By the time you get round to entering your keywords into your website, you should have conducted a good amount of research to make sure that you know what keywords to use and why you are using them. It is also vital that you target your page towards keywords that are directly related to your business and specifically what your website describes and offers the user. Choosing the wrong keywords can either result in having hardly any traffic, or more likely having a very high bounce rate (where visitors click on the website and leave immediately).
The first step is to take a good look at your website and make sure that each page has a specific purpose. Your website should be arranged so that each page describes an individual part of your business or service, this will make it easier for you to target each page with the correct keyword. Far too many people build websites and add pages to the site for the sake of adding pages. This can result in the message of the website being spread thinly across various pages and not only will that lead to SEO difficulties, anyone who has looked into website analytics will tell you that 90% of website visitors simply don’t hang around long enough to navigate through a poorly organised website. They need to get the information they are looking for straight away, or they will simply go back to Google and click on the next website. Don’t be afraid to reorganise your website, or even re-build it at this stage. Although this will take time and money; you will definitely benefit from increased productivity of the website.
Your website should by now be nice and focused, with each page targeting a different subject matter. Having conducted some keyword research, you should also know what keywords to put into what page. Targeting a page towards a keyword needs to be a focused effort with many elements of the page saying the same thing. Many people think that simply entering some meta tags will do the trick. This is certainly not the case. Let’s work through an example to explain how you can effectively target your pages. For the purpose of the example below, we will imagine that we are doing some SEO for a website that sells holidays in Greece, and that the page in question is focusing in on Corfu, and the keyword we have chosen to target the page for is ‘holidays in corfu’. We recommend putting the keyword in the following areas of the page:
Page URL:” www.exampleholidays.co.uk/holidaysincorfu”
Meta Title: “Example Holidays :: Holidays in Corfu”
Meta Description: “Example holidays; some of the finest packages available of Holidays in Corfu; Book now for early bird discount”
Meta Tags: “Holidays In Corfu, Keyword, Keyword, Keyword, Keyword, Keyword, ”
H1 Tag: “Holidays in Corfu”
Text: “Holidays in Corfu” within first 100 words
Image Tags: “Holidays in Corfu” included in tags
Monday, 22 February 2010
Thursday, 18 February 2010
Keyword Research
The first step of any online campaign is deciding what you want to be known for, particularly when aiming for a stronger presence on the search engines. These terms or search phrases that you wish to be seen for are called ‘keywords’. Researching and implementing these keywords into your website is crucial to the success of your website. It is vital that you look into both the search volume of each keyword and also the competition levels. By conducting a bit of research first you will gain a good understanding of how your market looks online, and also what keywords you could realistically achieve good positions for.
There are many ways you can conduct keyword research. The internet offers different tools, both free and paid for, and in addition to that there are some commands on the search engines that will also give you some clues. Free tools such as Google’s Adword’s keyword tool give you a basic look into monthly search volumes and competition levels, however it is sometimes questionable as to how accurate these figures can be. If you want to step it up a notch, you could try paying for software such as Word Tracker. Word Tracker will give you a much more thorough analysis of each word and ultimately give you a better view of the market.
For most people, using the free tools and search commands are enough to give a good idea of what keywords you should target with your website. Listed below are a few useful search commands that you could use to do a little research:
1. “In URL : ‘keyword’”
By typing this into a search engine and replacing the word ‘keyword’ with your keyword, you will get a list, and more importantly a number, of websites that are using your keyword in their URLs. This will give you a solid idea of how many websites are directly targeting your keyword.
2. “In title: ‘keyword’”
2nd most important to the url, the meta title is vital to targeting a particular keyword. By using this command you will be able to see how many websites are using your keyword in their meta titles.
3. “In text: ‘keyword”
This command will give you a really good rounded view of the market. It will produce a list of websites that are talking about your keyword.
The perfect keyword is one that has a substantial amount of traffic, yet a relatively low competition level. Of course, the keyword must be highly relevant to your website and business to ensure that any traffic that comes from the search engines is looking for exactly what you offer. You will probably find that when you start to look into keywords, by varying the phrase slightly you can find keywords with high traffic levels and low competition...this is exactly what you are looking for. Also, don’t ignore keywords with low search volumes; if these keywords are relevant to your website the traffic they could bring could be a lot higher in quality if you are targeting a niche area.
There are many ways you can conduct keyword research. The internet offers different tools, both free and paid for, and in addition to that there are some commands on the search engines that will also give you some clues. Free tools such as Google’s Adword’s keyword tool give you a basic look into monthly search volumes and competition levels, however it is sometimes questionable as to how accurate these figures can be. If you want to step it up a notch, you could try paying for software such as Word Tracker. Word Tracker will give you a much more thorough analysis of each word and ultimately give you a better view of the market.
For most people, using the free tools and search commands are enough to give a good idea of what keywords you should target with your website. Listed below are a few useful search commands that you could use to do a little research:
1. “In URL : ‘keyword’”
By typing this into a search engine and replacing the word ‘keyword’ with your keyword, you will get a list, and more importantly a number, of websites that are using your keyword in their URLs. This will give you a solid idea of how many websites are directly targeting your keyword.
2. “In title: ‘keyword’”
2nd most important to the url, the meta title is vital to targeting a particular keyword. By using this command you will be able to see how many websites are using your keyword in their meta titles.
3. “In text: ‘keyword”
This command will give you a really good rounded view of the market. It will produce a list of websites that are talking about your keyword.
The perfect keyword is one that has a substantial amount of traffic, yet a relatively low competition level. Of course, the keyword must be highly relevant to your website and business to ensure that any traffic that comes from the search engines is looking for exactly what you offer. You will probably find that when you start to look into keywords, by varying the phrase slightly you can find keywords with high traffic levels and low competition...this is exactly what you are looking for. Also, don’t ignore keywords with low search volumes; if these keywords are relevant to your website the traffic they could bring could be a lot higher in quality if you are targeting a niche area.
A Little Intro to SEO
The process of search engine optimisation (SEO) is aimed at pushing a website further up the search engines for specified searches. This can be quite a difficult and time consuming process and is definitely one that requires a certain amount of patience. SEO involves both on-site and off-site activity and one must first analyse the website in question and carefully look into options for keywords to be used. There are many companies who specialise in SEO and their prices range greatly, as do the techniques they use. At the end of the day, it’s their results that matter the most so if you are considering paying a company to engage in SEO of your behalf, first make sure you are happy with their track record.
On-Site Optimisation
On-site optimisation is as the title suggests; it involves work carried out on a website and its aim is to make a website as search engine friendly as possible and also relevant to the searches involved. Typically, the work done on a website will be both technical and content based. Search engines use complicated formulas or ‘algorhythms’ to decide upon the placement of websites within their listings, and thus there are many factors involved at this stage. Once the keywords have been chosen, the first step is to make sure that all the content on the website is focused towards the keywords, and that the meta page titles/descriptions/tags are also keyword strong. This ensures that the search engines identify your website in relation to your chosen keywords. Technically, a website must be of a high quality and that includes factors such as page validation, load times and XML site maps etc. All these things can help you earn ‘brownie’ points with the search engines and therefore increase your positioning.
Off-Site Optimisation
Off-site optimisation is focused mainly on gaining a website inbound links. A major part of any search engines algorithm is the amount of links a website has coming in. However, not only do search engines judge on the quantity of links, they also judge the quality of links. A high quality link is worth so much more than hundreds of low quality links. A high quality link is usually a link coming from a website with an old domain name and a high page ranking that is relevant to you particular line of work. Having a link as close to the home page as possible also helps the cause. When acquiring a new link, it is important that you try to make sure that the ‘anchor text’ includes the keywords for your website. ‘Anchor text’ is the text that forms the link to your website. This text helps identify to the search engines what the link is all about, and goes a long way to helping boost your websites positioning.
There is much more to it than discussed in this article, but hopefully some of the points raised can go some way to making the process of SEO clearer.
On-Site Optimisation
On-site optimisation is as the title suggests; it involves work carried out on a website and its aim is to make a website as search engine friendly as possible and also relevant to the searches involved. Typically, the work done on a website will be both technical and content based. Search engines use complicated formulas or ‘algorhythms’ to decide upon the placement of websites within their listings, and thus there are many factors involved at this stage. Once the keywords have been chosen, the first step is to make sure that all the content on the website is focused towards the keywords, and that the meta page titles/descriptions/tags are also keyword strong. This ensures that the search engines identify your website in relation to your chosen keywords. Technically, a website must be of a high quality and that includes factors such as page validation, load times and XML site maps etc. All these things can help you earn ‘brownie’ points with the search engines and therefore increase your positioning.
Off-Site Optimisation
Off-site optimisation is focused mainly on gaining a website inbound links. A major part of any search engines algorithm is the amount of links a website has coming in. However, not only do search engines judge on the quantity of links, they also judge the quality of links. A high quality link is worth so much more than hundreds of low quality links. A high quality link is usually a link coming from a website with an old domain name and a high page ranking that is relevant to you particular line of work. Having a link as close to the home page as possible also helps the cause. When acquiring a new link, it is important that you try to make sure that the ‘anchor text’ includes the keywords for your website. ‘Anchor text’ is the text that forms the link to your website. This text helps identify to the search engines what the link is all about, and goes a long way to helping boost your websites positioning.
There is much more to it than discussed in this article, but hopefully some of the points raised can go some way to making the process of SEO clearer.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)