How to do Keyword Research | Google Keyword Tools

Filed under Keyword Research by on February 14, 2012 at 6:54 pm {no comments}

Many people do not know how to do keyword research, so we are going to go over some basic things to keep in mind when doing your keyword research that can improve your success.

When doing keyword research, you need to use a tool for the job. There are many tools out there to aid in keyword research, but we will focus on those offered for free that are available to all, the Google keyword tools. These are found in the Google Adwords interface, but you can use them even if you do not have an Adwords account. Simply type “Google keyword tool” in your search bar.

Using this free tool, you can drill down and create a list of keywords to target. To get started, simply type your main keywords in the ‘word or phrase’ box, change the ‘match type’ (left column) to ‘exact match’ and click on search.

This should return a list of related keywords. It will show you the level of competition, and the number of searches for this term done each month. You can sort both of these columns, allowing you to get ideas for low competition keywords, as well as high search volume keywords.

From this list, you can pull out another list of keywords, paste that list into the ‘word or phrase’ box and get yet another list of keyword suggestions.

Spend some time looking at variations on your keywords and you will find a number of phrases we can consider low hanging fruit, highly targeted keywords with low competition. These types of phrases are often long tail phrases, meaning they are made up of many words rather than just one or two. These are great terms to target due to two facts. One is that the competition is lower for them, meaning you can rank better, faster. Secondly, these long tail keywords are typically more detailed than the general search terms. This means that with proper selection, you can ‘laser target’ the type of visitors you want coming to your site.

Another group of keywords you want to be mindful of that are related to these long tail keywords are keyword terms that are what we call ‘buyer phrases’. These phrases may not have the high search volume as other more general phrases, but they are typically going to send the type of traffic you want to your site – people looking to buy.

An example of this can be seen in the camera niche. Someone searching ‘digital camera’ is much less likely to be ready to buy as someone who searches something like ‘buy Canon digital camera online’. You may not have the high search volume, but by targeting a number of these buying phrases you can generate the right kind of traffic to your site.

Think about what a buyer of your offerings is going to search for and get creative. Each niche will have different buying phrases, and by doing the research and finding the right keywords to target, your SEO campaign will have a solid base from which to generate the largest return on investment for you.

One mistake so many people make is targeting the highest search volume keywords. Remember, this is not a contest to get the most visitors to your site. You want visitors that will convert into buyers or clients, so our goal should be to get the most conversions possible.

It’s not hard to go find keywords to target, but to find the best keywords to target you need to know how to do keyword research. If you put in the time and research, you will be a step ahead of most others in your niche.

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On Page SEO – SEO Page Structure

Filed under On Site Optimization by on February 6, 2012 at 7:58 pm {no comments}

On page SEO factors are becoming more and more important. Having the proper SEO page structure can really help your rankings, especially as Google continues to work on improving the end user experience.

In addition to being very important for search engine rankings, it is also very important to the usability of your site. A good layout that is not cluttered will allow your visitors to better navigate your site. That will also help to improve your bounce rate and time visitors spend on your site (both of which also play a part in your rankings).

Finally, the on page SEO factors are one thing you have direct control over. You may not be able to control various off page factors, but you certainly can control your SEO page structure. Here we are going to look at a few things you can do to improve both your user experience and your rankings.

Above the Fold

Above the fold is a term that you should be familiar with. It basically refers to the part of your site that visitors see when they land on your page before they have to scroll down. This is prime real estate, and needs to be treated as such.

One thing we see a lot is web sites that have huge headers. Headers that take up half of the page ‘above the fold’ are too large. Shrink that down, your goal is to get your high quality content and your call to action to show above the fold. Your logo does not need to be huge. I know it’s your logo and you are branding your site, but you don’t need half of your above the fold space to do this.

In addition, placing too many ads above the fold is a no-no. Let’s be clear on this, having ads above the fold is ok, but you don’t want to impact the usability of your site. When users come to your site, they need to be able to easily and quickly identify the content they came to find. If they cannot do this, not only will your conversions and user interaction suffer, but your search engine rankings will suffer as well.

Keep your pages clean, make the content the king and not only will you have better interaction with your visitors, but the search engines will like your site better. These are just a few SEO page structure tips that you can impement to improve the performance of your site. Check back in and we will be looking at more. As always, please like or +1 this post if you found it useful!

Keyword Selection

Filed under Keyword Research by on January 18, 2012 at 9:44 pm {no comments}

For all the resources dedicated to SEO, there is very little emphasis put on proper keyword selection.  This is a shame, as keyword selection forms the base of your SEO campaign, and without proper keyword selection, you will not see the greatest possible benefits of your SEO efforts.

In my opinion, keyword selection is the single most important stage in the optimization process.  Good keywords are going to maximize your return on investment.  Choosing the keywords with the highest traffic is a very common way to go about keyword selection, but that is not the most profitable way to go about it.  The most profitable optimization is the one that gives the greatest return on investment, and that is what our keyword selection strategy aims to accomplish.

For an example, let’s consider a specific scenario involving a common type of business, a restaurant.  If you own an Italian restaurant in San Francisco and want to get found in the search engines, you may consider the keywords “restaurants”, which has just under 400,000 searches per month, and “Italian restaurants”, which has a little over 40,000 searches per month.  These search terms are likely your high volume search terms, but just because they have the most searches per month does not mean that you will earn the best return on your investment by ranking for them.

Consider the fact that these are very broad based keywords.  Chances are, very little of the traffic that these keywords generate is actually going to convert to new business for this business.  Instead, you could target “San Franciscorestaurants”, which has just under 10,000 searches per month, and “San Francisco Italian restaurants”, which has almost 800 searches per month.  These phrases may not be the highest volume keywords to choose, but they are going to send visitors to your site that are much more likely to become customers than the other phrases discussed above.

In addition, it will take less time to rank well for these terms, and will cost less in terms of time and/or money spent.  Less time means new customers will start finding your site sooner.  To take this one step even further, you should drill down even more and target additional niche terms that will be likely to send the right visitors to your site.  To do this, you need to think like a customer.

Thinking like a customer means finding the ‘buying phrases’.  These are phrases that are typed in by buyers.  A good example would be a camera shopper.  Someone typing in “Fast shipping Nikon Coolpix camera” is much more likely to be a buyer than someone typing in “Nikon cameras”.  The latter phrase may get a lot more search volume, but the buyers phrase is going to send much more qualified traffic to your site if you are selling Coolpix cameras.  In addition, you will likely rank higher and faster for the very specific buyers phrase than if you were to try to rank for the more general “Nikon cameras” phrase.

Spending your time identifying the proper phrases for your website and business and then targeting a lot of these niche buyers terms is likely to provide a much higher return on investment than if you were to simply target the phrases related to your product that have the most search volume.

Everyone likes search volume.  It is easily measured, the top keywords are easy to find and choose and it seems very intuitive to try to get the most volume possible.  The problem is that simply choosing keywords based on volume disregards the very reason you want traffic to your site.  I would rather have 10 visitors a day that all wanted to purchase my product than to have 10,000 visitors a day that either wanted to just gather information or who where unqualified buyers for some other reason.  By doing proper, in depth keyword research, you can identify these quality phrases.  If you do a good job identifying them and optimizing for them, your return on investment will be much higher than if you simply focus on volume.

At SEO Tacklebox, every custom SEO job we take starts with in depth keyword analysis.  We don’t want to just get you ranked for phrases to increase your traffic, rather we want to put together and implement a game plan that is going to increase your sales and maximize your return on investment.  For more information, please feel free to ask us for a free SEO quote.

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