finding keywords related to your business.
3) Relative Strength
Now comes the hard part, figuring out if your search terms or phrases are worth pursuing. You will need a tool that lets you see how many times this term is searched. I like Google's Keyword Tool.
Add a column to your spread sheet indicating which terms have the most searches and are worth keeping in our list. I'd suggest keeping those terms in the top 1/3 of searches performed. Don't delete those other keywords, you still might want to use them at a later date.
Keep in mind that Google's tool shows searches for everyone in the USA (or world) and does not show searches by your audience. So if you think a term is valid for your audience, but is shows up poorly using the Keyword Tool, then keep it on your list.
The Keyword Tool also displays search phrases that it thinks are related to your initial list. Add any terms you think are worth while to your spread sheet.
4) Popularity
As I mentioned before some words are more popular than others. If you are in the electronic business, you will see that "digital camera" has over 100 million results on Google. Your odds of getting on the first few pages of a search like that is slim to none. (You might get lucky, but don't can on it.)
I tell my clients that SEO is kind of like applying to college. There are different levels of search terms: Safety, Match, Reach, and Hope & Pray.
Hopefully you know your clients, and how they think. Check with your sales team or customer support, they interact with clients all the time. Find out what words they think people would use to search for your products / services.
If you have Google Analytics or some other method of tracking traffic to you site, see what words people use when they search for your site.
2) Your Business
Look at your business, what words or phrases would you use to find your business? Look at your competitors. What words can you search for to find them? (Hint: Look at their website's page titles and headlines.)
Place the list of words / phrases on an Excel spread sheet.
Need help finding keywords?
Google's Keyword Tool and a Keyword mapping tool (http://www.kwmap.net/) are useful if you are looking for help finding keywords related to your business.
3) Relative Strength
Now comes the hard part, figuring out if your search terms or phrases are worth pursuing. You will need a tool that lets you see how many times this term is searched. I like Google's Keyword Tool.
Add a column to your spread sheet indicating which terms have the most searches and are worth keeping in our list. I'd suggest keeping those terms in the top 1/3 of searches performed. Don't delete those other keywords, you still might want to use them at a later date.
Keep in mind that Google's tool shows searches for everyone in the USA (or world) and does not show searches by your audience. So if you think a term is valid for your audience, but is shows up poorly using the Keyword Tool, then keep it on your list.
The Keyword Tool also displays search phrases that it thinks are related to your initial list. Add any terms you think are worth while to your spread sheet.
4) Popularity
As I mentioned before some words are more popular than others. If you are in the electronic business, you will see that "digital camera" has over 100 million results on Google. Your odds of getting on the first few pages of a search like that is slim to none. (You might get lucky, but don't can on it.)
I tell my clients that SEO is kind of like applying to college. There are different levels of search terms: Safety, Match, Reach, and Hope & Pray.
- Safety: If you have a quality web site, you should be able to get on the first page results. You can even get in the top three for many of theses pages. These are searches with under 500,000 search results.
- Match: Quality web pages have a good chance to be on the first page of these search results, but you might be in the top three results on only a few pages. These are searches with between 500,000 - 2,000,000 search results.
- Reach: Web pages with good content probably won't get on the first page of results for these phrases. They can get on the second or third pages. Searches with between 2 - 5 million search results are Reaches.
- Hope & Pray: Searches with over 5 million results are still worth trying for, but don't count on getting a good placement. Odds are these are general phrases, and the words are included in the previous categories. (Ex: "bulk sheeting" has 11 million results, "bulk latex sheeting" has 78,000 results. "Bulk Sheeting" would qualify as Hope & Prayer, but those two words are included in the Safety term "bulk latex sheeting".)
Step Two: Choosing Your Keywords
Choosing what keywords to go after is the next step.
Look at your spread sheet of words and phrases. Find terms that are frequently searched for (step 3) and are also Match or Safety searches (step 4). Those are the search keywords you should be going after first.
Next look at those terms that are frequently searched (step 3) but in your Reach column (step 4).
If your website is going to have (or has) lots of content pages, then you might want to look at some of the other search terms on your list.
Step Three: Implementation, Using Your Keywords
Next week I'll talk about how to place these keywords in your website's pages.
1 comments:
Have you tried the iSpionage keyword tool? It gives very complete results including keywords lists, main keywords as much as long tail keywords, along with vital in formation like monthly searched volume, competitors' interest, keywords popularity, which are very important for a good marketing plan. They have free version for testing on their website. You should give it a try.
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