Another aspect of selecting keyphrases is keyphrase research.
We know what we are offering, but we aren't sure what search
terms people might use to find it, or else we have so many
possible search terms that it would be prohibitively expensive
to optimize a site for each one of them.
The first part of keyphrase research would be brainstorming
which is nothing more than making an educated guess. You
know your business better than anybody so the best place
to start is with you! We come up with maybe ten or fifteen
different keyphrases, or however few or many as may be appropriate
to our particular endeavor, which we believe are applicable
to our enterprise.
We can also just ask people for suggestions. Friends, family,
and especially your existing customer base, if you have one. "What
search term would you use to find my product or service on
Google?" That's simple enough. And it provides valuable information.
If you have existing advertising or marketing material,
such as print ads, radio or television spots, attempt to
extract common themes or elements from them in the selection
of keyphrases. Keep in mind that most business web sites
are nothing more than souped-up, 21st-century, nice-looking,
interactive newspaper classifieds. The content of any existing
marketing materials should therefore be a good source of
ideas. Also, the marketing materials of your competition
should provide a wealth of information for you - especially
their web site content. Examine the body text of the web
site, and the META information for ideas. Perform a search
on Google, Yahoo! or another search engine for the keyphrases
you think are correct - and see if what comes up would qualify
as competition. If so, see what they are doing - and then
do it better! Examination of your competition is both ethical
and fruitful. Know your enemy! No use reinventing the wheel
if someone else has already invented it for you - just make
it better, using steel-belted radials instead of stone. Knowing
your competition also enables you to effectively focus on
what they are not doing - crucial to your niche marketing.
Later we will discuss something called focus pages. For
now, just know that every page of your web site will be optimized
according to the contents of that particular page. So if
you sell both alligator wallets and snakeskin boots, it is
okay to have the multiple, unrelated keyphrases alligator
wallets and "snakeskin boots". You do not have to settle
for only one, nor do you have to figure out a way to use
the term "alligator wallets" on the snakeskin boots page,
and vice versa.
Tools useful in keyphrase research
By now we have a list of brainstormed ideas. We know what
the competition is doing as well. So let's drop in our keyphrases
and start selling!
Not yet. What if you are missing something. What if everyone
(your competition) is missing something? What if one hundred
thousand people are searching for the term you think is right,
but one hundred million are searching using a different,
mystery, search term? How do you find out? There are some
great tools available to help you in this regard.
The primary purpose of a keyword research tool is to take
your raw brainstorming ideas and convert them into actual
search terms. It is one thing for a marketing professional
or business owner to speculate as to appropriate keyphrases
- it is another thing entirely to be empowered with the knowledge
of what search terms your customers are actually using. One
useful tool is the Overture Keyword Selector, found at http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
. Here, you input a suggested keyphrase, and it delivers
a list of related keyphrases that have actually been utilized
by individuals searching throughout the Overture (now known
as Yahoo! Search Marketing) network in the last month. It
also lets you know how many times each keyphrase has actually
been utilized. Once you get the results, you may find other,
related keyphrases that are extremely popular which you may
wish to consider. Nobody wants to optimize their web site
for keyphrases for which nobody is searching!
Another useful tool is WordTracker, www.wordtracker.com.
This tool utilizes a database of actual Internet searches
occurring over the last four months to deliver keyphrases
related to your brainstorming ideas. You input your brainstorming
ideas, WordTracker outputs suggestions. Then, we take a look
at the suggestions, attempting to find popular search terms
that we, or most importantly our competition, has failed
to recognize. Optimizing for these terms then leaves us with
little to no competition for this vast market!
WordTracker does charge a small fee, however you can buy
a license good for one day, one week, or one month, depending
on your needs.
A powerful tool is KeywordDiscovery, www.keyworddiscovery.com.
For a nominal monthly subscription fee, you gain access to
a number of features. KeywordDiscovery offers an impressive
keyword research tool. You can also search for keywords by
industry without having done any brainstorming, which can
be very useful if you are just coming up blank. It also offers
spelling mistake research, which is a good way to attract
customers who make common typographical errors when entering
their search query. KeywordDiscovery also provides a related
keyword engine, seasonal keyword trends and keyword density
analysis. This tool is the tool of choice among many professional
SEO firms and consultants.
If you have access to a traffic counter which tracks keywords
or your server logs, there is another way to come up with
keyphrases. You can examine this data and find out what terms
are actually being used by customers at this time to land
on your site. The problem with this method is that it doesn't
tell you much - in other words, you have no information about
the traffic you are missing. What it can tell you, however,
is whether or not your site is attracting quality traffic.
For instance, if your business sells dog sweaters that are
specially designed for a three-legged dog and are marketed
under the brand name Tripod Pups, with the fourth hole sewn
closed so that heat does not escape, and you are able to
ascertain that most of your traffic is coming from people
searching for "photography accessories", you know that you
are not reaching your niche market. One useful and free tool
for adding tracking software to your web site can be found
at www.statcounter.com.
How many keyphrases?
Ideally, each page of your web site should be optimized
for only one keyphrase, so as not to dilute your keyphrase
density. Of course, most web sites offer a number of products
and services, all of which they want to be highly visible
on the search engines. The short answer to this conundrum
is to optimize each page individually according to the main
content of that page. The long answer gets us into the topic
of focus pages.
If you have more than one product or service, for example
not only do you market a product line called Tripod Pups,
but also a product line called Bipod Pups for two-legged
dogs and Monopod Pups for one-legged dogs, it becomes difficult
to effectively optimize your web site using common keyphrases
throughout the site. This highlights the need for individual
page optimization.
What we want to do is to create separate pages which feature
each product line and are optimized for only the search query
which relates to that product line. So we now need to make
our one page web site a three page web site. Each page focuses
on the individual product line for which you are desirous
of attracting traffic.
To avoid the use of mirror pages, which we will discuss
more in depth later, we will need to rewrite the content
so that there is a noticeable difference from page to page.
It is probably not sufficient to merely do a "find and replace" type
edit of the content, the only difference from one page to
the next being the substitution of one search term for another.
We have now concluded our selection of keyphrases. We know
what our competition is doing, we know what our customers
are searching for, we have identified both our niche market
and common misspellings.
About the Author: Matt Foster is the President of ArteWorks
Business Class and is an expert in search engine optimization.
Mr. Foster has been active in the industry since 1995. For
further information, please visit
http://www.arteworks.biz or
http://www.search-bully.com.
