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.

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.

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.”

If you change your title, be mindful of any recommendations you have that were tied to the old title.  These may be moved to the unassigned state.  If this happens to you, please follow these steps:

• Go to the left-hand navigation menu. Click ‘Recommendations’ under the ‘Profile’ sub-menu.
• Scroll down to the ‘Unassigned recommendations’ part of the page. Click ‘Show ‘Recommendations’.
• You can now assign each recommendation to a specific experience listing.

Good luck with your search and find objectives!

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.