SEO And Great Content Go Hand In Hand
There is a misconception among many search engine optimization specialists that SEO must be a focus of content or the content just isn’t good. The truth is, great content and great SEO compliment each other. They can co-exist without hurting each other.
The key to this SEO philosophy is in the use of keywords and links. Keywords are the fuel in every search engine optimization strategy. You don’t want to overdo it, but you must do it.
What does that mean, exactly?
Keywords are a matter of targeting the right phrases for the right audience. If you are trying to reach people who purchase automobiles, then you have to target the right key phrases that attract automobile buyers. If you sell Ford vehicles specifically, then target your phrases to people who buy Ford vehicles. Sounds like a no-brainer, right?
It is, but you’d be surprised at how many SEOs target the wrong keywords for their audiences.
When it comes to links, you want your links to compliment your keyword phrases. They shouldn’t dominate. Anything in moderation is better than the same thing in overdose. Use links that compliment your keywords by incorporating the keywords into the link anchor text and pointing them to relevant pages on your website. Title attributes can also compliment your anchor text.
By complimentary title attributes, I don’t necessarily mean repeating your anchor text key phrase. I mean use a phrase that compliments it and is a more nuanced way of using your important keywords.
SEO is not a science. It certainly isn’t rocket science. Your first concern should be in creating great content. Make the SEO compliment the content.
The Long Tail Keyword And Your Website
Are you familiar with the term “long tail” in relation to SEO and website optimization? If not, here’s the lowdown.
Think of a many-headed hydra. In Greek legend, the hydra was a monster with nine heads. Those heads were quite dangerous. If one got you, it hurt. And of course, if you cut one off, then another one grew to replace it. The Greek hero Hercules had to fight a hydra one time – you know, mythologically speaking.
Many search engine optimizers approach SEO like they are fighting a hydra. They focus on the head. But if you focus on the head, even if you defeat one (that is, manage to take over its search engine ranking), there are two more ready to sprout up in place and challenge you to work harder. This type of SEO is very difficult to beat. You can go after the most popular search phrases and risk fighting more and more powerful and dangerous heads (competitors) or wise up and go for the long tail instead.
The long tail in SEO are the less popular phrases that can be just as powerful yet easier to defeat. That hydra had a tail. It was long. And it could sweep around and knock you off your feet. But if you managed to cut it off, nothing grew in its place.
Long tail keywords are like that hydra tail. They’re easier to defeat even as powerful as they are. Knock your competition off the pedestal and there aren’t as many competitors there to try and replace them. It’s easier to win.
The Essence Of Effective SEO
SEO copywriters always run the risk of making two big mistakes:
- Doing too much
- Doing too little
And I mean this with regard to the nuts and bolts of SEO – keywords, links, etc.
Doing Too Much
SEOs who do too much usually end up stuffing their content with keywords or going hog wild in building links. If they would just spend some time writing natural language content, they wouldn’t have to worry about stuffing their content with keywords and links. Nothing beats good SEO like saying what you intended to say and just getting on with it.
That said, it’s important to pay attention to your keywords. Would you write about rotating your tires without using phrases like “tire rotation” and “wheel?” Of course not.
Use the language you would normally use and your SEO should be fine.
Doing Too Little
On the flip side, I think you can do too little. That is, you don’t employ any keyword usage at all. Why would you do that?
If you’re afraid of being tagged as a spammer, it’s probably because you’ve been tagged as a spammer before. Don’t worry about it. Just write good content that answers people’s questions. When you do that, be sure you write in the language of your audience. That’s the best SEO you’ll ever employ.
Why Keywords Are Not Out Of Fashion
Every once in a while I read a blog post or hear some SEO somewhere, or a social media marketer, start proclaiming that SEO is dead or keywords are useless. But I notice that they have pretty well optimized web pages themselves.
The question comes to mind, What are their motives?
Maybe they’re trying to create a ruse to throw other SEOs off track and stop optimizing their web pages. Or maybe they’re sincere and misguided. Or maybe they just have some brilliant insight into the future direction of SEO. Whatever the case, I’m pretty sure they’re wrong about keywords. They are not useless nor are they out of fashion.
Keyword stuffing is useless. Keyword density is WAY out of fashion. But keyword-optimized web pages are still very much en vogue.
The search engines still return results for search queries that match keyword-optimized on-page content. As long as they do, keywords will still serve a purpose. But managing your keywords in a way that search engines will reward them is paramount. Otherwise, you may not rank as you think you should or you may find yourself at odds with search engine policies. Both scenarios are bad.
Don’t listen to the naysayers who say that SEO is dead or keywords are useless. Maybe some day they will be, but that day is not today.
How Important Is Keyword Selection?
More important than keyword density, more important than ensuring you put your keywords in all the right spots, and more important than inbound anchor text with a solid keyword pick is your keyword selection to begin with. Of course, I’m not talking about whether or not you choose keywords. I’m talking about making sure you choose the right keywords for your business.
Keyword selection is about more than picking the right keyword for the best search engine optimization practices. It’s just as much about choosing the right keywords for your business.
For instance, if you sell red widgets, then you would not want to optimize your web pages for the term “yellow widgets.” You would attract all the wrong customers. But I see businesses doing this all the time. More often, I see businesses targeting a generalized keyword when drilling down to a nichier, narrower keyword would deliver better targeted traffic.
Here’s another for instance. If you sell industrial construction materials, optimizing your website for the keyword phrase “construction materials” is too broad. You want to narrow it to “industrial construction materials.” This will eliminate anyone looking for construction materials to build a house. You want to attract people looking for a specific type of construction materials.
Keyword selection is very important. Make sure that you are not only optimizing your web pages for keywords related to your niche, but that they are the right keywords for your business.
Can You Improve Search Engine Rankings Overnight?
Is it possible to improve search engine rankings overnight? Let’s say you have a few keywords that are attracting search engine traffic, but you know that you rank at the bottom of page one or on page two for those keywords. What should you do?
Consider that about 90% of searchers click on page one results. Also consider that more than 80% of searchers click on one of the top three listings on page one. It makes sense to try to increase your rankings for those keywords that are moderately successful.
What you want to do is identify those keywords that are sending you traffic but whose search engine rankings are below the top three positions on page one yet not further down than page three. Got that list? Now, start a link building campaign that focuses on building solid anchor text links for those specific keywords.
This process should take no more than a month or two. If you build good links – that is, focus on links from high authority web pages, use specific anchor text, stay away from spam in any form, and stay consistent and steady – then you can increase your search engine rankings in just a short time.
Link building is a time consuming process, but it is well worth the effort for the pay load on the back end. It won’t happen overnight, but it can happen.
3 SEO Benefits To A Company Blog
Adding a blog to your small business website can increase your SEO benefits tremendously. There are a number of benefits you can receive from a company blog, but these three SEO benefits are very distinct benefits you receive if you blog often and blog using the right strategy.
- Increased search engine rankings – Every blog post is treated like its own web page. That means every blog post has the potential to rank for your keywords on its own merit.
- More opportunities to rank – Every blog post you write invites the search engines back to your website to recrawl it. They will not come back to your site again until it is updated. Because your static site gets updated less often, you should have a blog that you update on a regular basis so that you can have your website crawled often.
- More navigational links – Because you can link from your blog to your main website, you can build more links. Those links will serve as important navigational tools for your visitors, but the search engines like links too. The anchor text you use for those links can push your web pages up further in the search engines in addition to the SEO benefits you get from the content.
A blog is one of the best SEO tools available for your website. If you don’t have one yet, now is the time to consider one.
Using PPC To Narrow Your Keyword List
If you were to use your entire keyword list for a natural search marketing campaign, it would cost you a fortune. And you might spend a year or two learning which keywords are performing best and which ones are more profitable. We can do that in a month or less with pay-per-click advertising.
By using PPC to test your keywords, we can group those keywords into tight target groups and test them against different ads and landing pages. Using a multivariate approach helps us to gain a better understanding of your keyword effectiveness.
Let’s take an example: If you have three landing pages and five ads that can be rotated to test your keyword list and find that you have one keyword that performs well consistently on all ad and landing page combinations, then we know that’s a strong keyword. But if another keyword consistently fails to achieve any meaningful results, then we know it’s a weak keyword. We can strike it from your list and not waste our time creating content for natural search.
This approach saves you money and time. You will not have to wait a year to determine that certain keywords are ineffective for natural search and the small investment in PPC you make to determine that will save you tons of money on the back end.
The Bad SEO Advice NAR Gives
If you are a real estate agent or broker, you might feel more comfortable getting your SEO advice from another real estate agent or broker, or from the National Association of Realtors. That might not be such a good idea, however.
Think about this: Would you caution your real estate clients against getting real estate advice from anyone other than a real estate agent? The reason is obvious, isn’t it?
The NAR recently posted SEO advice for real estate agents in an article on its website. The problem isn’t so much in the general advice NAR gives, but in the specific advice.
For example, its six recommended SEO practices include:
- Write better page titles
- Broadcast your links
- Use keywords generously
- Reword outgoing links
- Develop a site map
- Tweet about it
That’s a mediocre list, at best. What’s not on that list and should be are: 1) list your site on local directories; 2) claim it on Google Local, Bing Local, and Yahoo! Local; 3) and start a blog. But the nitty-gritty details of these bullet points isn’t much to be desired either.
For example, hear what NAR has to say about keywords:
Your main keywords should appear at least 10 to 13 times per 700 words on a page, says Mark Menzella, who runs RE/Advantage, a real estate Web design company in Fairfield, N.J.
In industry speak, this concept is called “keyword density.” The problem is, keyword density is a huge myth. It doesn’t work. There is no optimal number of times a keyword should appear on any web page. That’s because the search engines use almost 200 criteria for determining where pages rank for a specific keyword.
Let’s look at what NAR says about tweeting:
“Now that tweets are indexed in Google, Twitter has become an important part of SEO strategy,” says Misty Lackie of Go Smart Solutions, a technology consulting firm in Grover Beach, Calif. So get a Twitter account if you don’t already have one, and create useful tweets that happen to include your business keywords and links to your site.
Honestly, I’ve never seen much SEO benefit from tweeting. Keywords in your tweets don’t help you much in terms of your website’s SEO. Even anchor text in your links from Twitter are low grade since those links are no-follow links. That’s not to say that Twitter is a bad marketing tool. Rather, it’s a highly effective marketing tool for getting you some local exposure, but for SEO, it’s not a must-have tool.
Your best bet for good SEO advice is not to rely on industry professionals within real estate. You should get your real estate advice from real estate agents and brokers, but get your SEO advice from professional SEO consultants.
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Kick your PPC campaign off with some basic keyword research. We’ll search and find the best keywords for your business based on your landing page, your goals, your competition, and past marketing initiatives.
With PPC marketing, you can test your keywords before you use them in your organic marketing. It’s a great way to test new keywords and keyword groups. Why spend countless hours building landing pages and promoting them through social media and articles when you aren’t 100% confident of the keywords you are using? You can be confident in less than 24 hours just by testing them in PPC ads.
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Does Your Search Engine Optimization Strategy Include The Youth Audience?
A good marketing research program will help you to understand who your demographic audience is. Don’t be surprised to see that youths and young adults are high up on the list. They have taken to the online world faster than any other generation, and they have brought with them a whole new language.
The language of our youth is not just the abbreviated or truncated language that evolved from SMS through to Twitter and is now common on Facebook. They have also brought with them a new language. They have brought with them the art of taking two words and combining them into one – and those words are starting to stick in our day-to-day language.
Search engine optimization is based in part on your choice of keywords and keyword phrases. The time will soon come when keyword selection will necessitate diving into this new language. John Jantsch on WebProNews suggests that SEO programs should be concentrating on these issues for mobile search. I agree, however, why stop at mobile search?
If you are communicating with this generation of users through social media sites, you will no doubt have come across this new use of our language. By targeting your keywords, onsite content and social media conversations using this language, you may just find there is a whole new group of potential customers that you can tap into.
The Internet is moving forward quickly. We need to move forward as well, upadating and replacing equipment as and when we need them, while keeping an eye on who our customers are. It’s an interesting world with an interesting language taking over the Internet.
SEO – Are You Results Oriented, Or Chasing The Impossible Dream?
If you are a new business just setting up then you are going to find it tough. There’s no point mincing words – search is quickly becoming saturated, especially when it comes to short one- or two-word keywords, and ranking highly quickly is just not going to happen. It’s not all doom and gloom, however. If you work your way methodically you can succeed and, over time, you can start to make a serious impact in search results – it all depends on your approach.
Chasing highly competitive keywords is the quickest way to bankruptcy. Your competitors have had a big head start on you and their search engine optimization programs will make it much harder for you to compete. If you are results oriented, then you can start to make an impact. It’s really a very simple process on paper (not so simple in application). What is the process?
Keywords – Finding keywords that are still competitive. They may not receive zillions of searches each day, but that factor alone makes them attractive.
Optimizing – Optimizing your web site for those keywords is the next step. This includes all the usual onsite and offsite factors.
Analyzing – Now comes the results orientated process – are those keywords starting to rank; are they delivering traffic; and are they converting into sales? If they are, you are on the right track; if not, why not? – this is the real analysis process.
More Keywords – Once you are starting to see results, it’s time to go back and take another look at those keywords. Your first list contained keywords with low competition – it’s now time to start attacking keywords with a little more competition – then optimize, then analyze. It’s a process that never stops and, over time, you may well be in a position to attack those top-of-the-chain keywords.
The key to succeeding in a highly competitive market is to start by attacking the lesser quality keywords – running a strong search engine optimization campaign – then steadily building on that base. In two, three or perhaps four years time, you will look back and be amazed at far you have traveled. Build your business on results rather than trying to be number one overnight – it’s not going to happen.
Should You Have More Than 100 Keywords?
How many keywords is enough for your SEO or PPC campaign? The truth is, you can never have enough keywords. How you use your keywords is far more important than how many keywords you have.
When it comes to SEO, the more keywords you have the more opportunities you have to capture rankings for those keywords. You figure you have two chances to rank for the same keyword on the same website at Google and once or twice at Bing. If you have a 1,000 keyword list then that gives you about 4,000 chances to rank for those keywords with a 1,000-page website.
With PPC it’s a little different. Pay per click campaigns operate best with tight keyword groups. If you group your keywords effectively and write good ads that lead clickers to well-optimized and conversion-ready landing pages then you should have a profitable marketing plan. The more keywords you have in your arsenal the better your chances of reaching that goal.
But pay per click advertising and search engine marketing effectiveness depend on your use of the keywords you have. Your SEO efforts will be greatly improved if you have a good army of keywords.
Don’t get wrapped around the axle on numbers, just find good keywords.
Using Pay Per Click To Find Your Way In The Market Place
If you are about to start out in business and you intend using search as one of your main sources of traffic, you may find yourself confronted by several hurdles. Organic search can take months of tight optimization before you see any results. Before you can even begin to optimize, you need to research keywords that will attract traffic to your website. Pay per click advertising is one area that can help you test those keywords.
Using pay per click to test keywords has its own pitfalls and these need to be considered carefully. These pitfalls include:
- Cost – pay per click can be expensive if you don’t set limits or choose your keywords carefully.
- Accuracy – while pay per click can help identify keywords that do or don’t convert, that data doesn’t always relate to how organic search converts for the same keywords.
Having considered those negatives, you should also bear in mind the positives that come with pay per click. These include:
- Income – while testing keywords, you should be receiving traffic that converts into sales. That income may sustain your business while you are waiting for organic search results to improve.
- Data – although keywords don’t always perform the same on organic and paid search, you can identify keywords that are real duds. You may also find keywords that are real gems.
- Direction – there are many businesses that thrive on pay per click marketing. Rather than relying on the ups and downs of search engine optimization and organic search, they rely on pay per click with any organic traffic being the cream.
The bonus to using pay per click to test keywords is the income you can potentially receive when find good converting keywords. You do need to use care with this form of marketing, otherwise you will find your marketing budget gone in days. Set limits and do as much testing as your budget will allow.
Are Keywords Still Important?
Every now and then I read an article that claims that keywords are obsolete and that search engines now rely entirely on semantic language indexing. The truth is, that’s all wrong. Let’s deal with a few facts.
- Semantic language indexing is not new. Google has been doing it for years. They’ve gotten better at it, of course, and other search engines have started to incorporate it as well. But none of them have abandoned keywords.
- Type a search query into any search engine and see what comes up. Your first results will almost all incorporate the exact keyword phrase that you typed into the search engine’s search box. That’s evidence itself that keywords are still important.
- Keyword densities, the process of counting keywords and ensuring that you have the right mix of keywords in your content compared to the number of overall words, are not important. In fact, for about five or six years now, they haven’t been. This fact could be the reason for the myth that keywords themselves are not important.
- How many keywords you have in your content is not important. Where those keywords are located within the content is much more important.
- Most search engines these days rely on both keywords and semantic language indexing to some degree.
The advent of semantic language indexing has not made keywords obsolete. It does mean that keywords for the sake of keywords are not important. It makes keyword stuffing much more difficult. Besides that, keywords are still important and I wouldn’t throw them out of my search engine marketing efforts completely.
What Is A PPC Evaluation?
Before you begin a pay per click campaign it is always a good idea to get a PPC evaluation, which is a way for your PPC manager to see what you’ve done, how it’s affected your ROI, what worked, what didn’t, etc. There are 5 key elements to a good PPC evaluation.
- Website Evaluation – There are certain aspects to your website that are important for consideration when you use PPC to drive traffic to it. First is usability. Do your visitors find your website usable or is it difficult to navigate? How about conversion optimization? Are your landing pages ready to receive orders? And we’ll also take a look at your page load times to ensure that your PPC ads have a high quality score.
- Existing PPC Accounts – Do you have existing accounts? How effectively were they managed? What potential issues are there in those accounts, what are your missed opportunities, are you targeting the right keywords, etc.?
- New PPC Accounts – You’ll need to outline your PPC strategy, estimate your average cost per click on each keyword, set your monthly budget, and define your marketing channels.
- Google Analytics Account – Do you have one? We’ll set one up for you. You also need to set goals and establish lead funnels.
- Custom Pricing – Finally, you’ll need to get your pricing set for your campaigns. Not a one-size-fits-all budget, but the cost for your campaign.
If you’ve been struggling with PPC and you’re ready to take on a campaign that will be successful, get a PPC evaluation.
5 Aspects Of SEO You Can’t Ignore
SEO is not just writing content and hoping it gets ranked in the search engines. There is a specific strategy that you should follow to get your pages where you want them so that you can have traffic delivered to your website. Here are 5 aspects of SEO that you cannot ignore and hope that your efforts are working.
- Every SEO campaign should begin with keyword research. If you don’t know what your most important keywords are then you’ll never be successful at SEO.
- Local business listings provide a natural opportunity for most businesses, particularly small businesses that operate within a specific geographic community. Don’t ignore local search. Some of your best opportunities will be right under your nose.
- Link building is a time consuming task, but if you want your web pages to rank highly then it’s a necessary task.
- Before you build links and after you’ve done your keyword research you’ll need to create content. This is the most important aspect of SEO. Do it wrong and you won’t rank for the right keywords. Do it right and you can rank even without links.
- Call it monitoring and reporting, analytics, or metrics. Whatever name you give it, it is significant. You’ll never know if your SEO campaigns are succeeding unless you continue to monitor your progress and track your results.
Start and end your SEO efforts on the right foot. Begin with keyword research and end with tracking and monitoring. But don’t leave out the cream in the middle either.
How To Find The Right Keywords
Internet marketing is about one thing – primarily. How you employ your fleet of keywords. But what makes a good keyword?
If you don’t know, a keyword is any word (or phrase) that a searcher would use to look for information that would be found on your website. Ideally, you want them to find your site and not your competition’s website. So how do you make that happen?
In a word, it happens when you effectively manage your keywords so that you use keywords that have high conversion rates and that you acquire at lower costs.
So the question is, How do you find these keywords?
There are several methods for finding keywords. Some of them are good and others are not so good. Your real goal is to find your best keywords at the best prices. So what are your options?
- Your first option is to go at it blind. This isn’t a very good option because if you can’t see your target then you aren’t likely to hit it.
- You can use a keyword research tool to help you narrow down your list of keywords. This is a great way to find an initial list of keywords, but it’s limited in giving you information on the effectiveness of those keywords.
- You can evaluate the websites of your competition and come away with some reasonable keywords, but those are keywords that your competition uses. They may or may not be good keywords for your business.
- Or, you can wage a small scale pay per click campaign to test your keywords and see which ones convert better at lower click prices.
Our preference for finding the right keywords for your business is the last option. It will narrow down your list of keywords to the best keywords, tell you which ones convert the best, and provide you with information on expected click-through rates and click prices.
Effective keyword management begins with a good list and from there you narrow it down to the best keywords.
Where Do You Get Keywords For PPC Campaigns?
If you are running any PPC campaigns and are looking for places to find keywords outside of the traditional keyword research tools, is there help for you? Actually, yes, I think there is. You don’t have to use the same old keyword research tools to find your keywords.
Here are a three places you can find additional keywords for your PPC campaigns:
- Twitter – There are two ways to use Twitter for keyword research. You can look at Twitter trends, which is real telling for what is hot right now. And then there is Twitter Search. Either way will tell you what is popular on Twitter or what is happening on Twitter.
- Analytics – Take a look at your website’s metrics. What keywords are people using to find your site? Those keywords could be ripe for a PPC campaign.
- Competitive Blogs – What are your competitors writing about? Better yet, pick the top three blogs in your niche and read the comments. What are the readers saying? They are the same audience you are trying to reach. Pull out some niche-related keywords for your PPC campaigns.
When it comes to PPC campaigns, you don’t have to be like everybody else. You have to do what is right for your business. It starts with keyword research.
Do You Have The Right Keyword Mix?
Search engine optimization is a multi-tiered marketing approach. You cannot simply add a couple of keywords to your search engine marketing campaigns and think that is going to be enough. The most important thing to know about search engine optimization today is that natural language optimization, or semantic language, is the road to success.
What does that mean?
Natural language writing is a style of writing that uses keywords for text enhancement, but it is not keyword-centric. In other words, you are not writing keyword-based content. You are writing content in such a way that it reads naturally, which is the way that people talk in normal conversation. Then you spruce it up with the right mix of keywords.
How do you know what is the right keyword mix? You settle on a primary keyword. That is the keyword you ensure appears in your title headline and multiple times on your page. Then, pick a secondary keyword and a tertiary keyword. Make sure they are related to the primary keyword, but not a variation of it. In other words, you wouldn’t use “truck driver”, “truck drivers” and “truck driving”. You’d be better off with keywords such as “truck driver” “eighteen wheeler” and “Big Rig”.
You don’t want your secondary and tertiary keywords to overshadow your primary keyword so use them but use them sparingly. And make sure that your SEO content reads naturally, not forced.
Why Strict Keyword Densities Are No Longer Necessary
To truly understand how SEO works today you need to have an understanding of the history of SEO as a marketing strategy. Search engine optimization did not develop in a vacuum and it won’t evolve into what it will be tomorrow without the developments that are occurring today. There is a continuum and it can be traced.
To begin with, SEO did not really get its name until after Google came on the scene. Before Google, Internet marketers were optimizing their websites but they didn’t really call it that. However, that “optimization” was very primitive compared to how it’s done today.
Meta Tags, Backlinks And The Rise Of Google
At one time, pre-Google, all you had to do was add a bunch of keywords to your meta tag list and you’d rank well for those keywords. It didn’t even matter if those keywords appeared in your page content or not. You’d still rank. Hardly seems fair, does it? That’s why Google rose to such prominence as quickly as it did. The company introduced a whole new paradigm.
When Google came along, no one was interested in analyzing back links. Today, that seems intuitive, but at one time no thought it was important except for two guys with the software to make it happen.
Those two guys started Google, whose search ranking algorithm was based largely on the number of inbound links pointing to a particular web page. Soon, Internet marketers started dropping their meta tag strategy in lieu of a backlink strategy. Back links became the new currency.
From Backlinks To Semantic Natural Language
Over the years, Google has tweaked its ranking factors to include more than just an analysis of the number of inbound links to your site’s pages. Quality of links, relevancy of links and link diversity are important too. And there are more than 100 other factors Google considers as well. And then there are Bing, Yahoo!, AOL, Ask and many other search engines. Each one has their own ranking criteria.
One consideration that the major search engines look for today is natural language, or semantic language, syntax. While keywords are still important, successful web page do not need X number of one keyword phrase per Y number of words on the page, what marketers call “keyword density”. Instead, it’s important to put your keyword phrase in the right places on your page and in proximity to other important elements on the page. And to write naturally for your site visitors just as you would if keywords were not important.
In essence, the search engines are looking for the best content for every keyword phrase they rank pages for. If you stuff your pages with keywords just for a ranking then you are doing yourself and your site visitors a disservice. It’s basically shooting yourself in the foot. Trust me, that hurts.
Where Does Your PPC Keyword List Come From?
New pay per click advertisers often wonder where they should get their keyword list. The obvious answer is from your initial keyword research – the same place you get the keyword list for your organic search campaigns. But that’s a little too pat. And the answer is not so cut and dry. There are other ways to get your keyword list.
- Borrow from the competition – Have you analyzed your competition’s PPC and organic search campaigns? If not then hop to it. It’s a great resource for your own keyowrd list.
- Your own referrer logs – Study your referrer logs from time to time to see what key phrases people are using to find your site. You can often find phrases that you haven’t targeted. If some of those phrases turn out to be popular phrases then you’ll have a few gems in the rough.
- Google Zeitgeist – This little known product from Google will show you what search queries have trended each day.
- Google Trends – Another product from Google. It allows you to look at trends over time, which can tell a story all its own.
- Twitter Trends – Twitter Trends tells you what is popular right now. This is real time data and if you hit your new keyword trends just right you might find a gold mine.
There is really is no right or wrong way to find new keywords for your pay per click campaigns, but if you think creatively then you can likely find your own.
What Keywords Are Your Competitors Targeting?
There are two reasons why you might want to know what keywords the competition is targeting:
- So you can target the same keywords
- So you can identify keywords they are missing and capitalize on them
The competition is certainly targeting keywords. But are they targeting the right ones? Are they targeting the keywords that you should be targeting?
Keywords are not all created equal. Some of your competitors may actually be targeting the wrong keywords. Your goal should be to identify the right keywords and to go after those aggressively. That means studying the keywords that the competition is (and isn’t) using and studying the keywords that searchers are searching for. The right tools can make that process much easier for you. And your competitive intelligence initiatives will go a long way toward making you successful.
Competitive Intelligence Is As Good As Your Tools
When it comes to gathering competitive intelligence, the information you can obtain legally and ethically is only as good as the tools you use. One good tool for gathering information on your competition’s organic SEO campaigns and PPC campaigns is KeywordSpy.
KeywordSpy allows you to search for information in several ways – Domain, Keyword, Destination URL, and Ad Copies. You’ll probably use the Keyword search most often, but the others do come in handy.
When you search for a keyword at KeywordSpy you get a boat load of information on several competitors. You get keyword statistics on PPC competitors, including CPC and search volume. There is even a nice pretty graph to show you the history of your competition in PPC.
You also get an overview of related keywords, which is nice because it also shows you the CPC and search volume for each of those keywords. Then you get samples of PPC ads from your competition.
Another great benefit is an overview of your top competitors, comparing organic SEO information and PPC information on each one. You get a nice list of the keywords for each of those competitors and how many keywords they are using for PPC and SEO.
I would definitely recommend KeywordSpy for conducting competitive intelligence before embarking on any PPC or SEO campaign.
Are Keywords Important With PPC?
If you are new to pay per click marketing, you might be wondering how important are keywords. In a word, they are very important. You can’t manage an effective PPC campaign without focusing on the right keywords for your campaign.
But how are keywords important?
Keywords in PPC are important in three ways:
- They ensure that your ad is shown for the right keyword queries in the search engines. Targeting. Plain and simple.
- Keywords are important for matching your ads with your landing pages. Your prospects will want to know that what they have queried is also what you are offering.
- Keywords are important for bidding and budgeting correctly. You’ll get to bid on your keywords, placing a value on each one. Consider this value carefully.
Don’t ignore the importance of keywords in PPC marketing. They are just as important as keywords for SEO.
How Many Keywords Can You Manage With PPC?
Google is getting stricter with its quality score. Recently, the search engine announced that you will hurt your quality score if you try to target too many keywords with one ad. The search engine wants you to target a specific web page with each keyword. The result for many webmasters could be a new PPC campaign for every keyword they want to target.
But that’s not to say that you’ll have to target a different keyword for every PPC campaign under every circumstances. In most cases, a tight keyword group within a PPC campaign will boost your quality score and give you maximum performance,l but you have to manage the campaign in the right way.
Your targeted web pages should be managed around a tight keyword group consisting of keywords that are related. We’re talking about a small keyword group – about 5 or 6 keywords. If you try to manage a single PPC campaign around hundreds of keywords that are broadly related then you will hurt your quality score and your ad rankings and click-throughs will suffer.
Content, Links, Meta Tags – Which SEO Factor Is Most Important?
Content, links, meta tags, keywords … it’s all a sea of confusion, right? Which SEO factor is most important?
Links are important. They build link popularity. Relevance, page authority, anchor text, link age, they’re all important, right? Yes, they are all important. But links are the not the most important thing for SEO. Without at least one inbound link to your website, it won’t get crawled and the search engines won’t index it. But for search engine ranking purposes, links are not the most important SEO factor.
How about meta tags? No. In fact, Google doesn’t even consider meta tags for ranking purposes. Yahoo! and Bing still consider meta tags, but they aren’t the most important ranking criteria.
Is it keyword density? SEOs still talk about keyword density. In fact, keywords get a lot of airplay all around. Keywords in title tags, keywords in alt tags, keywords in anchor text. Yes, they’re all important. Even keyword density, to some degree, is important. But not the most important thing.
Content.
Quality, original content is the most important SEO factor online. There’s a reason “content is king” is the Internet’s chant. It’s not a campaign slogan. It’s reality. Content is the most important SEO factor. Over links. Above keyword density. And higher than meta tags.
Make your content shine and dress it up with great links, meta tags, and keyword considerations. But make your content the king.
How Niche Search Engine Marketing Pays The Bills
Search engine marketing is the process of using search engines to drive traffic to your web pages, primarily through search and paid search platforms. Crafty Internet marketers do this by focusing on niche-related keywords in their marketing efforts. How does that work exactly?
For starters, you’ve got to build value into your marketing campaign in your keyword research. This should be your first step in the process. Look for the best and most profitable keywords for your niche and focus your marketing efforts on those. After you’ve identified the best keywords, put them into a list and build your web pages to focus on those keywords with each page focused on a primary and a secondary keyword. Then build links using your keywords as anchor text.
Try a PPC campaign as a test campaign on one or two of your keywords and attempt to drive traffic to a keyword-based landing page. As you do this, note your CTR. If you are getting a high CTR on any keywords then focus on those keywords for building more web pages and for increasing the search engine presence of others you’ve already built.
Search engine marketing is not hard, but it is tedious. You can build value into any niche if you know the basics.
What Makes Good Search Engine Optimization?
Search engine optimization is a process that seems to be getting more and more sophisticated as time goes on. Used to be, a webmaster could toss in a few keywords on the web page, add some meta tags, and all was well. Today, there are more than a couple of hundred ranking factors to consider. And what gets one website high rankings may be completely different for another website. Generally speaking, it’s better to focus on principles than specific techniques.
However, there are some best practices that are, across the board, very effective. Savvy search engine optimizers know that putting your keyword in your title is very effective. They also know that inbound links can make a mediocre site a great one. And your URL is important in many ways as well.
But there are certain factors that today may not be important while being extremely important next year or five years from now. A good search engine optimization specialist should be able to look down the road and predict, with some fair amount of accuracy, where search is headed – and begin to optimize web pages for the future of search as well as for today. You don’t need a crystal ball, just a good handle on the playing field. Can your SEO boast of that?
Keyword Analysis As Competitive Intelligence
One of the most important aspects of competitive intelligence is keyword analysis. One of the simplest parts of competitive intelligence, it is also one of the most involved. There is more to keyword analysis than simply checking which keywords are the most popular searches in the search engines and which are the most sought after in terms of competitive business. Those are important, yes, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
One very important piece of the keyword analysis puzzle is the keyword meta tag. It’s relatively easy to scour the competition’s website and extract their keyword meta tags. The danger is that your competition may not have optimized their meta tags well and you’ll just be getting garbage, but if your competition has done a good job at producing optimized web pages, including the meta tags, then you can get their full list of keywords just by visiting their websites.
When using meta tags, you have to visit each page of your competition’s website individually. That’s because they will likely have optimized every page for one, two, or three keywords. The meta tags, if done properly, will show up to 10 important keywords for each page (5 is better) and each page will be optimized for different keywords. So you can see that there should be some overlap from page to page.
At any rate, while the keywords meta tag is not the only place to go for competitive keyword analysis, it is one place you don’t want to overlook.