Keywords – Key For All Doors

Keywords – Key For All Doors

by: Zoran Makrevski

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 inhouse, 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 ขshoes manufacturersข will return worldwide results, and your competition will be very strong. Even if you manage to rank high, ขconversion to sales rateข will be fairly low. Some of the people would actually search for ขshoes manufacturersข 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 ขUK shoes manufacturersข or ขEU shoes manufacturersข 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 recheck 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.

About The Author

Zoran Makrevski

Search Engine Positioning Firm

SEO.Goto.gr

This article was posted on October 21, 2004

by Zoran Makrevski

UnCommon Sense Search Engine Optimization Strateg

UnCommon Sense Search Engine Optimization Strategies

by: Kerry Emrich

Want to reach the top of Google for your niche, or keyword phrases? Don’t let it cause you stress or anxiety, simple read on…

Google, MSN, and Yahoo all use their own formulas to calculate the relevance of your pages, but here are a few common factors to guarantee you will rank above those not using them.

Start analyzing your pages today, don’t forget to resubmit the changes when you are done, and the traffic will start to flow.

1) Keyword Density

You should strive to obtain a keyword density in the 3.5 to 7 percent range for each of your pages. Do not overuse your keywords on the same page, instead simply use related keywords.

2) Keyword Phrase Choices

A single keyword is almost impossible to rank high for, so you should shoot for lower demand phrases. Overture lists the keyword กcoffeeก as being searched 370820 times per month. The keyword coffee has a huge amount of competition, but a keyword phrase such as กcoffee clubก is only searched 1813 times. Of course ranking number one for coffee would be fantastic, but ranking well for many lower demand keywords should be an important part of search engine optimization strategies.

3) Original Content

Google will tend to penalize sites offering the same content resulting in lower ranking for all sites. Think about all the sites you have seen promoting the same resale rights product. They all have the same sales page. The best thing you could do is to simply rewrite the sales letter and submit that page to the search engines. This is an incredibly important Search Engine Optimization tip. Try to work in related words and phrases not just the top keywords.

4) Proper Linking

Make sure all your links use proper text. How many times have you seen กclick here to visitก on a website? Simply changing the link text will cause your page to rank higher in all the search engines. You can also choose related phrases for link text.

5) Repeat Keywords and Phrases

Always make sure that your selected keywords and phrases appear several times in each of your paragraphs. Try to add related keywords and phrases to help boost your SEO. Do not get involved with keyword stuffing (repeating the same keywords over and over), and make sure to leave some space between keyword occurrences (once every second or third line)

5) Stay Current

Visit SEO news sites to stay current with the latest trends. The engines are always changing their strategies and formulas so it is a good idea to read the latest news at least once a week. A great place to start is http://www.seobuzz.com

6) Alt Tags

When adding a photo or picture to your pages you should always add relevant keywords to the alt tags. This helps to boost your page rank with little work.

Taking the time to review your site, make the necessary changes, and staying current on the latest trends in SEO will help ensure that you achieve a top ranking site for your chosen keywords and key phrases.

About The Author

Kerry Emrich

The author is a internet research specialist with an interest in hypnosis. For info about self hypnosis mp3 files visit us http://www.fearphobia.com/selfhypnosismp3 and for keyword research related information at http://www.keywordtrack.com/category/keywordresearch/.

[email protected]

This article was posted on August 02

by Kerry Emrich

How to Conduct Keyword Research

How to Conduct Keyword Research

by: Keith Baxter

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.

Product Idea Evaluator http://www.productideaevaluator.com/

Niche Finder http://www.nichemarketresearch.com/

Better Keywords http://www.searchguild.com/utils.html

Onwards…

This is how I personally do my own keyword research.

It’s actually simple, but does require a paid version of http://www.WordTracker.com.

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 35 terms that best fits what I’m looking for. I then click on the first of those 35. 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 35 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.ezsearchengineoptimization.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.

Copyright 2005 Keith Baxter

About The Author

This article has been authored by Keith Baxter, the founder of http://www.topkeywordlists.com. If you wish to maximize your Adsense income and learn how to drive massive amounts of traffic to your website from the search engines, visit the site now.

This article was posted on March 13

by Keith Baxter

SEO 101 – The Basics Of How To Get To The Top Of T

SEO 101 – The Basics Of How To Get To The Top Of The Search Engines

by: Rob Rawson

Search Engine Optimization (commonly referred to as SEO) is one of the best waysto get traffic to your site. The best thing about SEO is that the traffic you get is free! If you manage to get top ten listings in a major search engine like Google, you can get hundreds or even thousands of visitors to your site.

Depending on your site’s subject matter, you might even be able to start earning a significant income purely from the popularity of your site. For example, if you have a site on jokes you might be able to get a substantial amount of traffic, but you’re unlikely to earn a huge income.

On the other hand, if you have a top ranking site on Google for the keyword phrase ขweb hostingข, you’ll be able to earn at least $12 million (probably more like $34 million) per year from that site alone. However, to get into the top 10 in Google for the phrase ขweb hostingข is extremely difficult, you would need to be a search engine pro to do it even then, it might take you two years to get there with a team of 5 people working around the clock.

A profitable site will be based on a good keyword phrase, a good topic (or subject material) and be different enough to stand out from the competition. If you can combine these elements successfully you’ll increase you chances of turning a profit from your site.

Keep in mind that there are a number of niche areas where there is not so much competition but still the opportunity to make a decent profit. There are hundreds of such areas where you have the potential to earn $5002000 per month.We’ll talk about keyword research and finding profitable niche areas in later issues, but for now, let’s look at the basics of how to get a site to the top of the search engines.

I’m going to focus on SEO for Google because it’s the largest (and the best) search engine which will generate the most traffic, especially if you can master all of the right optimization methods. Google has a very complicated system for determining which sites make it to the top of the search engine. There are manyfactors involved and there is no precise formula. A further consideration isthat Google often changes its formula so you can’t rely on it being the same from month to month. However, there are a few key factors which are unlikely to change dramatically:

Keywords phrases should be one of the most important considerations when you are optimizing your site (remember that for each page of the site you should concentrate on one or two keyword phrases).

Keyword phrases (which you want to get to the top of the search engine for)should be well researched. For more information on researching keywords, have a look at http://www.profitpuppy.com/keywordresearch.htm where you can find links to useful keyword tools.

Key factors for getting to the top of Google:

The keyword phrase in the title of the page you should have the phrase in the title of the page.

The keyword phrase in the text of the page – you want the keyword phrase to be up the top of the page, preferably as high up the top of the code on the page as possible. You also want the phrase repeated a few times on the page. Don’t worry about how many times, just at least 34 times and more if you think it fits in naturally with the content of the page.

Include the keyword phrase in a large font heading with H1 tags (this may make a small difference).

Links into your site from other sites (covered in more detail below).

Links within your site (covered below).

Links to other sites (covered below).

Links into your site from other sites

This is probably the most important factor for getting good search engine listings. You need to have good links coming into your site from other sites.

You want those links to be from popular sites that also have lots of links coming into them. Google uses a Page Rank system which is a rough measure of how many links are coming into your site. You want links from sites that have good Page Rank. Creating 50 of your own sites and interlinking them won’t increase your page ranking.

How do you get links from other sites?

The main ways are to: Create a great site that people naturally want to link to, Get an affiliate program so people can link to your site and get paid, swap links with other sites, get listed in directories such as dmoz.org and buy links from people who have sites with a high PR (Page Rank). Again, we’ll be talking about this in more depth in another issue of the newsletter.

The most important consideration with incoming links is that you need to have the keyword phrase in the link that directs traffic to you your site. Getting listed in directories such as DMOZ (Open Directory Project) can also help you significantly in getting a good search engine ranking in Google.

Links within your site

It helps once again if you have the keyword phrase in the links to each page of your site. For example, let’s say you have a site on baby products and you have one page where you are trying to optimize for the keyword phrase ขcheap baby suppliesข. You should make sure that links that come into that page have the phrase ขcheap baby suppliesข so that your links look like this: Click here for cheap baby supplies

Links to other sites

You can improve your page rank if you link to other sites that have high search engine listings for the phrase that you are trying to optimize for. Note: it can also hinder if you link to pages that are offtopic. For example, you don’t want to link to a chemical arms factory from your baby supplies site.

Some other things you don’t want to do (and some things that make no difference at all) are:

Repeating the keyword phrase multiple times on the page unless it makes contextual sense.

Placing hidden links on your site – for example, links that are the same color as the background of the page won’t be recognized by Google.

Optimizing your site too carefully – if it’s obvious that you have optimized your site for Google (for example, if all your incoming links use the same keyword phrase) you may be penalized. Google looks for sites that are more ‘natural’ in their structure, so if all links look the same this won’t look like an organic site to Google robots and you may be penalized for it.

Despite popular opinion, Meta tags don’t really help at all. However, the description tag is important because that is the description that will appear in your listing on Google.

Finally, you may have heard of people using automated pages and or ‘cloaked pages’ to get high search engine rankings in Google. Personally, I don’t believein taking this approach as it’s a nonsustainable way of getting high search engine rankings (that’s not say that some people who aren’t very successful at it). I know of atleast 3 highly successful companies who generate automated pages using this software http://www.profitpuppy.com/traffic. This is a sneaky way to make it to the top of of the search engine rankings, but it can work; one guy I know is earning several million dollars per year using this technique. So it can work, but as I mentioned before, I don’t think it’s sustainable and the Google engine doesn’t take kindly to it.

How do I submit my site to the search engines?

My personal philosophy is that if your site is not found naturally by following links then it is unlikely to rank in the search engines I don’t usually bother submitting to search engines.

So that’s the basics of how to get to the top of the search engines. We’ll have a look at the more advanced stuff later on. It takes a lot of time knowledge and dedication to get there but once you master it, SEO is a fantastic way to gettraffic and make money on the web.

www.profitpuppy.com

About The Author

Rob Rawson

You may reprint/republish any of the following articles on your own Site, in your own ezine, autoresponder series, product, bonus items, or any other format you wish as long as you adhere to the following:

1. The article must not be altered in anyway and the links must remain active

2. You must not abuse the Internet in anyway, shape, or form with ANY of your online marketing. This includes but is not limited to sending unsolicited commercial email (SPAM), abusing online forums, using copyrighted materials without permission, or infringing on the trademarks of others.

[email protected]

This article was posted on September 29, 2004

by Rob Rawson

Exploring Beyond Keywords Into Behavioral Research

Exploring Beyond Keywords Into Behavioral Research

by: John Alexander

If you have ever studied search engine optimization, then youกll know that most educators place tremendous importance on performing good keyword research. After all, itกs true that we need to optimize our pages for the best phrases, or we will never realize our true traffic potential. Itกs all about trying to attract the ideal audience of searchers to our Web site, right? Is that not what most of people do? They build a Web site offering their business services, then they say to themselves กHow do I get traffic to my site?ก For many Web site owners, their source of traffic is an afterthought.
Itกs much wiser, to first try and discover what keyword phrases people are searching for on the major search engines and then optimize Web content for those specific phrases. However, there are still further regions to explore that go beyond keyword research. Letกs call it researching the กbehaviorก of your target audience.
The difference between keyword research and behavioral research is that keyword research keeps us in a rather technical mode and focused on finding out what words people are entering while searching. Behavioral research has the added advantage of enlightenment and understanding that not only reveals what keyword phrases are being used, but why those keywords are being used.
Give this some careful thought. What could possibly be more important than getting inside the head of your target audience and discovering what they really want? Actually nothing! Once we understand exactly what someone is looking for, we can give them exactly what they want. Think กbehavior.ก Every day, people around the world use the Internet as a tool for a vast array of purposes. A study of behaviors can carry you much deeper into understanding the desires of your target audience and ultimately, an understanding of what kind of useful content to provide for them.
While most people are thinking about what keywords to use, try to expand your scope to focus and discover the fullest possible picture of what your customer REALLY wants, what they really are doing, by simply studying their searching behavior on the major search engines.
Why make all this fuss about behavior trends anyway? What creates behavioral trends? Think about it this way. If you can discover how a certain target audience is using the Internet, then chances are the rest of your target audience may be doing exactly the same thing. This is not only helpful with respect to the ideal keyword phrase selection but also may be helpful to your writing style. How you communicate to a grandmother will have a completely different spin than how you communicate with a sports enthusiast looking for sports scores or a photographer searching for a place to review several different lenses.
If you happened to learn that a grandmother is shopping online to buy a gift for her daughter’s newborn baby, then what are the chances of there being many other grandmothers doing the same thing. If enough grandmothers are doing this in real life every day, it creates a trend.
So lets get down to talking about behaviors then.
Some people have already realized that online consumers are searching for price comparisons online. Wouldn’t it be useful to know exactly what prices or what products people are comparing? How easily you could you take advantage of this information by creating ideal content within a retail site, that compares exactly these things that people are searching for and want to know! Not only that, but suppose you could research those exact products and determine fairly quickly where the biggest กwindow of opportunityก would be for you?
One of the most powerful and useful tools for researching human behavior is Wordtracker.com. As an official member of Wordtrackerกs question and answer support team, I help answer peoples questions about keyword research every day. The questions I answer are mostly things that customers are curious about, but often the answer to their question does not allow me the time to explain about some of the special advantages of Wordtracker. This is why I wrote an ebook called Wordtracker Magic, to help people understand some simple, easy alternatives to performing keyword research and behavioral research. Many people miss the behavioral trends simply because they are thinking too narrowly about กkeywordsก which may already be preprogrammed into their minds. Remember, if there is enough common interest in any topic, so that a similar search behavior is occurring then it will often leave an identifiable trend behind in Wordtrackers database. Every time you can discover those trends, itกs like pure gold!

About The Author

John Alexander is the CoDirector of Training of Search Engine Workshops with Robin Nobles. Together, they teach 2day beginner, 3day advanced, and 5day allinclusive กhands onก search engine marketing workshops in locations across the globe. John also teaches online search engine marketing courses through http://www.onlinewebtraining.com, and he’s a member of Wordtracker’s official question support team.

[email protected]

This article was posted on July 28, 2004

by John Alexander

Competitor Analysis How Writing Rubbish Can Give

Competitor Analysis How Writing Rubbish Can Give You An Edge

by: Tom OกBrien

The Gobbledygook Competitor Analysis Tip

When typing c*ap can tell you a lot about your competition…

One of the great things about Adwords is it allows you to test so many different things ever so quickly. It is a very useful tool but if it were likened to a sword it would be doubleedged.

What do I mean by this?

Itกs very simple your advert when it is displayed is in the public domain and can be seen not only by your prospects but also your competitors.

The reverse of course is also true, which means you can perform competitor analysis too. So how can you leverage this to find out who amongst your competitors is doing a great job writing Adwords creative copy?

A quick refresher is in order Google allows you to match in 4 different ways:

Broad Match (unadorned keywords and keyword phrases)

Phrase Match (Enclosing Quotes ก ก)

Exact Match (Enclosing Square Brackets [ ])

Negative Match (With a preceding minus sign )

Google also has some inbuilt smarts and will display your advert on occasions when it deems your advert is suitable (even though your keyword list may not match).

This is known as กExpanded Matchก and is only employed for your keywords that are Broad Match specified (the least targeted). The idea behind this is to maximise your advert exposure thus driving more targeted traffic to your website.

Natually Google will get more revenue as a result 😉

So how can you benefit from this?

I hope your eyes haven’t glazed over quite yet because here comes the good bit:

Type in a keyword phrase you are interested in it must be at least a 2 word phrase.

Note the results of adverts there may be 10, 20, 100 or more depending on how competitive your market is.

The Gobbledygook Competitor Analysis Trick

Now type in the first word from your keyword phrase, followed by some gobbledygook e.g. 1kises and then put in the remaining part of your keyword phrase.

Now youกll see the amount of adverts displayed will be vastly reduced only those who have used broad match keywords will be shown BUT…

The adverts shown are shown in order of precedence the precedence being dictated by the best adverts in terms of Click Through Rates!!!

So you have a sorted list of the best adverts for your target market for that particular keyword (exclusive of phrase and exact match keywords).

With this information to hand you can now construct better adverts faster for your chosen target market all for a little time taken to write rubbish and perform a competitor analysis.

About The Author

Tom OกBrien turns Adwords PPC management problems into profitable advertising campaigns. For more free tips on Adwords Campaign Management visit: http://www.pdqprospects.com/services/GoogleAdwordsCampaignManagement.html

This article was posted on August 25

by Tom OกBrien

How To Find The Top Keywords Relating To Your Them

How To Find The Top Keywords Relating To Your Theme

by: Jeff Schuman

Have you ever wondered what people are searching for online? More specifically have you ever wondered what people are searching for as it relates to the theme of your website?

Letกs say you have a website built around the theme of music downloads. Here are 2 easy ways to get a list of keywords you can use to build your home page and then build more pages around each specific word.

1. Do a search by typing in music downloads here:

http://www.pixelfast.com/overture

As of November 2004 the keyword phraseก music downloads was searched 1,068,310 times. We can also see that กfree music downloadsก was searched 1,169,992 times.

As you look down the list you will find all kinds of combinations of keyword phrases with the words กmusic downloadsก included in them.

You can build specifc web pages centered around each keyword phrase. You will find that lesser searched keywords have less competition and therefore will be easier for you to make it to the top of a search engine and generate free traffic.

For example the keyword phrase ก free mp3 music downloadก was searched 22,360 times. This would be a great keyword phrase to target in comparison to the more generic phrase กmusic downloads.ก

2. Take a look at what people are willing to pay for a keyword here:

http://www.teamschuman.com/7searchkeywordtool

When typing in กmusic downloadก it brings up the keyword, number of searches, and the top 5 bids. It also brings up a complete list of possible keyword phrases and what people are paying for them. You can use this information to find affiliate products relating to each specific keyword phrase and then build additional web pages relating to each specific one. You can add these keywords to your home page and then join 7Search as an affiliate and add pay per click text to your pages.

Then get paid by 7Search when someone clicks on an ad relating to that keyword. I do this to generate hundreds and thousands of dollars each month. It is a great way to make some money on your site for generating traffic to it. Here are examples on 2 of my websites. You will see the text ads for the Top 10 websites at the top of each page.

http://www.teamschuman.com

http://www.sitesplus.com

If you are looking for top keywords being searched in a broad range of categories then subscribe to the กKeyword Reportก here:

http://www.teamschuman.com/wordtracker

Click on the link for Keyword Report and you will receive the top 500 keywords people are searching for delivered to you by email every week. Then use the Overture and 7Search keyword tools to find more specific keywords you can build websites and web pages around. This is a great strategy and a great way to get started making money with your own theme website and web pages around that theme.

Remember this simple point. People go to the internet to find information. They will type in all kinds of keyword phrases and variations of those keywords. The more web pages you can build targeting those specific keywords the better off you will be when it comes to increasing your website traffic and making more money online.

Copyright 2004 Jeff Schuman

About The Author

Jeff Schuman is using this strategy to create new websites around specific keywords relating to a theme. You can see his Top 10 Make Money and Top 10 Small Business Websites here:

http://www.teamschuman.com

http://www.sitesplus.com

This article was posted on December 21, 2004

by Jeff Schuman

3 Deadly Search Engine Marketing Sins

3 Deadly Search Engine Marketing Sins

by: John Gergye

My inbox this week provided glaring examples of three all too common rookie search engine marketing mistakes. What you could call three deadly search engine marketing sins. Starting with

===> Inadequate Keyword Research

Hey! If you’re going to spend hours developing a web site, isn’t it smart to invest some time to insure you’re focusing on the most traffic laden keywords?

Especially when typically the plural form of a keyword phrase generates way more traffic than the singular form. For example กdog dishesก rather than กdog dishก.

Yet just this week I was asked to look at a site that had focused on the singular form. Evidently the owner hadn’t bothered to do any digging to make sure that was their best keyword move.

Look, you’ll never know for sure unless you research it. Besides, you can access Wordtracker, the tool of choice for what? a measly $7 a day.

Even better here’s a quick and dirty way to get the most out of that day.

Search for your target keyword in Google.

Visit the top ranking sites. Use the กView Sourceก feature of Internet Explorer to check out the keyword meta tag of each site. You’re looking for a site listing lots of keywords there. Do this with each of the top listings or until you find one stuffed to the gills with keywords. Ahha! There’s your starting point for your list of likely keyword phrases.

Repeat with a couple of other sites and you’ll soon have a long list of candidates to check out in Wordtracker.

Enhance your list further using this tool:

http://www.promoteindia.com/keywordtoolbeta.htm.

It will give you more keyword ideas from Google and Overture.

Now you’re ready for Wordtracker.

Once you’ve compiled your Wordtracker results, you could simply sort by KEI and then by searches per day.

That gives you the strongest keywords with the most searches. (And yes, I realize KEI assumes all search engine listings are of equal value. But I did say this was กquick and dirtyก didn’t I? However if you want another approach that improves on KEI there’s a spreadsheet available at http://www.seoworks.com/seoresources/keywordeffectivenessrank.html)

Anyway, once you’re sorted your keywords in some way to highlight the most profitable, simply take the top 25 on the list and create content for those first. No, not every one will be a natural born traffic magnet. But enough of them will be to get the ball rolling.

Repeat with the next 25. Don’t stop until you have at least 100 pages of hot content.

Remember, two or three word keyword phrases are usually your best bets. And I really like keyword phrases that are actually several keyword phrases in one. For example กirish setter dog dishesก gives กirish setterก, กirish setter dogก, กdogก, กdog dishesก, กsetter dog dishesก.

===> Site Bloat

Twice this week I was asked to look at sites that would have let me read War and Peace while waiting for them to come up. And no visitor is going to have a copy of that handy.

To avoid losing any precious visitors lose the huge graphics. One of the sites had a graphic 501K in size! No wonder it took nearly two minutes to load up on a 56K modem.

Then too lose the Flash unless you have a very good reason for using it. Even then lose the Flash.

If you’re wondering how your siteกs download time measures up test it here: http://www.netmechanic.com/toolbox/htmlcode.htm

It won’t cost anything to find out. But a slow loading site can cost you plenty. Because as the Net Mechanics follow up reports says, itกs a good idea to keep your page load times under about 12 seconds on a 28.8 modem. Otherwise your visitors will be wearing out the back button trying to escape.

===> Too Few Links

Did you know links can account for up to 80% of your success with Google? Yet someone else complained to me about how much work it took to get them.

Well doh! Ever think that maybe that’s why (in part) Google assigns so much value to links? Because you can’t quite as easily game links as you can on page content? Meaning you actually have to work to get links. Both by having link worthy content and by actively seeking them out on a regular basis.

It’s a given that most niches require you have a healthy collection of links to be competitive. Yet if you’re lucky enough to be in a niche that doesn’t, but you do, then you can easily dominate those rankings.

Anyway in a nutshell you can easily avoid these three search engine sins. Do your keyword homework. Keep your pages on a strict diet. And don’t forget link up with as many other quality sites as you can.

Do all that and you’re well on your way to search engine success. Ignore this advice and you’re, well you know, your Google goose is probably cooked. Leaving you perpetually stuck in Google purgatory.

Copyright 2004 John Gergye

About The Author

John Gergye shares more ideas like this in his just updated eBook ‘traffic From Google in 35 Daysก. Find out more here:

http://www.traffictesttube.com/j/tfg35cl.shtml

Or test your search engine IQ by taking his seo quiz

http://www.traffictesttube.com/searchenginequiz.shtml

and get the free special report กComing Out On Topก.

This article was posted on September 25, 2004

by John Gergye