SEO Expert Guide - Keyword Analysis (part 3/10)

If you imagine that building an optimized site is like cooking a meal, then keywords are the essential ingredients. Would you attempt to cook a complex new dish without first referring to a recipe? Would you start before you had all the ingredients available and properly prepared?

In our analogy, key words are your ingredients and the rest of the guide (after this part) is your recipe. It is vital that you start by investing time in key word research. This may surprise you, but I would recommend you spend at least 25% of your time on this activity alone! That's 25% of all your time, including the time you spend designing your site, building it, optimising and promoting it! Quite an investment, eh? But believe me, if you din't get this part right your meal will not be a very satisfying one and no-one will want to eat it!

(a) What are your 10 key words?

You may think you know straight off. You are likely to be right about most of them but you will almost certainly make three common mistakes. Firstly, you will tend to pick single words (rather than chains of words). Secondly, you will tend to pick the same words used by other people. Thirdly, you will compound this by overusing these key words on your site and underusing related key words. The result will be a poor finished product and sub-optimal ranking or traffic.

So please be patient and walk through the following steps. From part two, you will remember Doug (who sells antique doors, door handles, knockers, door bells or pulls and fitting services).

Like Doug, you should start with a visit to the Overture Keyword Selector Tool (which I recommend in preference to Wordtracker, which is a paid service, and the Google Adwords: Keyword Suggestion Tool, which does not indicate the popularity count of each search phrase). This tool allows you to check for recent word search combinations (and their derivatives) on the Overture search engine, returning search frequencies for each.

Doug enters "antique doors" and is surprized to find that "antique door knob" and "antique door hinge" score higher than "antique door knocker" (his best selling product in the high street store). But far higher still is the category level combination "antique door hardware". He had never guessed searchers could be so savvy.

Next he tries "antique door knocker" and finds a single derivative "antique brass door knocker". He had not thought seriously about making brass a keyword. Now it is pencilled in on his list.

Trying "antique door bell" and playing around, he discovers "antique door chime" is about as popular (reflecting a difference between UK and US english). This is also very enlightening, as he is hoping to sell to the US audience by mail order.

Perhaps you begin to see my point. As you will see later in the guide, I recommend a separate page for each product, service or information topic on your site. Through your Overture search, you should come up with an "A" list of about 10 key words for each page. At least four of them are likely to be site-wide in their applicability and common to each page. The remaining six will be page-specific. Put any left-over words onto a second page entitled "B" list.

In Doug's example, he decides he wants antique, door, brass and hardware on each page in the site. On the door knocker page, he wants (in addition) the key words knocker, iron, decorative, engraved, pineapple and lion.

You too should do the same. If you find this activity overly difficult, can I suggest you revisit your proposition? It is quite possible you have not yet properly thought that through!

(b) Which key words do your competitors use?

Through searching for door knockers on Google and focusing on the top 15 results, Doug brings up their pages. He uses the menu option "view-source" in Internet Explorer to look at the key words used in the page metadata.

He is surpised to find some consistent themes. For example, almost all of the sites he finds whilst searching for "door knockers" also include "door knobs" in their metadata for that page. He also finds that several have used old as one of their kewords, in addition to antique.

Don't read me wrong here. Metadata (particularly in isolation) is not the route to high search engine rankings (as you will see later). However, top 10 sites generally have done well with their optimization more generally (and their metadata is likely to reflect quality keyword analysis, repeated throughout the site in other ways).

Another key tool is the Google Smackdown, permitting you to compare the overall frequency of two competing keyword sets across the whole of Google's results. Doug compares "antique door knob" with "antique door knocker" and finds the former is hugely overrepresented on the web compared to the latter (with over 2,000 results vs. under 200). He knows that knob is not searched on ten times more (from his earlier work) so decides to concentrate on knocker as a word where he has less competition.

However, Doug confirms the effectiveness of all competitor combinations using the Overture tool and revises his list to include some of these new words, relegating "pineapple" and "lion" to his B-list, in favour of "old" and "knobs".

(c) How many related keywords can you identify?

Now for an important third step. Navigate your browser to the GoRank Ontology Finder - Related Keywords Lookup Tool. Like Doug, try entering "antique door knocker" and look at the results. For "antique", the tool suggests related keywords of old, classic, antique, furniture, vintage, rare, victorian, antiques, collectible.

Hmmm. Now he can see why his competitors use old in their list! Doug runs these related words back through the Overture tool and finds that "Victorian door" yields some decent results, so adds Victorian and Edwardian to his B-list (something he had never thought of previously).

Imagine if Doug had started with victorian door knockers as his gane plan. The Ontology finder would have shown him that antique door knockers was a much more sensible combination. He would then have been changing his A-list.

As Search Engines move ever further towards the use of semantic intelligence in their ranking systems, the use of relared keywords will become ever more important. Make sure you future-proof your site through the liberal use of such words in page text content. More on this later in the guide.

(d) Building key word chains

Perhaps it might surprise you to learn that the majority of all searches on Google are for two or three word combinations. Why does it surprise you, though? Isn't that what you yourself do when you are searching? Even if you start with one word, the results you get are generally not specific enough (so you try adding further words to refine your search).

Bearing this in mind, it is vitally important to come up with 3-5 keyword chains for each separate page on your site. When you write your page copy later, you will need to ensure that these keyword chains appear with reasonable density in your overall text.

Like Doug, pay a visit to the ABAKUS Topword Keyword Check Tool. Put in your competitor sites one after another and check out the results (using the default search settings). Study closely the two-word and three-word combinations that come up most frequently for each of your key pages in turn.

Through Doug's exploration (for his door knockers page), he comes up with three favorite two-letter combinations: "door knockers", "antique door" and "antique hardware". For three-letter combinations, he settles on "house antique hardware" and "brass door knocker".

Doug is surprised to note that "door knockers" is more popular than "door knocker". He has learnt another key lesson; always pluralise your key words where you can. You will achieve higher traffic this way (becuase of the way search engines handle queries).

For a typical 10-page site, you should now have approximately 65-70 A-list words (with four of those being site wide) and perhaps as many as 200 B-list words (many of which will be related key words). You will have perhaps as many as 50 key word chains. Congratulations. You now have all the ingredients you need to get cooking. Read on...

Navigate the guide

Previous : SEO Expert Guide - Proposition Development (part 2/10)

Next: SEO Expert Guide - Sitewide Optimization (part 4/10)

About the author:

David Viney (david@viney.com) is the author of the Intranet Portal Guide; 31 pages of advice, tools and downloads covering the period before, during and after an Intranet Portal implementation.

Read the guide at http://www.viney.com/DFV/intranet_portal_guide or the Intranet Watch Blog at http://www.viney.com/intranet_watch.

---

Black Hat SEO and the Sneaky Redirect

Are shades of grey SEO really Black Hat SEO?Black hat... Read More

Cache in the Bank: Understanding Googles Advanced Operators

If you would like to know when your site was... Read More

Search Engine Saturation Tool ? A Must Have SEO Tool

Search Engines have become the soul of the Internet. They... Read More

SEO Quickstart - 3 Things You can Do to Improve Search Engine Rankings Right Now

Increasing your search engine rankings should certainly be one of... Read More

Link Popularity: Why Its The Best Investment You Can Do For Your Business

More and more search engines rank your web pages based... Read More

Absolute Top Five Search Engine Marketing Myths Uncovered!

It's no secret that Search Engine marketing can drive significant... Read More

Search Engine Ranking... Oh, the Mystery!

Rankings, Rankings, Rankings!How do you get your website ranked well... Read More

Without Conversion Rates You Don’t Know If You’re Mickey Mouse Or Mickey Mantle

I couldn’t agree more with the headline of this article... Read More

The Two Most Important Things You Must Do For Google Top Ranking

Attaining a top ranking in Goggle or any other major... Read More

Non-Reciprocal Link Building For Higher Search Engine Positioning

Non-Reciprocal Link Building For Higher Search Engine Positioning By Dave... Read More

7 Search Engine Optimization Mistakes and Solutions

To many websites, webmasters discover that major sources of website... Read More

Keyword Targeting Strategy In Your Site

Once the keywords have been decided for the site one... Read More

Anatomy Of A Top Ranking Web page

Optimizing web pages for high rankings in the search engines... Read More

What is Search Engine Optimization?

It is no secret that search engines are the number... Read More

SEO For Ecommerce

Ranking well under the free listings in the major search... Read More

Finding The True PR Of A Page?

I had an email "conversation" this last week which I... Read More

How To Weather Google Algorithm Changes

If you spend much time reading the various webmaster forums,... Read More

Tales, Fails And Betrayals Of Search Engine Placement Part 1

This is the first of a series of articles about... Read More

Has Google Indexed Your Site ?

So has Google found your site yet?Over the last 12... Read More

SEM - Research Measures Success

SEM - Research Measures SuccessSearch engine marketing success comes from... Read More

5 Extremely Valuable Search Engine Optimization Tips

Search engine optimization is THE most cost effective way for... Read More

How to Get One Way Backlinks

Don't be fooled into believing that all backlinks are created... Read More

Why Search Engine Optimization is Not Enough

OK. So you've created a nice website with lots of... Read More

Google Gunning For Directories?

Why is it that webmasters are so quick to blame... Read More

Seecrets on Website Promotion: Search Engine Wars ? a Different Perspective

The objective of all search engine providers is epitomized by... Read More

SEO, the Simplified Version

Lets get things straight. SEO is a very competitive market.... Read More

SEO Tips - Google Has Changed - Learn Why And What To Do

Google now checks the year your domain name was first... Read More

Search Engine Optimization Tips For 2005 - Part Two

Welcome to the second part of our series of articles... Read More

Search Engine Marketing: 20 Nitty-Gritty Strategies To Compel People To Link To Your Website

You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know... Read More

How To Measure Search Engine Marketing ROI

According to the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO), advertisers... Read More

What is the Google Dance?

As with any good web developer, the ability to time... Read More

Google PageRank Explained

PageRank - an exclusive technology developed by Google which can... Read More

Soliciting Search Engines

As your guide operator through the web, search engines are... Read More