Archive for keyword research

Sep
22

Developing An Effective Keyword List

Posted by: Luca | Comments (3)

Welcome back

Developing An Effective Keyword List

When considering the importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), the success of your website often depends on it. That is why it takes crucial planning and careful execution of the best, most appropriate keywords in order to improve your ranking and effectively capture the attention of your target market.

Coming up with a list of the perfect keywords, or combination of words, takes time. Some website owners often think this is the easiest step in the SEO process. However, they couldn’t be more wrong. In fact, this step should be the most difficult. Why? Because, sure anyone can come up with a list of keywords related to your business. But not everyone knows exactly what your customers are looking for.

When creating your list of keywords, you have to put yourself in the shoes of your customers and actually think like them, rather than try to sell to them. In other words, as a business owner, you may have a tendency to use buzzwords (like “niche” or “conversion”). But your customers may not be as familiar with those terms, or simply apply more commonly used words to the same concepts (like “group” or “sales”).

The trick is to come up with a list of keywords that not only apply to your business, but actually work. You may start with a list of 100 words, but in order to drive customers to your site, you will have to cut it down. A great tip is to take a look at some competitors’ sites. Try to get a feel for what keywords they are focusing on and how you might be able to improve upon and top them.

And don’t limit yourself to single keywords. SEO is about the recognition of single and mutli-word phrases. For example, if you are in the telecommunications business, you wouldn’t only optimize for words like “calling”, “telephone” or “wireless”. Instead, you might focus on keyword phrases like “call centers”, “wireless communication” or “home telephone services”.

The good news is, you won’t be alone in your SEO efforts. There are many useful tools available to help you develop the best, most effective and easy to rank keywords possible. Google, in particular, provides a tool that allows you to research how often keywords are searched. What you want to avoid are keywords that impossible to top.

For example, a very broad word like “cellphone” is searched over 2.2 Million times a month (according to Google AdWords keyword tool). This makes it nearly impossible for your site to come up within the first few pages of a search engine because the competition is so fierce. But a phrase like “cellphone service” is searched 14,800 times a month, making it easier to compete for a high ranking spot. Therefore, if you are in the cellphone industry, be it sales, service, accessories or otherwise, you will want to optimize for phrases and keywords that are searched often but not so often you lose your ability to be found.

For more information on how to discover the hidden treasure in Keywords download this Special Free Report.

Discover The Answers To The Top 3 SEO Questions

Even if you know a fair amount about search engine optimization, or SEO, you may have questions. Because search engine optimization is an evolving technology, it pays to stay on top of the industry. Here are just a few of the most common SEO questions.

1. What are text links?

Text links are links that contain only text. The links are contained within a sentence and     when a reader clicks on them, they are taken to a different page on the same website.  Generally, the text included in the link is called anchor text and it’s a great way to optimize the keywords on your page and link to an external or internal webpage.

2. What are link farms and link exchanges?

They’re bad news. While links to your website are important for a good page ranking, search engine spiders don’t accept just any old link. The link has to be from a relevant and quality website.

A link farm is a Web page designed to profit from linking to web pages and Google and the other major search engines will penalize you for participating,

Link exchanging is essentially a link trade, “I’ll link to you if you link to me.” It’s okay to do this in small doses as long as the website you’re trading links with is relevant to your website. If your website sells dog-training products and you’re trading links with a furniture website then the search engines are going to discount the link.

3. What is latent semantic indexing?

When search engines find a keyword or keyword phrase on a webpage, they automatically search for other related words and phrases they would reasonably expect to see.  For example if you’re writing an article on snowboarding the spiders may also search for boarding, riding, skiing, freeride style and so on.

If the search engine spiders find these related words or phrases they have more confidence the primary keyword is being used in context, and therefore they will judge the page as more relevant.

LSI has been an active part of search engine ranking for a few years and as more and more content is published online, it’s becoming more important for webmasters to recognize it and make use of it when writing their content.

Search engine optimization is part science and part art.
The science comes from understanding the technology involved in meeting and understanding the search engine algorithms. The art, creating valuable content that includes your sometimes awkward keywords and keyword phrases. As your business grows and your web pages and content increase, you’ll want to stay on top of this ever changing practice.

Recommended SEO and Web Traffic Tools and Resources:

Top Trafic Tips Learn how to drive massive traffic to your sites, blogs, sqeeze pages and affiliate links
WordPress SEO Call A Few Simple Tweaks Can Make The Difference Between Page 5 In Google And Page 1!
Generating Keyword Call – You can complete all the initial keyword research you need using 100% free online tools if you know what you are doing.
Keyword Elite One of the best Keyword tools out there.

Recommended WordPress Resources

Expert WordPress: Create A blog in 3 simple steps and FREE
WordPress Wizard 2.0 – Excellent step by step video tutorials
Membership Tactics How to set up a Membership Site In under 6 minutes – Using COMPLETELY FREE Software…

Comments (8)

Three Steps to Write SEO Content and Still Sound Natural

When it comes to tactics and strategies to improve search engine results, there’s really nothing more important than the content on your website. Content, after all, is what the search engines analyze to determine the validity of a webpage and website. For this very reason, many webmasters focus their content efforts with the search engines in mind.

However focusing entirely on your search engine results is a mistake because search engines don’t buy your products or services, they don’t click on your ads and affiliate links and they don’t contribute directly to your bottom line – customers do.

This is why it’s essential that you write your content for your audience first and the search engines second. This, however, presents a conundrum because sometimes it’s difficult to combine the two. Keywords don’t always fit into an article or blog post naturally.

Here are three steps to write your SEO content and still sound natural.

Step One

Research your keywords and keyword phrases. Choose one to focus on in your article and then set it aside.

Step Two

Write your content, keeping your main keyword topic in mind, without even thinking about keywords and keyword phrases. For example, if your keyword phrase is, “How to housetrain a puppy,” then you’ll write an article about how to housetrain a puppy however as you’re writing it, you’re not worrying about if you’re using the keyword phrase or not. Your entire focus is on writing a quality article for your audience.

Step Three

Working in your keywords. Once your article or blog post has been written, then it’s time to go back with your keyword at the ready. Read through your article and insert this keyword or keyword phrase where it seems to fit naturally. Keep in mind the fact that search engines are also looking for relevant words so if you’re writing about puppy housebreaking, you can also use housetraining and potty training occasionally to break up the monotony and help the search engines recognize the relevance of your article.

When inserting your primary keyword or keyword phrase keep in mind the places the search engine spiders are going to look.

  • Your headline
  • Your subheadings
  • Your first paragraph
  • Your last paragraph
  • In the body of the article

When using your keywords aim for a density of about three to seven percent. Anymore and search engines might recognize your content as being keyword stuffed. To determine percentage simply take the number of times you use your keyword and divide it by the total words. Therefore, if you have a 450 word article and you use your keyword 18 times you have a keyword density of four percent.

Once you’ve completed your article, read it aloud to see if it sounds natural. This is one of the best ways to evaluate it. Remember to keep your audience in mind first and the search engines second – this strategy will always pay off.

Recommended SEO and Web Traffic Tools and Resources:

Top Trafic Tips Learn how to drive massive traffic to your sites, blogs, sqeeze pages and affiliate links
WordPress SEO Call A Few Simple Tweaks Can Make The Difference Between Page 5 In Google And Page 1!
Generating Keyword Call – You can complete all the initial keyword research you need using 100% free online tools if you know what you are doing.
Keyword Elite One of the best Keyword tools out there.

Recommended WordPress Resources

Expert WordPress: Create A blog in 3 simple steps and FREE
WordPress Wizard 2.0 – Excellent step by step video tutorials
Membership Tactics How to set up a Membership Site In under 6 minutes – Using COMPLETELY FREE Software…

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Comments (30)
Internet blogs