The
Ultimate Keyword Optimization Guide for Search Engine Positioning
Author:
David Gikandi
We all
know it and we all do it. Whenever the typical web user
needs to find something on the web, he or she will almost always
instinctively go to one of the top search engines and run a
search. Then, he or she will have a look at the first 30 search
results returned (usually the first three pages of results),
hardly ever looking beyond that. If nothing looks appealing,
they will run another search using a variation of the keywords
they used on the first search. Again, they will look at the
first 30 results. If they still find nothing of interest, they
may switch to a different search engine and repeat the process.
This, believe it or not, is the typical web navigation behavior
of at least 86% of the 110 million all web users out there. The
question is, does your web site capitalize on this behavior?
If the answer is yes for you, then no matter what a user
searches for that has any relation at all to your products, they
should find you even if they hadn't thought of finding you! That
translates to a very high amount of daily traffic to your site.
Is this what is happening for you?
I bet the answer is no. Very few web sites really capitalize on
this behavior. However, you can learn how to do so. For this
tutorial, we shall assume that you are in the business of
selling wedding gowns. You have a web site that does a good job
of displaying your wedding gowns, but like most other web site
owners, your web traffic is really low and clients are simply
not finding you. You have done everything you can think of, but
your pages hardly come up on the search engines. What next?
Well, get ready to learn one of the most effective online
marketing strategies.
We know that the web user will think of a keyword or phrase and
type that into a search form on an engine. That is his or her
first step, and so it should be ours. This is a very important
step! Get a piece of paper or open up your text editor and keep
writing all the keywords and phrases that you think of as you go
through the steps outlined below. Selecting the right keywords
or keyword phrases will skyrocket your traffic. Research has
shown that most people use phrases of 2 to 3 keywords when
searching. People have come to learn that just typing in one
keyword in a search will get them thousands of records that they
just do not need. Therefore, they combine two or three keywords
in their searches.
Your list should end up having about 50 or more keywords and
phrases. You must write down every word that a person might use
to look for your site PLUS words they may use to look for other
related information or products. This is no easy task. It
involves some research and a fair bit of thought. Remember,
thousands of people out there looking for wedding gowns may not
all think alike, look for wedding gowns directly, or even
realize at the time that they can get wedding gowns on the net!
To get a good list, here are the steps that you should go
through. Keep your pen and paper handy so that you keep writing
as you go along each step.
1. Think! Brainstorm! Sit down for several minutes and think!
Write down whatever keywords or phrases come to mind. Then look
at your list and see what other word combinations you can make
out from the keywords you have already written down.
2. Look at your products and services and see what words
relating to them will pop up in your mind. Write the names of
each product or service that you deal in. These product names
will also be part of your keyword list.
3. Ask your family, associates, clients, and friends what words
and phrases they would most likely use to search for products or
services like yours.
4. See what keywords your competitors use. See what keywords are
featured on their pages and in their meta tags.
5. Be specific AND general in scope. Think of words that also
describe things related to what your site is about. For example,
if you sell wedding gowns, also think about other things and
words related to weddings, such as honeymoon, bridal registry,
wedding rings, engagements, and other wedding accessories and
services. The idea here is to capture people who may be looking
for other things related to weddings, whether they are directly
looking for wedding gowns or not at the time. Chances are that
someone looking for any wedding related information will also be
interested in knowing about wedding gowns. Get the idea? This is
a very powerful way of getting more targeted traffic to your
site.
6. Do not forget misspelled words. People often misspell words
when they enter their search terms. Include commonly misspelled
words or phrases as part of your list.
7. If your site deals with a particular region, remember to
include that in your keyword list. E.g. 'Los Angeles wedding
gowns' if you deal in wedding gowns within Los Angeles. A lot of
people will search for wedding gowns, get a big list of returned
search results, and decide to add the words "Los Angeles" (or
wherever else they may be interested in) to get more specific
search results.
8. Use the long and short form of words, e.g. consult,
consulting, and consultants.
9. DO NOT SPAM! Do not use keywords that have nothing to do with
your web site. Do not list the keyword "sex" or "free pics"
just
because they are frequently searched for if they do not have
anything to do with your web site. You will only get traffic
that is of no use to you anyway because surfers will come to
your site and leave angrily when they realize you just cheated
them. Also, search engines are on the look out for such
deceitful practices and can sometimes ban your pages for
spamming. As long as you stick with keywords related to your
core business, you will be fine, but do not go way out of line.
10. Now its time for some research. You now need to look at what
people are actually searching for on the various engines and get
more phrases for your list. Here is a list of sites that will
help you out with that. When doing your research at these sites,
remember steps number 5, 6, and 8 above - people often misspell words, they use different word forms, and they may be looking
for a whole lot of different stuff all related to your products.
(a) SearchTerms.com (http://www.searchterms.com)
- See what the
top 100 search terms worldwide were. Remember that it is not
advisable to use terms that are not related to your web site's
content, but this service can still prove useful.
(b) SearchSpy (http://www.searchspy.com)
- SearchSpy is a
database of search terms captured from the top search engines.
Use this to find even more words and phrases for your list.
Now that you are armed with your big list, what you do with it
next is what will get you all the traffic you need. The next
process is long and complicated if done manually, but there are
ways of making this automatic, easy, and fast, saving you the
agony of doing it yourself. This article is too short for the
technical details on search engine optimization techniques, so I
will just give you a quick explanation and a link to where you
can get all this done for you automatically and easily.
Basically, there are 8 major search engines today - AltaVista,
Excite, Infoseek, Lycos, HotBot, AOL Netfind, WebCrawler, and
Northern Light. Yahoo is a directory so this technique will not
work with it. What you need to do is figure out what kind of
pages rank well with each of these engines. Search engines use a
mathematical formula to rank all the pages in their index. It is
hard, but not impossible to come really close to knowing exactly
what kind of a page will rank well on a particular engine.
Basically, the text statistics on a page are what are considered
most by the engine's ranking formulas. Now, for each keyword or
phrase on your list, you need to create a web page that focuses
on just that one keyword or phrase and ranks it highly on a
particular engine. Because each engine ranks pages differently,
you will need to create a different page optimized for each
engine.
Stop and think about this strategy for a second. You have a list
of virtually every phrase that someone interested in your
products and other related products can ever use in a search.
Then, you have pages that make sure they rank highly for all
those searches. No matter what people search for that has any
relation to your products, they will find you even if they had
not thought of finding you! Do you now see how much qualified
traffic you can get? It is amazing!
The only set back is the amount of work you would have to put
into figuring out what kind of text statistics on a page will
rank it well on an engine, then creating these optimized pages
for your entire list of keywords for each major engine. That
means creating about 300 or more finely tuned web pages! But do
not worry! As long as you have compiled your list of keywords
and phrases, there is an online service that will automatically
create the optimized pages for you in a couple of minutes.
SearchPositioning.com (www.searchpositioning.com)
uses a set of
online scripts to cleverly generate web pages optimized for the
major search engines. All you need to do is give it your list of
keywords and phrases, a short piece of text describing your site
or business or products, and your email address (the pages are
emailed to you as attached HTML files). To my knowledge, this is
the only service on the web that works in this way.
Once you have your pages, upload them to your web server and
either submit them to the engines if they aren't too many, or
have the engines crawl over them and index them by only
submitting a page that links to all of them. That's it! Now
simply step back and watch your traffic skyrocket!
Granted, there are many other ways that people use to find new
sites, such as following links on other sites, reading about
sites on magazine, hearing from friends, etc. But no matter what
other methods they use, they almost always use them in addition to using the search engines, especially when actively trying
to
locate new information. By knowing how to use the search engines to your advantage, you will become an empowered Internet
marketer. No other method of marketing is so powerful,
effective, and affordable (virtually free)!
About the
author:
David Gikandi support@searchpositioning.com
SearchPositioning.com http://www.searchpositioning.com