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How To Do Keyword Research

October 7, 2011 By admin Leave a Comment

After you have determined your SEO objectives, you are now ready to begin researching the keywords on which you will build your content marketing strategy. Keyword research is one of the most important, high-return activities in which you can invest your time. When properly done, keyword research will give you a better understanding of your customers, ever-changing market conditions, and the competitive landscape.

One of the most important concepts to understand about keywords is the long tail of the keyword demand curve. Although some popular search terms may generate 5,000+ searches per day, the reality of keyword search is that such popular keywords comprise only about 25% of all searches. The other 75% of all searches are what is commonly called the “long tail” of search. In this long tail are millions of unique searches that might occur only once a day, or once ever, but make up the vast majority of keywords that are used to find information through search engines.

For an example of what types of keywords make up the long tail of a search, take a look at the graph below. As a search becomes increasingly specific, beginning with the generic keyword “interior design”, and moving on to “interior design ideas”, “interior design ideas bedroom”, and culminating in “interior design ideas teenage girls bedrooms”, the volume of searches decreases, but the person performing the search is much more likely to find the exact information that they are looking for.

The long tail means the following for your keyword strategy:

  • The world is made up of people with very specific information needs. People find information mostly by very specific searches.
  • Expect these to take them directly to content of interest - they won’t necessarily enter your website via your home page.
  • Therefore, every page should be a complete experience, and a compelling introduction to your site.
  • Your site doesn’t have to rank highly for some popular query to get lots of traffic. Don’t try to be #1 for “design” - there is too much competition. Only the very top results get any user attention.
  • Popular keywords won’t generate the traffic you want. They won’t result in a meaningful interaction unless you truly have the world’s best general resource for design information.
  • “Optimal” traffic comes when you have the world’s best page for some very specific information need. Each of these generates a tiny bit of high-quality traffic.
  • Make it up in volume! Have lots of specific, useful content on your site. In practical terms: post often to your blog, and create lots of specific content.

Where can you get the information you need about keyword demand? A number of excellent free resources exist to help you do this research:

These tools will help you determine the number of monthly searches for each keyword term, the level of competition to gain a high ranking, trends in volume, and closely related search terms. Google’s Keyword Estimator will even examine your website for you and suggest keywords based on the content of your site! This useful tool will reveal whether you are on the right track in creating the content on your site that is consistent with your keyword strategy. Other tools for advanced keyword research exist, and these are covered excellently in the Professional’s Guide to Keyword Research.

Keyword research will help you determine the core set of keywords that help you achieve your SEO objectives. You can then build your content around these keywords. By monitoring your rankings for these keywords on a regular basis, you can track your progress in attracting qualified traffic to your website.

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How to Set SEO Goals and Objectives

September 27, 2011 By admin 1 Comment

SEO (Search Engine Optimization), once the domain of specialists, has now become a mainstream marketing activity. SEO can have a dramatic effect on the traffic that you draw to your website; the perceived quality, relevance, and trustworthiness of your brand; and the amount of revenue that you can generate through your website. Like any other marketing activity, it is important to set specific goals and objectives - and if the goal is not measurable, it is not useful.

A typical website will generate anywhere from 33% - 50% or more of its traffic from search engines. In our last post, we examined the importance of attaining a high ranking in search engines for the keywords that will drive quality prospects to your website.

Setting goals and objectives for your SEO strategy is the first step in determining the keywords on which you want to build the content of your website. Content is king in attaining high rankings. Your site content is the major source of information that search engines use to determine what your site is about. For example, if someone is searching for furniture, and you don’t have any information on your site about furniture, chances are you won’t rank very high, if at all, for searches containing that keyword.

You may have great blog posts, a unique photo gallery, and useful “how to” information on your website. However, if 20 other sites have similar content, and have been ranked in the search engines for a much longer period of time, it will be hard to displace them from the rankings.

To establish yourself as a leader, you must bring something new and different to the market. How can you do this? Perhaps you can focus on a specific vertical niche. For example, instead of furniture, you focus on contemporary furniture. Or perhaps you can offer a new type of content - be the first to offer videos in your market.

What kinds of objectives do you need to set in your SEO plan? Here are several factors to consider when developing your objectives:

  1. Revenue/Business Model
    Determine the main purpose of your site - to sell products, sell advertising, or obtain leads. Different keywords will typically be used for each type of search.
  2. Target Customers
    Define the audience that you are trying to reach. For example, it could be a specific income level, geographic area, or decorating style.
  3. Competition
    The competitive landscape is a major consideration in determining your SEO goals. Depending on your competitor’s product line and SEO strategy, you may have to make adjustments. If you are the market leader, you may want to fend off certain competitors. On the other hand, if the competition is firmly entrenched, you may want to focus on another segment of the market.
  4. Branding Goals
    There may be certain terms that are closely related to your brand that you want to dominate in the search rankings.
  5. How Your Potential Customers Search for Your Products
    It is important to understand which search terms your prospects use to find the products or services that you supply. This involves mapping the actual search queries that your target customers use when they employ a search engine to find what they are looking for.

Once you complete your objectives, you are ready to do the research necessary to determine the keywords you want to target, the subject of our next post.

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How Search Engines Affect Your Blog’s Traffic

August 31, 2011 By admin 1 Comment

At the last Design Bloggers Conference, Doug Cook gave a fascinating and highly informative presentation on Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The bloggers were so interested in what he had to say, that Doug probably could have talked for another hour.

One of the key questions that Doug did not have time to delve into very deeply was how much traffic a blog could drive for a given keyword search. Everyone knows that a higher ranking for a given keyword is better, but exactly how high does your ranking have to be to generate significant traffic for your website? Is it possible to predict how much traffic you can generate for a given search phrase and ranking?

Your ranking in the results has a huge impact on the amount of traffic you can drive to your website. While Google doesn’t publish this type of data, fortunately, there is some actual data available. In 2006, AOL leaked some data on over 36 million queries. The results are as follows:

Source: Predictive Marketing

As you can see, there is a huge advantage to being number one in the search rankings. An improvement in rank from second to first will almost quadruple the number of clicks! The first three ranks garner 63% of the clicks; the top 10, 90%; the top 20, 94.5%. Here are the percentages for ranks 1-21, 31, and 41:

The drop-off in clicks is enormous by the time you get to the second page; a rank off 11 produces only .66% of the clicks; in comparison a rank of 10 produces more than 4 times as many, and the number 1 rank more than 60 times as many! For more information on the effect of search engine ranking on traffic, see this post by Predictive Marketing.

Why are searchers blind to relevant results further down the page? Do researchers tend to simply trust the search engine to point them to the right page? According to studies, 72% of searchers click on the first link of interest, while only 26% read all the listings first and then decide which one to click.

Search engines can help drive a significant amount of traffic to your website. It pays to have a strategy to attain high rankings for keywords that are relevant to your target audience. We’ll delve more deeply into how to develop a keyword strategy in our next post.

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