Part 1b - SEO: Keyword / Key Phrase Resarch
People search for things online by entering words and phrases into their favorite search engine. So in order to help these people find your business website, you have to incorporate the right kinds of phrases in all the right places. This process begins with a thorough round of key phrase research.
If you want your website to come up in search engines for relevant phrases that people are actually searching day in and day out, then you must — you must — spend some time building a list of key phrases. By key phrases, I mean phrases your target audience would enter into a search engine when researching products or services like yours.
A lot of people guess at their key phrases, assuming that everyone else searches the same way they do. This is a bad idea; and to find out why, you can read my real-life case study on the subject:
Internet Assumptions - A Costly Case Study
Here's a true story about using the wrong kinds of phrases on a website. In a previous job position, I managed the search engine optimization program for a number of high-end real estate websites. One of the home builders referred to his product as "luxury estates." All over their website, it was luxury estate this, and luxury estate that. There were also very few mentions of the city where they did business.
So I did some research using services WordTracker.com and KeywordDiscovery.com. I built a list of phrases people were searching, as well as those they weren't searching. As it turned out, no one in the builder's city was searching for a "luxury estate" — no surprise. But thousands of folks were searching for "custom homes" plus the city name.
By adjusting the page copy and other elements accordingly, we more than doubled the client's search traffic — qualified search traffic, that is — in less than two months. It's also important to note that the phrases used on this builder's website did not always translate to their counterparts in other city or states. People use different language in different places.
For instance, I helped another builder in a posh area of Florida. Same product, different location. Only this time, few people were searching for the phrase "custom home." My guess was because all the homes in that area fell within the "custom" category, so people just referred to them as homes (plus the city name).
This same concept applies to other industries as well. For example, are more people searching for "San Diego lawyers" ... or "San Diego attorneys"? Is their more search volume for "website development" ... or "website programming"? Are more people looking for "Dallas lasik surgeons" ... or "Dallas laser eye doctors"?
There's only one way to answer these questions, and that's key phrase research.
The Lesson Learned
When it comes to search engine optimization, you make assumptions at your own risk. If you start your SEO program off by guessing which words and phrases you should include, or what kind of content to create, you're missing the opportunity to connect with a lot of folks who want exactly what you provide! That's where this particular step comes into play.
It's also important to note that longer, more specific phrases often convert better than shorter, generic phrases. Longer phrases are usually less competitive too, and therefore easier to rank for. So be sure to include a good mix of highly competitive (short / generic) phrases and highly targeted (long / specific) phrases on your site.
High-Value Search Phrases
Regardless of key phrase length, you want to create a list of what I call "high-value phrases." Such phrases have three things in common. These will be your minimum criteria when selecting phrases to put on your list:
- People are searching for the phrase.
- The phrase is related to your business / services in some way.
- You are capable of writing about the topic, or you know somebody who can.
How to Build a List of Key Phrases
There are a variety of keyword / key phrase research tools online. Two of the most popular tools can be found at WordTracker.com and KeywordDiscovery.com. If your website is limited in scope (for example, if your business serves a particular niche in a particular town), then you can probably get by using the free version of WordTracker. You can find the free version of their tool at http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com.
(See the Resources section for more great Internet tools.)
Once you have access to a keyword tool, set up an Excel spreadsheet or a Word document for your list of phrases. For now, you only need two columns. Eventually you can add columns for additional purposes, such as keeping track of web pages you've written, your search engine ranking for each phrase, etc. But for now, your spreadsheet or table only needs two columns — "phrase" and "count."
In the phrase column, you will obviously put the phrases that meet the three criteria listed above. In the count column, you will put the number of times the phrase is searched. This number will vary based on which keyword tool you use, but the exact number is not important. What is important is the relative difference between the phrases. For example, you'll get more traffic from a phrase that is searched 500 times a day than from a phrase that gets searched only twice per day.
With that said, go for a mix of high-traffic short phrases and lower-traffic long phrases. The high-traffic phrases will be more competitive, but also more valuable. The lower-traffic phrases are easier to rank for, but will bring less traffic (but more qualified traffic0. Aim for a good mix of the two.
Example Lists of Key Phrases
My main website deals primarily with small business websites, which is actually quite relevant to this book. My list of key phrases might look something like this:
"Small business website design" - daily count 225
"Small business website" - daily count 185
"Small business website development" - daily count 54
And so on...
* These counts are used for example purposes only. Actual data will vary.
I might also want to expand this list with more specific phrases relevant to my book and my website, phrases such as "business blogging" or "small business Internet marketing."
Keep Your List Manageable
For most small business owners, it's better to focus on a manageable list of phrases (say, 15 - 30 phrases) instead of trying to cover all possible variations. Remember, when you rank well for a particular phrase, you will also rank well for similar variations of that phrase. That's the value of having a content-rich website, which we will get to in the next chapter.
So you don't need to be completely exhaustive with your list. Try to create a good mix of general phrases (which are more competitive) and specific / niche phrases (which are less competitive). And make sure every phrase you put on your list is relevant to your products or services in some way.
So now you have a list of key phrases. What do you do with it? You build website content around it!
We will talk plenty more about website content in the next chapter of this book. But in order to complete this lesson on key phrase research and key phrase integration, I'll briefly cover website content now — mainly from a search engine visibility perspective.
Now I want you to study your own list of key phrases for a minute, or at least imagine what such a list might look like for your business. What do you see? You see words and phrases, sure. But they represent much more than that. Your key phrase list represents a constant cycle of Internet research, conducted by the people most likely to need your products or services. So by aligning your website with that cycle of research, you can leverage it for website traffic and potential business.
Remember, we want to tip the competition seesaw in your favor by using the Internet as equalizer. In order to do that, you need to be detail-oriented about your web publishing efforts. It might seem like I'm harping on an insignificant detail here, but nothing could be further from the truth. These details are important. The types of phrases you use on your website — and the types of topics you cover — will directly correlate to the amount of traffic your website gets down the road.
Word and phrases are the building blocks of your future success online. So treat them accordingly.
Think of your key phrase list as a blueprint for website growth. After all, the best way to grow your website is by building content around the phrases and topics your ideal audience is researching online! That's exactly what you're going to do in this step.
Writing website content is one of the easiest and cheapest ways to increase your website's search engine visibility, especially if it's an older website the search engines have already found and indexed. So to finish up our lesson on key phrases, I will show you how to create several pages of new content for your website. You will do this in a very specific way, by referring back to the list of key phrases you created (or soon will create).
Write One Page Per Key Phrase
When working with client websites, this is usually the first step in my process. I consider it "low-hanging fruit" because it's one of the easiest yet most reliable ways to climb the search engines. So in this step, you will begin the process of writing one page of web content for each of your key phrases.
That might seem like a lot of content, but you don't have to do it all at once. Start with ten pages of content to support your top ten phrases. (You can include variations of the same phrase on any given page, so that will help you make this task more manageable).
That's it. It seems pretty simple, doesn't it? Yet you'd be surprised how many websites lack the most fundamental element of search engine visibility — content! Your website cannot begin to appear in search engine results for certain phrases until you have those phrases on your website. That's what you are doing in this step. But instead of having one page focusing on dozens of topics (which is confusing to people and search engines alike), you are going to create one page per topic / phrase.
Your first step, of course, is to conduct some key phrase research to see what kinds of phrases you target audience is typing into search engines. If you haven't done that yet, just realize it's a crucial first step before cranking out pages and pages of content. Remember my real-life story about the "luxury estates" versus the "custom homes"? That website owner could have saved a lot of time and effort — and gotten better search engine results faster — if he had done his key phrase research up front.
The next step is to write a keyword-rich page of web content for each of your key phrases, or the ten you've chosen for this preliminary step. For example, if one of your top phrases were "fitness center Austin, Texas," then you could write a page of content (about 250 - 500 words) about choosing an Austin fitness center, or about the features of your Austin fitness center, etc.
The angle you choose for your web pages is obviously up to you. Just make sure your pages are more than "keyword fodder." Make each page useful and informative, while keeping those key phrases in mind.
Helpful hint: If you're not much of a writer, you can outsource the writing projects using a website like Elance.com.
Regardless of who writes your web content, make sure it's the kind of content your audience would find helpful. Then go back through it to ensure you have your key phrase spread naturally throughout the page (once per paragraph is plenty). You should also include some version of the phrase in the title element of each web page.
"What's a title element?" you ask. Great question. It's our next lesson!
SEO Continued >> The Title Element