Category Archives: Keywords

Select the Best Keywords for Your Web Site

Posted on by Posted in Keywords, Optimisation, Search Engines

Find below Dynamic Web Solution’s easy three step program to select killer keywords for your website.

1. How to Find the Best Keywords or Search Terms

Firstly, find out what your competitors think are good keywords for your industry class or product type. They may be completely wrong, but it is worth checking and it only takes a few moments. Here’s how…

  1. Go to three of your closest competitor’s websites
  2. On the homepage go View > Source
  3. Look for two lines of code at the top of the page that look like <meta name=”description”… and <meta name=”keywords”…
  4. Make a short list of search terms you think are worthwhile

Now, go and test your short list of these keywords on Google Keyword Planning Tool. You will need a Google account to log in. Select the country on the right that is relevant to your website, then supply a single phrase that you want your website to come up under.

For the keyword “real estate”, see how “house for sale” is also searched on thousands of times per month. Who would have guessed?

Recap: looking at your competitor’s web sites and using a keyword planning tool has a single purpose: to get real about what people are actually searching on. NOT what you think they are searching on, but what they are actually searching on. It is a litmus test. You are looking for synonyms to your search phrases.

Tip: the keywords you choose are not in fact words, but phrases. There are too many web pages that conform to a single word so people search using phrases.

 2. How do I Add my Killer Keywords to My Web Site?

Much has been written on this topic, so what follows are broad principles and not specific instructions.

So, you have your shortlist of keyword phrases and you now need to work them into your website – in such a way as to make it 100% clear to search engines what your site is all about.

But not all places on a webpage are equal as the following list explains.

  1. The <title> tag is glowing white hot. If you only do one thing, make sure each page of your web site has keywords in the title tag specific to that page. Many webpages are listed as “Untitled” in search engine results. These sites are missing the single biggest opportunity they have to present keywords phrases.
  2. The first link on your homepage is also burning hot for search engines. Try to include at least one keyword in it.
  3. The first main heading on your page (H1 or H2 tags) is burning hot. Tell those search engines what the page is about.
  4. The first para on the page is the one that introduces the subject of the page. It is cooler, but still very important. Add your keywords to it.
  5. Likewise, the closing para sums up the page. Put your keywords in it.

Any body familiar with direct mail marketing (now a thing of the past) will see some parallels between the above hierarchies and writing sales letters.

Recap: What does all this mean? It means that there are some parts of your page that are scrutinised more closely than others. Use this logic to present your keywords to search engines.

Tip:you are looking for 5% (not more) keyword density on your chosen phrase(s). Use www.seocentro.com/tools/seo/keyword-density.html to calculate your keyword density in relation to your competitor’s sites.
Tip 2: make sure your page is comprised of valid hypertext mark up. Go to http://validator.w3.org to make sure.
Tips 3:if your site is made with frames or Flash, get a web designer to rewrite it with tables or divs and css. Frames and Flash are old and out moded.

3. Evaluation: well, did it work?

To evaluate the success of the work above you need a ranking report. A ranking report takes your web address and chosen keyword phrase(s) and looks for your position or “ranking” on search engines.

There are free tools that do this like www.serps.com/tools/rank_checker but they tend to be blunt and not very helpful. If Dynamic Web Solutions made your web site, it is likely that we are submitting it to search engines and can give you a free emailed report of your search engine ranking on the leading search engines.

Summary:

  1. Compile a short list of keyword phrases you are going to target after researching competitor’s sites and using reverse look up tools like Goolge’s Keyword Planner
  2. Work these keyword phrases into strategic parts of your web pages
  3. Review with ranking reports at 12 week intervals. Google Analytics will provide traffic and visitor stats that will show you what your gains are.

If you have done the above, you will be clear what your objective is and you will have a subjective means of evaluating your progress.

This article was written by Peter Mitchell of Dynamic Web Solutions Pty Ltd

Web Marketing: Best Practice

Posted on by Posted in How Tos, Keywords, Offline Marketing, Other Authors, Search Engines, What NOT to do

I am being asked more and more often about where and how to spend money on Internet advertising. People rightly perceive that traditional display advertising, such as magazines and newspapers are offering less and less value. The paper telephone directories, which have been the cornerstone of many small businesses marketing efforts, have also lost their teeth. In this context, small business people are exploring what Google Adwords and SEO operators have to offer.

The web used to be a far more democratic place: if I wrote valid HTML, focused on and reused carefully selected keywords, I could get a small B&B site up beside a major chain hotel in the search engine result pages (SERPs). Those days are long gone. Google’s SERPs favour larger or aggregation sites like Wotif and Trivago over a individual accommodation providers web ste.

So we are no longer on a level playing field, and to mix metaphors, what is the game now?

What follows is a discussion of the most widespread means of web marketing… as it is today – it is a moving target and will change probably in less than 12 months. This isn’t a shopping list. Don’t cherry pick from it: do it all.

  1. Search engine submission. This is simply telling search engines that you have published a site and what the address is, and in some cases offers the search engines some meta information about your site. It doesn’t guarantee that your site will be indexed (visited), or in a time frame that suits you or that you will come up on the SERPs pages where you want. There is some discussion surrounding the value of search engine submission, but on balance I believe it has a place, certainly in the first year of a web site going live. Another trend to note is that CMS packages (WordPress, Joomla and Drupal) upon which increasing numbers of web sites are based, have a built in update service that alerts search engines to changes in a page, article or blog area of a site.
  2. Google Adwords campaign. Google Adwords are all over the web. You don’t have to go far to see them (they are even on this page!). You use Google Adwords to place an ad with your web address close to search results related to your chosen keywords. Obviously, if you are already in the free results, you needn’t pay for an ad. But if you are out on page 3, 4 or 5 of the SERPs or worse, you may consider Adwords.
    Adwords however do not come cheaply. Allow up to $300-$500 per month. The final cost is determined by the amount of competition for the keyword phrase(s) you are chasing. You have to bid for these in an auction environment. The good news is you can cap your monthly budget. Once your spend is exhausted, you ad is removed from rotation.
  3. Inbound, unreciprocated links. The objective here is to create “link popularity” for your site. Allow $7.50 US per link. You need up to 150 links or more than your nearest competitor to head toward that number one spot in the SERPs. There are other articles on this blog that discuss how you can find out who is presently linking to you so you can determine the size of the task ahead. You can do some of this work yourself at no cost. Start with directory sites.
  4. Social Networking. Activity on Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook (in that order) is fast becoming the next big trend in web marketing. Books and blog articles are emerging explaining how these media can be harnessed for marketing and sales purposes… even though that may run contrary to the use policies of the sites. The objective is to create an audience interested in your product i.e. be “followed” on Twitter, have “friends” and “likes” on Facebook, build a professional network on Linkedin. There is time involved in social networking, but no dollars. Be careful. You need to read the terms of use policies to avoid having your account closed for misuse.
  5. Newsletter. Like Google Adwords, there are newsletter subscription boxes on every second web site. The ones that work offer a real incentive to hand over your email address, say a PDF of an ebook, or exclusive information only available via newsletter, specials or notice of a sale. Only do this if you have something NEW you want to tell or offer people weekly or monthly. Just telling who you are and what you do wont lead to many more sales.
  6. Blogging.  Blogging (or writing articles) has also become widespread on the web – the so called “self-publishing” phenomena. If you write well, this may be a web marketing option for you. Blogging demonstrates the breadth of your knowledge and builds credibility with your readers. From a search engine perspective, it shows you are investing in content – watering the garden so to speak. Search engines love to see new or changed, keyword rich content. If your site has more information on it than a competitor site, search engines will reward you with higher rankings. Blogging is time expensive, but no cash is required. It is possible to employ writers, but this becomes costly. You can download articles from free article libaries, but these are sometime poorly written and not always precisely on topic.

Having said all the above, I must stress, there is no substitute for compelling content, and content that is update and refreshed. Content is king. What is the point of link popularity, if when people arrive at your site it isn’t saying much and offers little value to the visitor. Ditto a Goolge ads.

Quick And Easy Keyword Research Tools

Posted on by Posted in Keywords, Other Authors

by Michael J. Taylor

For a number of years, the Overture Keyword Suggestion tool was the favorite of Internet marketers. That tool has been decommissioned…though you can still find marketing advice that recommends the Overture Keyword tool.

Keyword research is still needed for both marketers and writers. So, with the Overture tool’s passing, where are we to turn for our keywords? Here are three excellent keyword resources. Two of these will supply you with keywords. The other one will help you determine the commercial potential of the keywords you find.

Wordtracker’s Free Keyword Tool

Simply enter a keyword and the free Wordtracker tool will return a list of up to 100 related keywords. You can click on the keywords it finds to narrow your list. For example, if you enter the very general term ‘water’, Wordtracker will return a long list of keywords related to water. If you’re hunting for keywords having to do with water pollution, you would click that keyword phrase and Wordtracker would return a list of keywords related to water pollution.

Trellian’s Free Keyword Discovery Tool

As with the free Wordtracker tool, just enter your keyword. You’ll also need to enter a simple code provided on the search form. This code is used to prove that you’re a human and not an automated computer process. The Trellian free Keyword Discovery Tool is limited to 100 keyword results.

These two keyword power-tools are helpful…they can help you build huge lists of keywords. But, if your goal is to generate the kind of traffic that puts money in your bank account, you’ll need to dig a little deeper to know if a keyword has commercial potential. That’s where MSN comes in. The next keyword tool you must have is MSN’s Detecting Online Commercial Intention tool.

Detecting Online Commercial Intention

This tool can evaluate a web page or a keyword phrase. When you submit your keyword phrase, it will grade it as either commercial or non-commercial. The non-commercial grade indicates the searcher is probably looking for information, rather than getting ready to make a purchase.

A commercial grade shows that a purchase may be on the searcher’s mind. This is a very handy tool, as it helps narrow down the keyword choices you have and points the way to more profitable online marketing campaigns.

Of course, just like any other tool on the Internet, the results won’t guarantee a flood of traffic or even sales. But in the crowd of free keyword tools, it’s light years beyond anything else.

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About the Author
Michael J. Taylor publishes dmpage.com – a direct marketing news page. For late-breaking news affecting your place in the world of direct marketing and Internet marketing, visit www.dmpage.com today.