So, you’ve done your keyword research.  Trends and Insights have got you jumping, and now it’s time to compete with the 50,000+ competitors out there to be found on the first page of Google Search results.  So, what will set your keyword apart?

Keyword Optimization, of course!

The placement, frequency, and geography of your keyword are all important pieces of your Keyword Optimization puzzle.

SAM, what is Keyword Placement?

When I refer to keyword placement, I’m talking about optimizing content by making sure that your relevant keyword is EVERYWHERE on and in your page!  Your keyword should appear in the body content of your site/page, should be tagged, AND should be a part of your URL.  A cute URL is not as important as a relevant one.

How often should my keyword appear, SAM?

Frequency is a VERY important factor in optimizing your keyword.  We call the frequency of your keyword, “Keyword Density.”  Keyword Density ≈ (Keyword Phrase) ÷ (# of words). Ideal keyword density is approximately 3-5%, and can be easily calculated at http://www.keyworddensity.com/.  Remember, a keyword density which is too low, won’t optimize your site.  If your keyword density is too high, you could be flagged for keyword spamming.

SAM, what does geography have to do with Keyword Optimization and SEO?

Great question.  I am referring to varying types of media.  And by using the word geography, I’m asking you to see your site/page, and all forms of media in a bubble-chart layout.  If you’re trying to populate the web with your content, you need to “cover a lot of territory.”  Make your mark in a video, podcast, blog, article, and connect them all to your website, making sure to use your keyword strategically in all locations.

Optimizing the keyword you wish to be found for must be well calculated.  Once you have chosen keywords with high search volume and low competition, it is wise to do some background checking to make sure the future with your keyword is looking bright.  Google Insights and Google Trends are two free ways to check out the history of your word and where it’s headed.

Let’s begin with Insights.  Head on over to http://www.google.com/insights/search/#.  When you arrive on this page there will be a place for your term, and drop-down menus to the right which allow you to customize by location.  If you’re selling books on Amazon and most of your sales base is across the United States, then you would not need to customize your location beyond “United States.”  However, you’re a local business, like a chiropractic office, it’s important to see what’s happening where people will be looking for you.  As an example, let’s search “Chiropractic” in “United States>Michigan>Detroit” over the past 12 months.  Your search will yield a few different measuring tools:

1) A graph that will show the popularity of people searching for your term over the designated period of time you chose.

2) Interest by Region. In our Chiropractic search, for example, we are shown how cities within the Detroit area compare.

3) The search terms themselves—the actual keywords searchers are using, and the terms that are being used more and more.

One easy thing to spot with these results is the popularity of your keyword… and the graph makes it easy to do this.  IF your graph has a steep or consistent negative slope (inevitable if we were trying to sell VHS players over the last 10 years), it’s possible you’ll need to look for new keywords that people will continue to search for.  Our “Chiropractic” results graph indicate that peoples’ desire to find chiropractors over time is pretty consistent.

Clean past and present?  Let’s turn to what Google thinks the future holds.
Google trends (www.google.com/trends) will allow us to predict the future of our term.   Let’s continue checking out the Chiropractic Market in Michigan.  After typing “Chiropractic” into the search bar and choosing the geographical area of United States>Michigan, you will see a graph showing the trends of the search term in the past.  To the right of the graph will be the most recent relevant news relating to your search term, and below will be the cities in your area that Google predicts will be up and coming.  It looks like the Upper Peninsula will be in need of chiropractic services in the future!

Worried your search term is getting too specific?  DON’T!  You WANT specific!  Sometimes less volume of “landers” on your page is not a bad thing, IF the people landing on your page have landed in the RIGHT place!  We like to visualize this with this nifty dinosaur graph. 

Thanks to Left Click Blog for the image.

The Dino’s height represents the number of searches being completed (at the head), whereas the Dino’s tail indicates the generic (on the left) versus specific (to the right) keywords at the bottom.  Using more specific keywords puts you in the “Long Tail,” increasing your probability to optimize and be found by a relevant audience.  The longer the tail, the more targeted your keyword is toward the audience you’re going after.  A longer tail indicates that of the people who land on your page using those specific terms, the percentage of them that are valuable to you and your business will be higher.

The moral of the story; thoroughly research your keyword to see if trends appear to be in it’s favor.  And, longer tail keywords (phrases with numerous terms in them) target a more relevant audience and are more likely to be of higher value to you.

How to Figure Out Your Best Search Terms Using Google Search Bar and Google Keyword Tools—FREE!

Last week we touched on how to do the initial brainstorming for keyword research—some good ways to find out which keywords you may want to actually research.  So, you’ve got the list of terms that you think people may use to look for you, your product, or your service on the internet (to solve their problem).  NOW what?

It’s time to find out what the numbers say.

Where do I go first?
Well, there are a number of products you can use to find out which words are working and which words are not.  The good news?  There is a free version of almost all of them.  Google offers: Google Search bar, Keyword Tools, Insights, and Trends to help you with your keyword research. Some other products out there include: Wordstream, Worktracker, and Keyword Discovery.  For now, we’re going to focus on Google Search Bar and Google Keyword Tools.

Let’s start with the Google Search Bar.
Sound familiar?  It should, because you probably use it every day.  We’re talking about the exact same search bar you type your searches into when you’re looking for something.  Maybe you haven’t noticed it before, but whenever you search for a term or phrase, when Google provides your results page(s), Google indicates how many results are yielded (and how long it took for the results to appear).  Example: Search “mashed potatoes” and you will see that 17,200,000 results were found within 0.16 seconds.  “Mashed potato recipes” yield 357,000 results in 0.19 seconds.  Google Search Bar is the easiest, least complicated tool to use.  If you’re looking for terms to be found for, you can decide pretty quickly whether or not you stand a chance (competition against 17 million other results for “mashed potatoes” and you want to land on the first page?  You can probably stop right there…)

Let’s pretend you searched “mashed potatoes” or something else, and your results yielded 24,000 results instead. We would advise you to proceed checking out the statistics on your term (as a rule of thumb, 30,000 or less is a good place to start).  Head on over Keyword Tools, through AdWords or Google.

From Keyword Tools, you will be able to search terms and find out the volume and competition for searches, as well as learn some groovy stuff about your website and the websites of your competitors.

Next visit www.adwords.google.com.
From the tabs at the top, choose, “Tools and Analytics,” and from the dropdown, choose “Keyword Tool.”  From the landing page, type into the word or phrase box whatever it is you’re looking to see.  As an example, let’s continue with our “mashed potatoes” theme.  Type it into the box, click search, and look below to use the tools.  You will find that under “search terms” you will see your keyword, how many searches are completed each month locally, yearly, and what your competition will be like.  One goal when choosing keywords is to have terms that yield HIGH VOLUME and LOW COMPETITION.  This combination means a lot of people are searching for your term, but not a lot of websites are using that keyword to be found.

Below “search terms” is a laundry list of terms and their stats under “keyword ideas.”  These results are Google’s recommendations of similar terms.  The similar terms may be terms you have already come up with as possibilities OR may offer terms you never thought to consider.

Already have a website?  Check this out…
Head back up to the top of the Keyword Tools page.  Directly below where you typed your keyword(s) is a search bar for “website.” This tool is what you can use to see the keywords Google believes are relevant to your website. Moving out of the realm of potatoes, we’ll search www.searchwithsam.com.

Now, let’s examine the results.
Google thinks that “pay per click on Google,” “pay per click with Google,” “pay per click at Google”… are the most relevant to www.searchwithsam.com.  It’s possible that you may even see some search terms that you used to get here listed below.  This is a great tool to see how Google sees your website AND the websites of your competitors.  Go ahead, choose your own website and try it out.

Some key tips to remember:

-        The more words you have in a keyword, the more targeted you can get (it’s easier to optimize)

-        The goal is to be found on the first page of search results

-        High volume and low competition are ideal when choosing words to be found for (will make being found on the first results page more realistic)

Check us out next week for how to read insights, trends, and How to use the “Long Tail.”

SEO is Not About You
It is perhaps the hardest lesson for anyone to learn, but especially for newbies when figuring out how to optimize their web content with Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  Starting a new blog or business is FANTASTIC!  YOU have all sorts of new ideas to enlighten the world with!  YOU are enthusiastic about what you have to give and the lives you will change with YOUR new fabulous blog!  Well, we’ve got news for YOU.  It is NOT about you.  As a matter of fact, it has nothing to do with you.  Well, maybe a little, but when it comes to search, it all boils down to who the prospect is, what they’re looking for, and making sure you’re a true match.

You think you know what customers need better than they do?  That may be true, but the customers still have to find you… and whatever they’re looking for, you better be it.

Where to start?  It’s called keyword research, and it’s really the foundation for all web activity.

Are You Found for the Right Searches?
What it boils down to is that every time a person types a word, phrase, or query into Google, Bing, or any other search engine, it is noted and recorded as a search.  If you have an online presence, your goal is to be found for the RIGHT searches, i.e. when you have what the searcher is looking for.  Investing in the time up front to do some keyword research will help you to ensure that the traffic directed toward your site is maximized AND meaningful.

Who Really Matters?
-        Until YOU or your product are famous, no one is looking for you… they are looking for an answer to their problem. You may have started a company selling green peas and have decided that you’re going to start calling green peas, holiday peas, and make them the next big thing.  Well, that’s fantastic, but you are not Cher and no one knows what your genius holiday peas are yet.  Thus, no one is looking for you or your peas, and you will not be found.  If you’re famous, you can do what you want.  If you’re the average Joe or Jane, you need to conform a little.

-        High volume traffic does not mean meaningful traffic.  Just because someone is landing on your page does not mean you’re a rock star.  It does you (or them) no good to accidentally land on your site if you don’t have what they’re looking for.  Thus, it’s important to use the right keywords in your site, your URL, blog titles, etc.

-        Think of their search as a question, and your site to be the answer—your keywords must be married.  Your prospect is not going to change their thoughts or behavior, so if you want to be found, you’re going to have to make the move.

Nobody Thinks About it the Same Way You Do
Want to get started?  Aside from using some fabulous analytical tools (which we will touch on next week), one of the best things you can do for you, your site, and your company, is to consult some searchers.  Your searcher consultants can be friends, strangers, family, or anyone who is not tied to calling your green peas, holiday peas.  We did this last week during our Pay Per Click Club Meeting and found that everyone had some surprising and exciting results (a few people even had the “it’s not about me” aha moment).  Find just a few people, explain your business, who the average customer/searcher is (are they men? women? age? occupation?), what they are looking for (hopefully the answer is your product), when they are looking for (is this a quick search while they’re on the road? in the office?), and ask them what they would type into Google if they were looking for you!  Keep an open mind, don’t have hurt feelings, jot down the results (you will need them when we get to the analytics)This is the simplest way to get yourself outside of your head and thinking about your business/service/product/site from the perspective of the searcher.

Stay tuned… more to come on SEO.

I have a creative mind.  I am surrounded by others with creative minds.  I was touched by one of these minds today in a blog post written on 7/14 by Anirudha Kurulkar.  Here is the link to his post: PPC & SEO Compared to Human Life

His story relates the importance of using negative keywords in PPC campaigns to appear in exactly the kind of search for which you want to be found.  Briefly, you ask God for a child, God gives you a beautiful child but the child is blind.  Well, you didn’t tell God you wanted a child with sight.  You got lucky he gave you one with legs, but why leave your results to luck.  Give search engines enough information to give you exactly what you want.  Negative keywords are an underutilized important part of all campaigns.  Use them and use them wisely.

Google is undeniably a ubiquitous part of most of our lives. It is an official word in the Oxford English Dictionary. Additionally, more and more business transactions and dollars are done online and away from Traditional Media: Television, Radio, Print. As a business owner or director of marketing/advertising or a related role, more and more of Business/Marketing individuals must be educated on how to effectively reach the most amount of visitors/users to your website. The key is through Google. Google is a link to many different business websites to potential clients/visitors; who are ready to buy: Internet users already have an intent or need/want for a product of service & their first step is usually through Google.

The following will illustrate and explain the flow of internet traffic to a typical website. In this example we will use Mr. Widgeteer. The owner that sells and buys widgets:

Figure 1. Mr. Widgeteer effectively selects which type of traffic that goes into his website. He doesn’t sell square widgets so he doesn’t want that type of client. Therefore he doesn’t advertise there. On the other hand, he advertises Blue & Fast widgets because he’s most profitable and he continues to like that type of repeat client.

To a certain extent Google becomes the gatekeeper of who gets clients or visitors. As Google’s search engine market share is growing and growing, it holds and dictates the rules of doing business via Search Engine Marketing. One of those rules is to effectively execute your keyword research. You must do your keyword Research!

Why Must You Do Keyword Research? Resources!

Advertising or placement on irrelevant or nonessential keywords can be a waste of time, resources and money! In the aforementioned example, one sees Mr. Widgeteer only sells Blue & Fast widgets. If he’s not selling square widgets he shouldn’t advertise or show internet users. Top search engine placement on the square widgets page would mean lots clicks but none will provide you a return; because you can’t sell them widgets.

Keyword research is very important in finding and qualifying the type of clients/customers that you’re looking for. With the internet, people are overwhelmed with choices. Keyword research can provide business owners with insights on what most average internet users are looking for. Keyword research can provide a wealth of data and statistics about which terms are being searched most and which keywords are currently unmarked territory.

Without using keyword research would amount to selling product x without knowing what demand you’ll receive. A good expert will filter and refine keywords that will be a best fit for your business. Even if you do keyword research the top result may not be something that is a best fit in terms of execution and strategy.

Be sure you contact SAM and discover your Keyword Potential and unlock those new clients that you’ve been looking for.