Choosing Keywords to Land Your Webpages on Google’s 1st Page
Picking the right keywords can take time and a large chalkboard
No-one knows the exact way that Google (or any other search engine) ranks websites. There are over 200 factors that are analyzed that determine how your website will rank for any given keyword set. It is known that content is king. If your website is easy to find, navigate, and gives a reason for users to return it will likely have a higher search result. This article is all about making your website easier to find. Read more specific detail in Step 7 Implementation for specifics on how to use the keywords you have chosen.
A small business client of ours asked us a question this week how we go about choosing keywords for our website to land on Google’s first page. Many small businesses with limited budgets need a process for choosing keywords themselves without paying for automated or professional keyword assistance. We remind our clients that picking accurate keywords and optimizing their web pages for them enables natural search traffic, which is the best (and cheapest) kind of traffic to have. Our own team has considered several different tactics for picking keywords over the years, but the one we have the most success with is detailed in the following 7 Step Process.
Step 1: Brainstorm
Of utmost importance is thinking of what products, services, news, promotions, etc. you offer that have a high probability of being interesting to the target market. Begin with that list and then come up with some basic keyword ideas that you believe people may search for that are interested in those topics. The picture at right gives an example of an online fitness training company brainstorming keywords it may like to optimize its site for. Choose your keyword sets and move on to step 2.
Step 2: Research additional Keywords based on Actual Search
Very important is to not just pick keywords that your team thinks may get searched a lot, but to use an analysis tool such as Google’s Keyword Tool to find words relevant to your products or services that your target market actually searches for. Imagine the example for the online fitness training company having selected the keyword set “online fitness coaching.” When putting the keyword set in the keyword tool they realize that no-one ever searches for that keyword set. However, the tool does suggest to them “online fitness trainers” and “online fitness training” which generate 590 and 3,600 local searches on a monthly basis respectively. Notice that just because one search generates 3,600 local searches per month does not necessarily mean it will be the best overall result until we finish the entire process. Also note that the Google Keyword Tool does provide Local Search data as well as Global Search Data. To avoid confusion ‘local’ here means in the country you are accessing the search from (USA in this case). Also, to be even more specific you can use the tool to only look for phrase or exact matches monthly searches to be even more accurate.
Step 3: Cross Reference Potential Keyword Sets against Google Search Results
It’s always good to know how much competition you may have. That is exactly what we do here as we take those keyword sets that have been selected and run a simple keyword phrase search in Google. To run this test, simply go to Google and enter in the keyword sets in parentheses (like this “online fitness trainers”) to obtain the search results figures Google presents. In this example Google presented 498,000 results for “online fitness trainers” and 30,000 results for “online fitness training’. These figures represent the total amount of web pages you will compete against when optimizing for each keyword set.
Step 4: Obtain the Keyword Score for each Keyword Set
Finally, you will divide the Search Results total by the Local Searches total to obtain each Keyword Score. The lower the Keyword Score, the better as it means there are more monthly searches and less competition for that keyword set. In this case you will find that “online fitness trainers” has a score of 844 while “online fitness training” has a score of 8. Then you will select the keyword set with the lowest score for your page.
Step 5: (Important but Optional) Head to Head Comparison with First Page Search Results
For even higher probability of choosing keywords that may gain you the respect of the search engines’ algorithms, you can take the process a step further. If you are evaluating many keywords with similar Keyword Scores, you can compare your site against the websites that come up on Google’s 1st page of search results for any keyword set. Using Alexa’s free toolbar ranking system, compare how your website ranks against the other 10 pages on Google’s first page of results. If you rank higher than a majority of them, then you have a much greater chance of replacing them on the first page of search results.
Step 6: Implementation
Now that you have found your keywords, how do you use them? Well, you don’t load them up in the keywords meta tag and expect good things to happen. Google has explicitly stated that they no longer use that factor in search rankings because of the amount of spamming found there. You do want to use your keywords in the Title, Description, link URL, and definitely in the overall content of the page. Those locations, especially the Title, help Google understand what your page is about and deem it as relevant to its users.
Step 7: Monitor Your Results
It is very important to monitor your results and constantly improve. You can download the RankChecker add-on for Mozilla to easily run your keywords and see how your optimization efforts are doing. If you find there are words that just aren’t working, then go through the process again and choose new keywords.
Finally, there is no guarantee for how to land your web-page on Google’s first page of results. If any company says they can guarantee that, your best option is to turn around and run as far as you can from that liar. For more information from Google about how they rank websites, see the Google Webmaster Blog.
How do you succeed at selling online: SEO E-commerce
The Internet has changed drastically over the past five years and so has the way we do business online. Many consumers are now purchasing large portions of their goods on the web through online retailers. Because of this, e-commerce website development has grown tremendously in order to meet the upward demand. There are many factors to take into consideration when starting a new project and most importantly would be your site’s capabilities to perform well in all major search engines. A very large factor in it’s performance is based on the site’s structure and how a search engine can navigate and index the site.
Understanding that the success of a website can largely depend on the ability for it to be found by keywords the target market may use to search, is the first step in creating a search engine friendly e-commerce website. By taking that into consideration through the development phase you will be cautious to avoid major pitfalls that can easily inhibit your sites search engine capabilities. There are many companies that can provide e-commerce website development that function well once a visitor has made there way onto the site but if these visitors don’t find your site when searching in Google, Bing, or Yahoo, you don’t have an opportunity to convert them into a paying customer.
DK specializes in producing search engine friendly e-commerce website development. Our developers are involved in the e-commerce development phase from the early stages of site structure development through individual page optimization using meta tags and keyword positioning.
Free SEO Report: 5 Free Tools to get you Started
Rapid growth in internet use over the past decade has created an interesting challenge for businesses everywhere including major brands and corporate giants; How to accurately measure what people are doing on the Internet, sort them into appropriate audiences, and engage with them? These tools will help you conquer these SEO challenges. Enjoy the free SEO report tools.
Alexa
Alexa is a useful resource for people to discover information about websites. You can use Alexa to discover how popular a site is, see visitor trend patterns over a rolling 6 months, find related sites, learn who owns a site and much more.
http://www.alexa.com/toolbar
Quantcast
Quantcast measures and organize the world’s audiences in real-time so businesses can buy, sell and connect with those that matter most. Quantcast engages all 220 million U.S. Internet users, providing detailed audience profiles for the advertising marketplace to learn more about what consumers are doing online.
http://www.quantcast.com/
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is the enterprise-class web analytics solution that gives you rich insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness. Powerful, flexible and easy-to-use features now let you see and analyze your traffic data in an entirely new way. With Google Analytics, you’re more prepared to write better-targeted ads, strengthen your marketing initiatives and create higher converting websites.
http://www.google.com/analytics/
SEO Chat
SEO Chat aggregates a number of different SEO tools so that the everyday website owner can quickly find highly relevant data involving meta-tags, keyword optimization, site link analysis, and much more.
http://www.seochat.com/
Keyword Discovery
Keyword Discovery collects keyword data from many different search engines world-wide and compiles a range of search related statistics. The site provides you with exact search phrases customers use to find products or services and enables you to maximize the available search engine traffic.
*Note, there is a free and a paid version of this tool.
http://keyworddiscovery.com/
What is Your Websites Value?
The Dispatch.com iPhone Application, while ornate, may not drive much loyalty from its users
By TJ Warren
If two websites are identical in terms of their use of graphics and imagery as well as their use of modern web techniques does that mean they also will get the same amount of visitation from web users? And how does the quantity of visitation relate to a websites value? We set out to answer these questions by comparing two seemingly identical websites, those of local Ohio newspapers. At first glance, The Cleveland Plain Dealer’s online home (Cleveland.com) and The Columbus Dispatch (Dispatch.com) appear very similar. However, this appearance is only skin-deep. Here are some figures to consider:
Alexa page rank:
Cleveland.com- 3,878
Dispatch.com- 16,672
Daily page views:
Cleveland.com- 263,283
Dispatch.com- 47,907
Daily ads revenue (potential):
Cleveland.com- $792
Dispatch.com- $146
Estimated worth (websites value):
Cleveland.com- $578,379
Dispatch.com- $106,704
Cleveland.com is estimated to be worth $578,000 while Dispatch.com is estimated to be worth $107,000. These estimates were derived from daily page-views on each site as a function of how many dollars in advertising revenue each website could generate if that were there business model. The more page-views to each site, the more they may charge for ad space. There are many ways to value a website, and this is one of the more popular methods.
Cleveland.com offers a simpler layout and no iPhone app, but has 5 times the number of pageviews as Dispatch.com
Cleveland.com has around 263,000 page views a day while Dispatch.com has about 48,000 per day. While both sites are valuable assets, Cleveland.com somehow is able to drive up their daily page-views relative to Dispatch.com. There are several possible explanations for this comparison. First, the Plain Dealer has a circulation of 450,000 newspapers delivered daily compared to 350,000 by The Dispatch. Also, while Columbus is the most populous Ohio city, Cleveland has the larger metropolitan area, with 2.25 million people compared to 1.73 million in metropolitan Columbus. However these advantages do not clearly indicate why one newspaper would have over 5 times as many daily page-views as the other. It may very well be that Cleveland.com offers better content or does an excellent job of inspiring its readers to engage online.
Whatever the reason, the larger volume of visitors results in higher estimated ad revenue for Cleveland.com ($790/day as opposed to $145/day). This estimate means that Cleveland.com could use the extra revenue to further distance themselves from Dispatch.com in the future. The overall lesson is to look further than just the appearance of a website to determine how valuable it is. There are many things that go on behind the scenes which contributes to the relative success and visitation of a website.
Free tools worth checking out include:
http://alexa.com
http://websiteoutlook.com
References:
http://factfinder.census.gov
http://www.infoplease.com/
CMS Websites: What is CMS?
Several Great CMS Options
We are frequently asked “what is CMS?“ Simply put, a content management system (CMS) website enables anyone to become a webmaster, no programming knowledge necessary! A CMS website allows you to modify text, images, video and more instantaneously at any time, from anywhere.
Using a CMS website eliminates the need for your employees to learn complicated coding or how to use software such as Adobe Dreamweaver, enabling them to focus on what your core business is. It also eliminates much of the need for costly outsourcing. Any time it is necessary to change or update content a CMS allows for quick and easy edits.
A good example of a highly functional CMS is Facebook. With Facebook you can edit your home page and profile as well as communicate with other people without the knowledge of the complex (in this case very complex) coding behind it. Simply put, Facebook would not work if every time you wanted to do something you had to edit code.
Another great feature of a CMS website is that, you have 24/7 access to web changes without a monthly maintenance fee! A few of the award winning CMS solutions include; WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, or CK Editor CMS platforms.
Contact DK for any additional questions about “What is CMS”.
Top 5 Worst Websites of 2009
By TJ Warren
Our mission at DK is to rid the world of boring websites. To end the year of 2009 we decided to look at some of the worst websites of the year. While not all of the websites we have chosen are boring, actually, some are rather entertaining, they do make up the Top 5 Worst Websites of 2009.
Grab a couple cups of coffee if you're going to fill out this form
#5 – Your New Dot Com (US)- If you want your website to look as boring and from the 90’s as this Kansas City web designer’s website does, then take the 3 hours to fill in their brief 64 question contact form to request a quote from them. Web designers are often noted as working harder on their clients websites than they’re own, but this is an extreme. http://yournew.com/
#4 – Who Represents (US) - This website contains a listing of agents who represent various celebrities. Great data, however, they might have been able to choose a better domain name, than http://whorepresents.com. If one were to read the url the wrong way, they may think this is a site that helps complete your X-mas shopping with those hard to find presents. This illustrates the importance of choosing your url carefully to make sure your website purpose isn’t misconstrued. A close runner up to this one was Experts Exchange (http://expertsexchange.com).
Beware - Browsing may cause seizure
#3 – Miauk (UK) - Beware building a website that may give viewers a seizure. This actually does happen. Well, not really, but the site is still painful to look at. If you can bare the view and feel like finding the proverbial Waldo, try to find the link to their “Kala” page. http://miauk.com/
#2 – Bella de Soto (US) - Have you ever wanted to take a large website with over 100 pages of content and cram it into one single home page? Well, Bella did too. She also adds a soundtrack which isn’t too bad until the shrieking and other sound effects begin about 10 seconds in. And if you’re tired of the crossword puzzle or can’t muster another Sudoku, really challenge yourself by trying to figure out what this page is about. This forces us to wonder on what planet was this website a good idea. http://belladesoto.us/
Do you like animated gifs or other quick website gimmicks? Well look no further than lingscars.com!
#1 – Lings Car Leasing (UK) – Gizmos and crap galore on this site. It is so bad its actually funny. Her site has been on so many “Worst Websites” lists that this website is actually ranked as the 155,000th most tracked website today which may actually drive sales to the site. Like they say, “Bad publicity is better than no publicity.”
What is really great is that Ms. Ling actually has advice about creating great websites. One of her website design keys is to “Make stuff colourful and flashing!” http://lingscars.com/