http://marketingsource.com/articles/ Articles at marketingsource.com Articles Library en-us http://marketingsource.com/articles/search-engine-optimization/keyword-usage-for-maximum-seo.html http://marketingsource.com/articles/search-engine-optimization/keyword-usage-for-maximum-seo.html Sat, 17 Apr 2010 10:48:57 -0500
The first place to use your keywords, and the easiest way to get a search engine “bump”, is to choose a domain name that includes your best keywords. Simply find a domain that is as short as possible and includes you best keyword phrase. This can be overdone if you try too hard; be sure that the domain name is also human friendly (not just “search engine spider” friendly).

The next place to insert your keywords is in the title and description tags. If you have a wordpress.org blog this is easy to do because you just enter the title and description of each page using the SEO plug-in.

The title and description are important for two reasons. One, they will be visible to your audience in the search engine results. And they will ALWAYS be spidered by the search engines.

If you know some HTML or know what a “source code” page is then you can easily locate the title and description tags and insert your keyword-precise title and description for your website.

If you don’t have any idea about HTML or websites that’s fine, just create a condensed title and description and tell your website developer or programmer to add them to your website. (You will do this for your homepage as well as each additional page. Each page can be, and should, be optimized for a certain keyword phrase.)

Along with the title and description tags, there are also ‘meta tags’. These are not visible anywhere, but instead are only seen by the spiders.

They are not as important for Google as they once were, but still important for other search engines. All you do for these is list your best keywords in order of importance and add them to your website under the appropriate “tag”.

The next “hidden” place you should put your keywords is in image file names and “alt text”. As you know every file has a name and images are no different. Use your keywords as they apply when naming your images.

The “alt text” for your image is just the description of the image that people will see who have a text-only browser. Use your keywords as they apply because the spiders will pick up these keywords too!

Another area to place your keywords is in the “H” tags. These are also code and are labeled 1, 2, 3 and so on. The H1 tag is viewed as the most important by the search engines, as it should because these tags also dictate the size of the text on the page. H1 would be considered a headline and H2 a sub-headline and so on.

And last, but not least, you need to use your keywords in the content of your page. Each article or post should use the keyword you would like to optimize it for once in the title or headline (H1), once again in the first 50 words of the page and then at about a 2-3% frequency throughout the page.

The important part with this is to be sure that it reads well for your human viewers and not just the search engine spiders!

Be sure to use your keywords in these places on every page of your website and you will soon be pulling in tons of FREE traffic! That is if you have chosen the right keywords for your business. ]]> http://marketingsource.com/articles/search-engine-optimization/keyword-test-for-search-engine-success.html http://marketingsource.com/articles/search-engine-optimization/keyword-test-for-search-engine-success.html Mon, 29 Mar 2010 08:27:14 -0500
So, how do you find out if your keywords will attract the right prospects? And more importantly, how do you do this quickly?!!

The answer is pay-per-click, or PPC. By leveraging paid advertising through Google Adwords or Yahoo Search Marketing you can quickly find out beyond a shadow of a doubt just how profitable your keywords will be for your business.

To briefly give you an idea how to set up a keyword test (both Google and Yahoo have video tutorials on how to use their services) here are a list of steps to follow:

1. Set up a “Landing Page” with a lead-capture form that contains some kind of “offer” that you will give your visitor in exchange for his or her email address

2. Break your keywords into related groups (you may want to use a free tool called Traffic Travis to do this)

3. Create a campaign in your preferred PPC provider (Google often has promotions for $100 to use towards advertising) for your keyword test

4. Put your groups of keywords each in a separate “ad group” and write an ad for each (To get ideas for ads run a search for your keywords in the search engine and look at the competing advertisers ads) **NOTE: Make sure the ad is consistent with your offer on the landing page**

5. Be sure to set a daily limit on your spending

6. Let this test run for a week and then go back and evaluate your results.

Don’t be overwhelmed by all of the features and options available to you in the PPC interface. You are just testing which keywords have the highest “attraction” and conversion rates.

In a week, go back into your account and look at the number of times each keyword prompted your ad to be displayed. Then look at the “click-through rate”. The number of displays will give you an idea of how popular the keyword phrase is, and the click-through rate will tell you how well searchers who input that particular keyword are attracted to your offer. This gives you an idea of just how often a placement in the search results will lead to targeted website traffic.

In the event that your results are inconclusive, which can occur if you do not have enough traffic (often caused by a low position in the results) you can run the test again for another week. But before you do, increase your bid by 25-50% for all keywords that are not in the top 4 positions.
Keep in mind that the higher required bid is due to increased competition and will likely result in more natural search engine optimization competition as well.

Utilizing this simple (and free, if you get Google Adwords’ $100 credit) method of keyword conversion testing you can save thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours you’d otherwise be wasting on keywords that just don’t convert for your particular business. Whether this is your first time at keyword selection or the hundredth, there is simply no reason not to go through this final keyword evaluation step.
]]> http://marketingsource.com/articles/search-engine-optimization/increase-targeted-web-site-traffic-with-relevant-keywords.html http://marketingsource.com/articles/search-engine-optimization/increase-targeted-web-site-traffic-with-relevant-keywords.html Tue, 16 Mar 2010 09:46:19 -0500
Your ideal prospect is the one, who when presented with your offer, will buy from you most often. Your ideal prospect is the customer who has the ‘need’ that your product, or service, will fill. They are the whole reason you are in business, but if you do not ‘speak their language’ when it comes to the keywords they use in search engines you will be wasting a lot of effort on the wrong people.

To avoid this from happening, you should qualify all of your keyword phrases before you settle on a final list. Here are a few questions you should ask yourself when qualifying your keywords for relevancy:

• Are they relevant to what my business does?

• Does each keyword phrase make logical sense?

• Would my target customer use these keywords to find me (my business)?

To help you answer the third question you can type the keyword phrase into a search and evaluate your keyword competition. First look at the organic search results and see what your keyword phrase competitors are selling and determine if your products/services are similar. Of course there will be varying types of businesses for some keywords, but you’ll be able to determine which ones seem to make the most sense.

Also, in the search results quickly see what is being sold in the paid advertising. Keep in mind that every time you click one of these links someone is paying, so right click and open the link in a new window. See if these businesses are offering similar products/services to you. If so, there’s a good chance that you have found a good keyword phrase that will increase your targeted web site traffic.

Not all high traffic and low competition keywords will bring you more business. Traffic, yes, but if your visitors have come looking for something other than what you’re offering then they will quickly disappear. The only way to make money from your keywords is to be sure they match your business and that your customer is using them to find you. Use the information in this article and you can increase your TARGETED web site traffic. ]]> http://marketingsource.com/articles/search-engine-optimization/search-engine-optimization-advice-rank-keywords-for-profitability.html http://marketingsource.com/articles/search-engine-optimization/search-engine-optimization-advice-rank-keywords-for-profitability.html Sat, 06 Mar 2010 03:12:19 -0600
The data that you need for ranking your keywords are:

1) the number of exact phrase match web pages (keyword competition)
2) the average amount of traffic for each keyword phrase (search volume)

All of this keyword competition and search volume data can be found for free. Put quotation marks around your keyword phrase and run a Google search. The number of pages in the upper right of the results is your keyword competition.

To get the search volume use either the Google Adwords keyword tool or Traffic-Travis, which is a desktop application and is a free download. The Google keyword tool will give you searches per month, and T-T will give you searches per day.

Put this data in a spreadsheet across from each keyword in a separate column. From here you simply need to sort the data correctly according to a couple of guidelines. But before you can do that you must know how those guidelines apply to your keywords traffic pulling power, or profitability.

The first metric is the Google search volume. When you put quotation marks around your keyword phrase and Google it you will get only the results, or pages, that have those words of the phrase in that exact order. This is a good indication of your ‘true’ competition.

The second metric is search volume and you can find this easily by using one of the two above mentioned tools. (Just Google them to find the websites.)
The guidelines for narrowing down your list are as follows:

• Google phrase match search results under 10,000 for keywords indicate a quick first page ranking (with proper optimization strategy)
• Keywords with search volumes of at least 1000 per month, or 35 per day, can generate enough web site traffic to optimize for.

Basically you can order your words in the spreadsheet according to the above metrics and remove those that do not qualify. Then you narrow them down further until you have 10-12 keyword phrases with the best combination of low keyword competition (or web pages with exact phrase matches in Google) and the highest search volume. This is done simply by first sorting your list by the least competition, and then by the most search volume.

Here are a couple of things to keep in mind if you run into any trouble when trying to decide between words.

1) If you have a product or service with a high price point you can optimize for words with lower search volumes because you don’t as many sales to profit. And avoiding competition only generates web site traffic faster.

2) When comparing a high competition, high search volume keyword to a low volume, low competition keyword the low competition keyword is always better (if it meets the minimum search volume criteria). Again, the faster you put yourself in a position where you can generate web site traffic, the more profitable you’ll be.

This is by no means an exhaustive study of keyword selection, but by using this method you will be able to quickly assess the value of your keywords. ]]>