SEO 101: On-Page Optimization Part 4
Voila! Part 4 of our SEO 101 series from SEO geniuses Matt Lerche and Josh Unseth. If you missed last week’s edition, check out Part 3 now!
Basics of Keyword Research
Knowing how to do basic keyword research is a huge asset to anyone who has a website. The information garnered through this simple online marketing secret helps site owners understand how many people look for the subject being written about. Keyword research can also be a good wake up call to site owners, reminding them just how immersed they are in their own industry’s jargon.
Good keyword research will get a person ranking for all sorts of relevant terms for their article or site page. Google, Yahoo and Bing are really very good at determining what words relate to what.
That means if you do good keyword research and implement it on your site correctly, Google and the others will know what your article or site is about, which, in turn, will make your site rank for both related high-traffic and related low-traffic keywords. While high-traffic keywords (also known as short-tail keywords) will yield the best results with regard to traffic increases, the multitudes of low-traffic keywords, are ultimately likely to be the major traffic drivers to your site. (This is referred to as the long-tail theory of search).
What is a Keyword?
Search Engines like Google and Yahoo send little robots all over the Internet called spiders. These spiders go page to page reading the content, and Google depends on complex algorithms they have written to determine what the page is about. When an user goes to Google’s homepage and searches for a phrase or word, Google uses the information that it has obtained from all the pages that its spiders have retrieved to deliver results to the user. These results are based on what Google thinks will give that user the most relevant website for their query.
Millions and millions of searches are done every day. So it should come as no a surprise that some of those searches use the same words. Phrases that people search are called “keyword phrases”. For simplicity, we call them keywords. The goal of any online marketer is to identify keywords that are searched regularly and make the website rank well for them.
How Do I Find Keywords That Have Lots of Search Volume?
There are several proprietary tools that allow people to find specific keywords. But most of them are more helpful for doing competitive research and fall outside the spectrum of a document on basic keyword research. The best tool for simple keyword research is the aptly named Google Keyword Tool.
This free program is a powerful fountain of knowledge. Google takes all of the searches that users do and gives the information away for free.
You use this tool by entering a keyword phrase into the top box, and clicking “Get Keyword Ideas”. So long as you keep the “Use synonyms” box selected, the Google Keyword Tool will put out a list of keywords that are related to the word you put into the box.
The way I use it is to start with the broadest term or terms I can possibly use, and I let the program output all the related words.
Let me give you an example. In my industry what I do is called search engine optimization. It is often abbreviated SEO. So, I will search both “SEO” and “Search Engine Optimization” in order to get a sense for what people are searching for with regard to my own profession.
I then sort the search in descending order by “Global Monthly Search Volume” by clicking on the link on top of the column, and I make sure that “Broad” is selected under “Match Type”.
The results are interesting. SEO has become a buzzword, and as a result, the acronym “SEO” is searched 5 million times per month while “search engine optimization” is searched just 823,000 times per month. Following the broadest search terms, I see that the most searched terms within my industry are “seo services” at 165,000, “seo company” at 135,000 searches, “search engine optimization marketing” at 90,500, and “seo optimization” at 74,000 searches per month.
After brainstorming about what your article is about, or what your site is about, make good keyword selections. These keywords should be put all over the article or page in ways that make sense to users and the crawlers. Make sure to include them in your Meta description, <h1></h1> tags, <h2></h2> tags, within your site’s <title></title> tag, and within the body of text.
How Many Keywords Should I Target?
A good rule of thumb is to select no more than three keywords for a given page. Remember that part of targeting keywords means incorporating them into your content. That said, selecting more keywords dilutes your keyword density, which will make it hard to get your site ranking well for things. This means that keyword targeting is a pretty good way to help a person understand how to arrange their site. If you want to rank for more keywords, you should build out more pages that allow you to target those keywords.
I’ve Picked My Keywords, Now What?
Ok, so you’ve picked your keywords and written your content that incorporates the keywords you selected. The next thing to do is acquire links. There are a lot of in depth tutorials online about getting links. The best way to get them is by asking people you know who also have websites if they can link to you. Just ask them to link to the page you set up using of the keywords you picked.
If you have questions about how we can help your SEO, email askjar@thejargroup.com with “SEO 101″ in the subject line!
