| Top Web Hosting Provider of The Month: |
 |
| Visit Bluehost.com | Read Bluehost Review |
|
|
| >> Web Hosting Geeks // Web Hosting Articles // SEO - Search Engine Optimization |
|
|
 |
SEO Expert Guide - Keyword Analysis (part 3/10)
If you imagine that building an optimized site is like cooking a meal, then keywords are the essential ingredients. Would you attempt to cook a complex new dish without first referring to a recipe? Would you start before you had all the ingredients available and properly prepared? In our analogy, key words are your ingredients and the rest of the guide (after this part) is your recipe. It is vital that you start by investing time in key word research. This may surprise you, but I would recommend you spend at least 25% of your time on this activity alone! That's 25% of all your time, including the time you spend designing your site, building it, optimising and promoting it! Quite an investment, eh? But believe me, if you din't get this part right your meal will not be a very satisfying one and no-one will want to eat it! (a) What are your 10 key words?You may think you know straight off. You are likely to be right about most of them but you will almost certainly make three common mistakes. Firstly, you will tend to pick single words (rather than chains of words). Secondly, you will tend to pick the same words used by other people. Thirdly, you will compound this by overusing these key words on your site and underusing related key words. The result will be a poor finished product and sub-optimal ranking or traffic. So please be patient and walk through the following steps. From part two, you will remember Doug (who sells antique doors, door handles, knockers, door bells or pulls and fitting services). Like Doug, you should start with a visit to the Overture Keyword Selector Tool (which I recommend in preference to Wordtracker, which is a paid service, and the Google Adwords: Keyword Suggestion Tool, which does not indicate the popularity count of each search phrase). This tool allows you to check for recent word search combinations (and their derivatives) on the Overture search engine, returning search frequencies for each. Doug enters "antique doors" and is surprized to find that "antique door knob" and "antique door hinge" score higher than "antique door knocker" (his best selling product in the high street store). But far higher still is the category level combination "antique door hardware". He had never guessed searchers could be so savvy. Next he tries "antique door knocker" and finds a single derivative "antique brass door knocker". He had not thought seriously about making brass a keyword. Now it is pencilled in on his list. Trying "antique door bell" and playing around, he discovers "antique door chime" is about as popular (reflecting a difference between UK and US english). This is also very enlightening, as he is hoping to sell to the US audience by mail order. Perhaps you begin to see my point. As you will see later in the guide, I recommend a separate page for each product, service or information topic on your site. Through your Overture search, you should come up with an "A" list of about 10 key words for each page. At least four of them are likely to be site-wide in their applicability and common to each page. The remaining six will be page-specific. Put any left-over words onto a second page entitled "B" list. In Doug's example, he decides he wants antique, door, brass and hardware on each page in the site. On the door knocker page, he wants (in addition) the key words knocker, iron, decorative, engraved, pineapple and lion. You too should do the same. If you find this activity overly difficult, can I suggest you revisit your proposition? It is quite possible you have not yet properly thought that through! (b) Which key words do your competitors use?Through searching for door knockers on Google and focusing on the top 15 results, Doug brings up their pages. He uses the menu option "view-source" in Internet Explorer to look at the key words used in the page metadata. He is surpised to find some consistent themes. For example, almost all of the sites he finds whilst searching for "door knockers" also include "door knobs" in their metadata for that page. He also finds that several have used old as one of their kewords, in addition to antique. Don't read me wrong here. Metadata (particularly in isolation) is not the route to high search engine rankings (as you will see later). However, top 10 sites generally have done well with their optimization more generally (and their metadata is likely to reflect quality keyword analysis, repeated throughout the site in other ways). Another key tool is the Google Smackdown, permitting you to compare the overall frequency of two competing keyword sets across the whole of Google's results. Doug compares "antique door knob" with "antique door knocker" and finds the former is hugely overrepresented on the web compared to the latter (with over 2,000 results vs. under 200). He knows that knob is not searched on ten times more (from his earlier work) so decides to concentrate on knocker as a word where he has less competition. However, Doug confirms the effectiveness of all competitor combinations using the Overture tool and revises his list to include some of these new words, relegating "pineapple" and "lion" to his B-list, in favour of "old" and "knobs". (c) How many related keywords can you identify?Now for an important third step. Navigate your browser to the GoRank Ontology Finder - Related Keywords Lookup Tool. Like Doug, try entering "antique door knocker" and look at the results. For "antique", the tool suggests related keywords of old, classic, antique, furniture, vintage, rare, victorian, antiques, collectible. Hmmm. Now he can see why his competitors use old in their list! Doug runs these related words back through the Overture tool and finds that "Victorian door" yields some decent results, so adds Victorian and Edwardian to his B-list (something he had never thought of previously). Imagine if Doug had started with victorian door knockers as his gane plan. The Ontology finder would have shown him that antique door knockers was a much more sensible combination. He would then have been changing his A-list. As Search Engines move ever further towards the use of semantic intelligence in their ranking systems, the use of relared keywords will become ever more important. Make sure you future-proof your site through the liberal use of such words in page text content. More on this later in the guide. (d) Building key word chainsPerhaps it might surprise you to learn that the majority of all searches on Google are for two or three word combinations. Why does it surprise you, though? Isn't that what you yourself do when you are searching? Even if you start with one word, the results you get are generally not specific enough (so you try adding further words to refine your search). Bearing this in mind, it is vitally important to come up with 3-5 keyword chains for each separate page on your site. When you write your page copy later, you will need to ensure that these keyword chains appear with reasonable density in your overall text. Like Doug, pay a visit to the ABAKUS Topword Keyword Check Tool. Put in your competitor sites one after another and check out the results (using the default search settings). Study closely the two-word and three-word combinations that come up most frequently for each of your key pages in turn. Through Doug's exploration (for his door knockers page), he comes up with three favorite two-letter combinations: "door knockers", "antique door" and "antique hardware". For three-letter combinations, he settles on "house antique hardware" and "brass door knocker". Doug is surprised to note that "door knockers" is more popular than "door knocker". He has learnt another key lesson; always pluralise your key words where you can. You will achieve higher traffic this way (becuase of the way search engines handle queries). For a typical 10-page site, you should now have approximately 65-70 A-list words (with four of those being site wide) and perhaps as many as 200 B-list words (many of which will be related key words). You will have perhaps as many as 50 key word chains. Congratulations. You now have all the ingredients you need to get cooking. Read on... Navigate the guidePrevious : SEO Expert Guide - Proposition Development (part 2/10) Next: SEO Expert Guide - Sitewide Optimization (part 4/10) About the author:David Viney (david@viney.com) is the author of the Intranet Portal Guide; 31 pages of advice, tools and downloads covering the period before, during and after an Intranet Portal implementation. Read the guide at http://www.viney.com/DFV/intranet_portal_guide or the Intranet Watch Blog at http://www.viney.com/intranet_watch.
MORE RESOURCES:
Google News |
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Meta Tags - What Are They and Which Search Engines Use Them? Defining Meta Tags is much easier than explaining how they are used, and by which engines. The reason is very few engines clearly lay out what they do and do not look at, and how much emphasis they put on any one factor. How to Avoid Being Dropped by the Search Engines For websites, one of the most important things in their existence is their ranking with the search engines. The reason why this is so important is because when websites are ranked high by the search engines, they get flooded with free, targeted web traffic from visitors who are looking for information or products. How to Make More Money with Your Mambo 4.5.1 Site For those of you who are not familiar with Mambo - it is an easy to use content management system that can be freely downloaded from http://www.mamboserver. The Long And Short Of It Is That These Two Sales Techniques Are The Same With the Internet beginning to stand up and be counted as an online business medium, many are beginning to realize that selling online is not only possible, but very profitable. People are seeking ways to improve their sales technique online and close on more of their website visitors. Easy Web Tips How can you be found on the web?The web is a necessity as we have mentioned before. It has become one of the things that you will be asked about in almost every meeting you have with clients. Google Sitemaps: 7 Benefits You Cant Ignore Google Sitemaps enables Webmasters to Directly Alert Google to Changes and Additions on a Website and that's just one of 7 Benefits.Telling search engines about new pages or new websites use to be what the submission process was all about. Using Meta Tags Wisely to Attract Search Engines and Visitors There are certain tricks and techniques in SEO industry, which can fetch you real quick and top ranking in short run and get banned for ever, which I am discussing in this article. Before optimizing any site, always follow code of ethics and never spam. Complete Web-Site Optimization For Search Engines (Part 1) SEO or search engine optimization strategy now becomes widely popular among online business operators. Nothing strange about it as it allows to substantially increase your gross income, as a result of growing traffic or visitors flow. Being dumped by Google? Learn how to avoid becoming a victim next time around! After Google latest update nicknamed "Florida", many webmasters discovered that their traffic plummeted.What happened?More importantly what can you do about it?And what will Google do next?What happened was that Google made an algorithm change on how they rate web pages. The Search Engine Secret That Is No Secret At All It's common knowledge - we all know that it is important to rank well in search engines. Doing so can bring qualified, interested visitors to the web site you create. How to Create Killer Keywords to Get FREE Traffic to Your Website When exploring good keyword choices there are several steps one must consider. The most important step is putting your self in the shoes of the type of customer you want to target. Search Engine Optimization --- An Overview Search engine optimization is one of most popular online marketing tool for any website. With most websites looking forward to increasing the online sales of their products/services, search engine optimization can be a very cost-effective tool to target and procure your customers online. Selecting The Title Of Your Link Exchanges I want to touch base with selecting the title of the links that are added to other sites. Adding your link on another site is very important for your search engine saturation and rankings. The Search Engine Optimization Game Is Getting Tricky For more than 4 years now I have been modifying my work from home based web sites trying to optimize for the major search engines, Especially Goggle. Today with much disappointment I have come to the realization that search engine traffic alone will not make me rich. Its All in the Title Unfortunately, we don't live in a perfect world. You may be the most intelligent writer in the world, and have breaking information, which, if people actually read it, would benefit them and their business. Optimum SEO Keyword Density - A Real-Life Case Study So you've built your website, you know what keywords you want to target (i.e. Make Quality Content Your #1 Priority It is by now a proven fact that content is the most important element for getting better pagerank and, consequently, more traffic.Furthermore, the best ranking websites have content that is better written than most other sites. If You Could Submit Just One Page To The Search Engines Which Should It Be? Listen. Some make submitting pages to search engines sound like the fast track to search engine ranking nirvana. New MSN Search Engine: How Good is it? If you have an online business or you just use Internet as one of your marketing tools, you know that how important are the search engines in your quest to get more targeted visitors to your website. The changes in search engine field can have unexpected outcome for your online endeavors. Do Search Engines Like Your Web Site? Between 75% and 98.8% of visitors to Web sites come from searches made at search engines.
|
|
|
|
|
| © 2004 - 2008 "Web Hosting Geeks" | Web Hosting Reviews | Customer Reviews | RealMetrics Reviews | Hosting Articles | Directory | Partners | Contacts Over 7000 articles: web hosting, web development, domain names, ecommerce, web design, site promotion, ppc advertising, seo, site promotion and many others. Web hosting reviews, ratings and awards are not based on any incentives or commissions. Names and trademarks are the properties of their respective owners. A direct link to Web Hosting Geeks (http://webhostinggeeks.com) must be provided in order to use any of the above information. Contact us for more info. Partners: Hosts by speed, Cheap Website Hosting, Free Website Hosting, Cheap Web Hosting, Top 10 Web Hosts, Top 10 Web Hosting Deals, Best Website Hosting, Free Web Hosting, Free Web Hosting, Dedicated Server Hosting, Adult Web Hosting, Web Hosting Discussions, Dedicated Server Reviews, Best Web Hosting, Web Hosting Discounts, HostProfessor.com, rsuog, halyava, PHP Website Hosting Services, Web Hosting Reviews, Hosting Uptime, Best Web Hosting Reviews, Cheap Webhosting, Web Hosting, Flash Templates, CMS Templates, Web Hosting Reviews, Website Hosting Reviews, Web Hosting Providers, Best Web Hosting, Top Web Hosting, RSUOG Web Hosting |
