WDTalk

Just this morning, I read an article on a web hosting forum about Keyword Research Guidelines - and was so impressed I considered asking the OP (original poster) for permission to use it on this blog. However, after performing a few Google searches, these guidelines have been circulating around the Web (verbatim) since 2003, and in fact, returned over 18 thousand results. I have no clue who the original author is, but the guidelines remain valid, nonetheless.

Many businesses recognize that search engines can - bring volumes of highly targeted prospects to their website, typically at a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing.

Unfortunately, these same companies often overlook - the most important part of their search engine marketing campaigns, which is keyphrase selection and evaluation.

Keyphrases (those phrases that potential customers are using to find products or services on search engines) are -  the building block of any search engine marketing strategy.

It is essential that they are chosen carefully, or else - the remainder of the campaign, no matter how effective the implementation, will likely be in vain. What follows is a three-step process that goes over the process of compiling, selecting, and evaluating the ongoing performance of keyphrases for search engines.

1. Compiling a keyphrase list:

Usually, companies are sure that they already know their ideal keyphrases. Often, they are wrong.

This is typically because it is very hard to separate oneself from a business and look at it from the perspective of a potential customer (rather than an insider). Compiling a keyphrase list should not be, despite common practice, a strictly internal process.

Rather, it is best to ask everyone outside of your company for their input, especially your customers. People are often very surprised at the keyphrase suggestions they get- and sometimes dismayed to realize that an average customer doesn’t speak the same language that they do.

Only after you have put together a list of likely phrases from external sources do you add your own. As a last step, try to add variations, plurals, and derivatives of the phrases on your list.

2. Evaluating keyphrases:

Once you have compiled a master keyphrase list, it is time to evaluate each phrase to hone your list down to those most likely to bring you the highest amount of quality traffic.

Although many individuals will base their assessment of key phrase value based only on popularity figures, there are really three vitally important aspects of each phrase to consider.

a) Popularity

By far the easiest of the three to judge is popularity, since it is not subjective. Software like WordTracker gives popularity figures of search phrases based upon actual search engine activity (it also gives additional keyphrase suggestions and variations).

Such tools allow you to assign a concrete popularity number to each phrase to use when comparing them. Obviously, the higher the number, the more traffic that can be expected (assuming you are able to obtain good search engine positions).

However, this number alone is not good enough reason to pursue any particular keyphrase, although key phrase analysis too often stops here.

b) Specificity

This is more abstract than the sheer popularity number, but equally important. For example, let’s assume that you were able to obtain great rankings for the keyphrase “insurance companies” (a daunting prospect). Let’s also assume that you only deal with auto insurance.

Although “insurance companies” might have a much higher popularity figure than “auto insurance companies”, the first keyphrase would also be comprised of people looking for life insurance, health insurance, and home insurance.

It is very likely that someone searching for a particular type of insurance will refine their search after seeing the disparate results returned from the phrase “insurance companies”.

In the second, longer keyphrase, you can be reasonably sure that a much higher percentage of visitors will be looking for what you offer- and the addition of the word “auto” will make it much easier to attain higher rankings, since the longer term will be less competitive.

c) Motivation of User

This factor, even more abstract than specificity, calls for an attempt to understand the motivation of a search engine user by simply analyzing his or her search phrase.

Assume, for example, that you were a real estate agent in Atlanta. Two of the keyphrases you are evaluating are “Atlanta real estate listings” and “Atlanta real estate agents”.

Both phrases have very similar popularity numbers. They are also each fairly specific, and your services are very relevant to each. So which phrase is better? If you look into the likely motivation of the user, you will probably conclude that the second is superior.

While both phrases target people looking for real estate in Atlanta, you can infer from the second phrase that the searcher has moved beyond the point where they are browsing local homes or checking out prices in their neighborhood- they are looking for an agent, which implies that they are ready to act. Often, subtle distinctions between terms can make a large difference on the quality of the traffic they attract.

3. Evaluating Keyphrase Performance:

Until recently, judging the performance of individual keyphrases was a dicey proposition. Although it is possible to tell from your log traffic analysis how many visitors are getting to your site from each keyphrase (valuable information, but unfortunately not enough to do much with), it was very hard to decipher which phrases were bringing you the most quality traffic.

Recently, however, some sophisticated but affordable tools have been developed that allow you to judge the performance of each individual keyphrase based upon visitor behavior.

This new software makes it possible to periodically analyze which keyphrases are bringing your site the most valuable visitors- those who buy your products, fill out your contact form, download your demo, etc.

This type of data, rather than the sheer number of visitors from each search phrase alone, is invaluable when you are refining your search engine marketing campaigns, since you can discard and replace non-performing keyphrases and put increased effort toward the phrases that are delivering visitors that become customers. This kind of ongoing analysis is the final piece of the keyphrase puzzle, and allows you to continually target the most important phrases for your industry, even if they change over time.

Conclusion:

Keyphrase compilation, evaluation, and performance are all vitally important to any search engine marketing campaign. While high rankings in search engines are an admirable goal, high rankings for poor keyphrases will consistently deliver poor results.

Integration of this keyphrase process into your overall search engine marketing strategy can dramatically improve your website performance (and thus your bottom line).

When you speak about the tradition of Internet technologies - you need only go back a couple of decades, but there is value to understanding the culture of your niche as a tool to connect with visitors on your website.

Staying connected entails identifying  - technologies, traditions or events that exist in your specific niche – that you and your audience find culturally significant. In other words, what has made your niche important to you and your visitors?

Websites with longtail (tradition relevant) keyword-rich titles – help draw a very targeted audience. When we speak of Internet technologies, we’re not necessarily spanning generations of cultures with regard to time, rather information.

Do you connect the vendor-client dots – via timetables, explaining how you, your clients or your industry have grown through the years? Taking this one step further, explain “why you now” concluding with a benefits statement and compelling call-to-action.

I read an interesting article that contends - that keywords beyond the top ten (in sum) refer more traffic than the top ten combined. This was attributed to a long tail effect. It went on to say that the terms that are most popular (most managed by site owners) are rarely those that provide the most business.

I couldn’t disagree more – as I’m seeing a growing trend toward more descriptive content, offering solutions to problems or issues – than I am to SEO structured content (for example, keyword saturation). Google has been stressing relevancy for some time, and webmasters are realizing the importance of combining keyword research with content – in other words, writing for their audience (visitors) rather than sculpturing their site for SERPS.

Content that reads naturally - (entices all five senses) and that has a strong call-to-action converts at higher ratios. Which do you prefer from the two examples below?

Susie’s Flowers has the right boutique for you! We carry an assortment of flowers from roses to lilies. Visit our online shop and photo gallery to view our current boutiques.

Susie’s exotic flower shop specializes in custom arrangements for every occasion; from weddings to back yard BBQ’s. From prom queens to blushing brides, imagine yourself adorned with a deep purple orchid corsage, being presented with a boutique of red and white long stemmed roses from your special partner. That’s the dream we deliver at Susie’s exotic flowers. Search our extensive online gallery of corsages and boutiques, or come by in person. We’d love to meet you.

The second example uses emotions to - drive traffic and conversions, and if you’re like me, buying anything (taking money out of my wallet) is an emotional experience.

Revised Oct 31, 2011 to reflect Bing update.

Bing clarifies stance on keyword meta tags - if you’re tagging keywords in WordPress, you need to read this!

Volumes have been written about – keyword meta tags and keyword density. While Bing still looks at keyword meta tags, Google does not. If you’re like us, the majority of our referrals are from Google, followed in the far distance by Bing, Yahoo and other search engines. Don’t forget about Bing, though – if you’re looking to maximize your SEO efforts because indiscriminately throwing in tons of keywords on your keyword meta tags could result in spamming penalties.

I have a keyword statistics plug in on this site - and found that it was generating keyword meta tags for some absurd keywords, so I blocked the ability of robots to read those tags.

Staying in the game means – keeping in touch with industry trends. Thus, I recommend Google Webmaster Tools as a viable resource for Search Engine Optimization of your site.

In the following video clip – Matt Cutts from Google officially addresses a lingering SEO controversy on the viability of keyword meta tags.

The full article can be seen on the Google Webmaster Central Blog.

Keywords are words in the content of your website that are relevant to what prospects would be searching for in Google and Bing queries – leading them to your site. Long tailed keywords are three and four word keyword phrases which are very specific to whatever product or service you’re selling. I prefer to call them keywords, then keyword phrases, and finally – extended keyword phrases.

Why are long tailed keywords or extended keyword phrases important?
When prospects use extended keyword phrases in search queries, they tend to know exactly what they’re looking for, which makes it so much more likely that they’ll buy whatever you’re selling once they find your site.

An example – if your business sells exclusive hair products not found in the major chain stores, search queries for shampoo would lead prospects to millions of results – but probably none of them yours. The search query is simply too general.  And the catch here is that if that prospect is searching for shampoo, they’re probably not a good prospect for your product anyway. Using shampoo as a keyword in Google AdWords will probably cost you a ton in advertising dollars, with little return on your investment.

But if you sell Brocato hair products, a search query for Brocato Volumizing Tonic will rank much higher in the search engines, improving your visibility to the world – and in turn, increase your sales.

Taking extended keyword phrases one step further
To capture discriminating shoppers, you should be creating pages based on extended keyword phrases. If you’re a Salon, Car Repair Shop or Web Hosting Provider, there are hundreds of variations of extended keyword phrases that you could use to create unique pages. Each of these pages should have its own title, description meta tag, H1 header tag and content that emphasizes your product or service.

A word of caution
Don’t go overboard on extended keyword phrases or you may SPECIFIC yourself out of business. Of course, if you have 500 visitors to your site looking for shampoo versus 100 visitors searching for Brocato products, which would you prefer? Site analytics have to be matched to conversion ratios.

How do you know what extended keyword phrases to focus on?
The key here, really, is how to determine which extended keyword phrases have sufficient traffic for you to target. Research is paramount. Fortunately, there are tons of programs available. A recent search on Bing for Keyword Analysis Tools returned over 34 million results!

Designing your site for e-commerce – begins with keyword research, matching keywords and phrases that most closely match today’s search queries. Why? Because designing a site with keywords or phrases that no one searches for makes conversions very very difficult (lack of traffic). Of course you can still advertise via article, blog and forum posting, or micro-sites, which should provide some very targeted leads, but you lose the viral power of organic search results.

I’ve seen sites that dominate –  SERPS (search engine results pages) for their particular niche, but can’t convert a prospect. Frequently, keyword research reveals that NO ONE is searching for that niche. In simple terms, if you’re getting 6 pageviews/month, it doesn’t matter if you have the best design, intuitive navigation and a kick a** shopping cart, your ROI (return on investment) will suffer.

Taking keywords one step further - selling anything is about the perception of providing value & solutions, and this applies to everything from selling toothpaste to cloud hosting – which leads us to Landing Pages and relevancy, and on to compelling calls-to-action. The words you use cross-site and intra-site need to be relevant to the search query. Getting traffic from a search query that leads to a product or service that’s either in conflict with the search, unreadable (poor theme or contrast), not compelling or out of alignment with the rest of the industry won’t convert well.

My recommendation - absolutely use keyword research tools to match the products and services you want to sell – with the keywords and keyword phrases currently entered into search queries – that will produce sufficient traffic to sustain and grow your business.

Keyword stategies are more important than ever with the upcoming release of Google Caffeine.

I recently reviewed a site for a law firm that wrote entire paragraphs for keywords – and had no description tag whatsoever. Google continues to evolve its search algorithms to return relevancy, thus the right mix of keyword phrases and extended keyword phrases becomes increasingly important. 

Keywords, keyword phrases and extended keyword phrases
Keyword density should be within the range of 3% to 5%. Keywords in the hosting industry would be hosting, space, bandwidth and so on. Keyword phrases would be shared hosting, disk space, unmetered bandwidth – and extended keyword phrases would be business class shared web hosting, unlimited disk space, unmetered bandwidth plans and so on.

Figuring out what works
The old addage of build it and they will come isn’t the best approach to SEO. Prospects search patterns change over time, relative to the services you offer. As well, search engine algorithms evolve as they refine their services. You need to first research what prospects are searching for TODAY relative to your services and tweak your site to match that trend – to make your site more relevant.

Since most sites have varied content from page to page, it’s important to change keywords accordingly. Your core keywords will blur somewhat from page to page, but your keyword phrases and extended keyword phrases should be relevant to their specific page. Using the same keywords, keyword phrases and extended keyword phrases on every page will simply confuse the search engines.