Microsoft's Key Phrase Research tool is now officially in beta. It's a really powerful tool and offers a ton of great information. I highly recommend you check it out!...
This week's list of the top 500 most frequently searched keywords....
I promise to let go of this one after this week, but there have been so many upset people that I feel the need to revisit this subject once again. There have been many comments about my original post that you should primarily target one keyword per page. I followed that up with some explanation of why. But one commenter called the advice "utter nonsense" (which is even worse that that regular nonsense I usually spew), so I think I'd like to give the explanation one more try, in hopes that perhaps we can at least live with each other...
Last week in this space, I urged organic search marketers to focus on optimizing for one keyword per page, rather than taking a scattershot approach where they are trying to shoehorn many keywords into the same landing page. I knew that it wasn't the normal advice that people hear, but I wasn't prepared for how many comments and questions I got, so I thought it was worth revisiting the topic this week. If you're still unpersuaded about the approach of targeting one keyword per page, I want to take another shot at it....
I'm sometimes asked this question, usually by someone savvy in search marketing. After all, it's expensive to create and optimize pages for search, so you'd want to amortize that investment over as many keywords as possible right? Actually, no. The number of organic search keywords I recommend you target per page is one....
This week's list of the top 500 most frequently searched keywords....
I'm a big fan of keyword research but I know that the data provided from any keyword research tool has its limitations. For the most part, these tools can only provide you information on what is being searched. What they can't do is tell you which searches were relevant, which results were quickly discarded in favor of a different or more refined search, or which searches actually provided the visitor with exactly what they were looking for.
This week's list of the top 500 most frequently searched keywords....
This week's list of the top 500 most frequently searched keywords....
I am frequently asked how to find search terms in a specialized industry—the other day I was asked specifically about the Biotech and the Medical Device industries. I think part of the reason this question comes up is that we search experts always use popular examples, such as "digital cameras," to demonstrate keyword research. But what if you sell apnea monitors? Surely a product that specialized needs a different approach, right?...
This week's list of the top 500 most frequently searched keywords....
This week's list of the top 500 most frequently searched keywords....
This week's list of the top 500 most frequently searched keywords....
This week's list of the top 500 most frequently searched keywords....
The process of organizing your keywords is similar to the process of splitting a single core term into multiple cores, only its done in a much more fine-tuned scale. With core terms you were dealing with multiple themes, or different ways to search for the same product. In this phase we are working with only a single core term and deciding how to segment literally hundreds of phrases into manageable groups that are similar in nature.
Organizing your keywords into an effective marketing strategy is the most important of the four phases of keyword research outlined in this document. While most often SEOs and keyword researchers focus on the research phases, organizing your keyword properly can truly help you create a vastly more successful optimization and marketing campaign.
The most important aspect of analyzing and eliminating keywords is to fully understand what the customer is looking for. We often see keywords through our own lens of understanding. You think about things a certain way because you are educated and trained that way. But the customer may not be educated in the same way, or at all, in terms of industry related jargon. So you have to step outside of your own thought processes and learn to look through the lens of searchers who think differently from the way you do.
As you sort through your lists of keywords, you want to be sure to eliminate phrases that won't deliver converting traffic. Whatever keywords that you keep for optimization, you want each to be able to drive the most qualified traffic, giving you visitors that are most likely to buy your product or services.
After having researched through your relevant core terms and search phrases, it's time to start the process of looking more closely at each phrase. What you want to do is separate the good keywords from the not-so good. You need to find the search phrases that will ultimately provide you with the greatest benefit in your marketing campaigns, and eliminating or sidelining the rest.
If you've been enjoying Stoney's series of articles on keyword research and organization, you may have found yourself rethinking your own keyword strategy. If so, you might be looking for some more ideas on how to start building out those lists.
As you research out your core terms you'll notice that there are three types of results produced. The first will be a core term that returns a very small list of search phrases. Almost too small to do anything with. The second is one that produces a healthy list of phrases that you can easily organize for optimization. The third produces an extremely long list of phrases that can be broken up into several other sub-core terms and groups. We'll discuss this latter in detail.
A core term and search phrase are similar in that both will be searched and both can provide potential traffic to your site. Core terms, represent a broader topic while the search phrases are simply core terms with added qualifiers, therefore representing a narrower focus. Both core terms and search phrases will be optimized into your website to drive traffic and hopefully, be instrumental in generating strong conversion rates.
There are four different factors that you need to analyze in determining the relative importance of each core term:
Site owners often begin the research process by first going to the available tools. But you can't really use these tools effectively--or to their fullest potential--until you have some information in which to actually research out. In this step we want to take core terms that we've already discovered and plug them into the tools to help us find core terms that have still remained elusive.
Today I'll show you the research steps involved in finding good, strong core terms that will be the basis for the rest of our research, and provide us some actionable intelligence that will be used throughout the keyword research process.
Because keyword research is so crucial, a more organized approach to it is essential. Instead of starting the research process looking for words you essentially already know but are just in an unknown order, you must start the process looking for what is unknown. In order to find those unknown phrases, you have to start with a foundation that will guide you from where you are to what it is that you're trying to find, a list of keywords that can be optimized into your site.
A start to finish guide on how to find, analyze, prioritize and organize your keywords. How to create a solid keyword foundation for your SEM campaigns, whether SEO or PPC, that puts you in a stronger position for success and gives you a significant advantage over your toughest competition.
One of the things you should be doing on a fairly regular basis for your web site is running a quick check on your keyword phrases so you can make tweaks to your copy. Just because a word or phrase was popular when you first optimized your site doesn't mean it is now and regular keyword research can help you spot "holes" in the search results that you can fill by creating new content.
Today we're taking a look at a stock photography website selling the rights to gorgeous photos in a niche topic. The website has a great product to sell, and a decent process for doing it. However, the site design and usability could use a little work prior to taking the next step in online marketing. When you are offering a niche product in a common area, IE stock photography, it's helpful to take some cues from other successful industry websites....
One of the questions I hear over and over again when I teach a search marketing boot camp is "How do search engines know which of my words are my keywords." These folks believe Google has a "list" of keywords and they come to your site hunting for them. While I can understand their line of thinking, the idea that search engines dub certain words on your site as your keywords isn't really true.
You've probably heard me advise marketers to "do it wrong quickly," allowing feedback from customers to help you improve your marketing. I am using feedback from my June 24th post on "Free Ways to Estimate Keyword Demand" (and a fortuitous announcement by Google) to improve the procedure I documented just a few weeks ago. (In case you're wondering, "keyword demand" is the number of searches on a particular search keyword done in a period of time, such as "3,000 U.S. searches per month for the keyword AAA Plumbing"—which you can use to help project the traffic you'll attract to your...
Before search engine optimization can be successful in driving conversions, not just rankings, you first need to ensure that your site is usable and compelling. Dynamic-Living.com has done a great job of creating a clean, simple, well-organized website and their visitors will have no trouble finding the products they want and getting through the checkout process. With a website in good shape, their next step is to perform optimization so that they start ranking for relevant keywords....
Have you ever been walking down the street just sort of minding your own business, staring at the cracks in the sidewalk, when you suddenly spot a fiver just laying there on the pavement? My fiver on the sidewalk of search engine marketing was NUMBERS. Yes, Google showed me numbers, glorious numbers. Not just the "1 through 4" types either. Big ones and little ones. Odd ones and even ones. It was neat. It wasn't Bob Barker calling my name or anything. But it was neat....
Is search marketing old enough to have a good old days? If it is, then I remember them. Ah, the days when you could fire up the Overture keyword tool to see how many searches were done in the U.S. on Yahoo! for a particular keyword. Add a little math, and you could estimate the number of searches done across all U.S. search engines in a month. But then Yahoo! crippled that free tool, and we've been left with no way to project keyword demand, until now....
This week we are taking a look at GolfAsian.com, an agency that plans golf vacations in Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. With a well-organized website and great customer service, they are poised to become a leader in the golf vacation industry - with a few website tweaks and online marketing strategies....
If you've been reading about search engine marketing for more than, oh...about five minutes, you know you need to pick and target keywords and phrases as part of your campaign. You might even be familiar with some of the popular keyword tools and know about concepts like the keyword long tail. Heck, you might have already picked your phrases, optimized your site and moved along to other projects. No matter what point you're at, you need to read Christine Churchill's latest article over at Search Engine Land about selecting your keywords.
Ben McConnell has a short little post over at Church of the Customer this week that serves as a perfect example of why keyword research is so essential. McConnell is talking about companies that rely too heavily on jargon in their marketing materials. In the world of search engine optimization, we call that "PR speak."
Today we begin the first installment of a weekly site clinic column, where small businesses are invited to submit their websites for review. Can't beat a little free advice, right? I'll be looking at the design, copy, usability, SEO, marketing, and any technical issues that may prevent websites from drawing loyal, active visitors and meeting goals. Each week, I'll give the top five issues the website owner/manager can address to significantly improve performance. ...
Continuing with coverage of the Small Business Marketing Unleashed conference, here's Heather Lloyd-Martin's presentation on keywords and content....
No doubt some of you looked at your calendars last week and realized you'd missed the $850 early bird price for our upcoming Small Business Marketing Unleashed conference in Houston. Don't sweat it, we've got you covered. We've spent the last six months building the perfect conference for you. We know how busy you are. Do you think we'd let you miss out on this great show just because you forget to set an alert on your calendar?
Another reason why people wrongly assume that keyword phrases in URLs are a factor in getting a page to show up in the search results is because the top results do indeed often use keyworded URLs! But (and this is a big but) websites that use keyword-rich URLs are using them because someone, somewhere is attempting to optimize the pages to show up in the search results — which means they are doing a lot more than simply putting keywords in URLs as part of their website optimization.
There are many keyphrase tools out there, but any quality search engine optimization company should know that they are in no way replacements for true market research. When one is embarking on a campaign of marketing on the Internet, it is important to select keyphrases that represent an understanding of one's audience. In this article, we'll discuss two crucial aspects of keyphrase research that your search engine optimization company should be taking into consideration: knowing the prospect and knowing the company.
According to new data released by the e-tailing group and PowerReviews, nearly two-thirds of online shoppers now spend a significant amount of time reading consumer reviews before making a purchase. Dubbed "social researchers," these shoppers rely on advice and feedback from others to help them decide which products or services to buy. 86% claim these reviews are "extremely important" to their buying decisions.
Although researching keywords for SEO is similar to that for PPC there still are many core differences. In many cases using the generic targets with high searches can be very costly in the world of PPC. While they can offer a good return, often long tailed, very specific phrases can offer more qualified traffic at a lower price
One of the first bits of advice I give to those who are new to search engine optimization is to stop trying to rank for highly competitive phrases and to focus on the long tail of search. Hamlet Batista disagrees. In fact, he wrote a post yesterday explaining exactly why he feels the suggestion to aim for less competitive phrases is a bad one. I understand what he's trying to say, but he's missing the point.
So you have decided to venture out into the world of SEO. The first thing you will need to do is determine the direction of your campaign in relation to the key phrases you are choosing to target. This article will focus on how to find keywords for your organic campaign, as the process is slightly different for PPC....
Keyword research is a vitally important aspect of your search engine optimization campaign. If your site is targeting the wrong keywords, the search engines and your customers may never find you, resulting in lost dollars and meaningless rankings....
We all know how crucial it is to create captivating titles and descriptions for our Web pages. Those titles and descriptions should contain our keyword phrase, of course, but the true value of titles and descriptions is the clickability of them in the search results....
With great anticipation, I pre-ordered Chris Anderson's The Long Tail two months ago. I received it last week and have read it through fairly quickly. I enjoyed the book as it was much more of a social commentary than a business manual. I like this approach, as the long tail is not a "how-to", but a "because why"....
In most cases, the top 10 terms provide a lot of traffic, but not nearly as much as the total terms after the top 10 or 20 most popular. Add up the terms that refer 1-3 visits during the month, and chances are, they will add up to more total visitors than the top terms....
What is the return on your investment for your search engine efforts? Recently, I was introduced to a new ROI calculating service called KeywordTool. It covers both pay-per-click engines and regular engine results....
Keywords are the most important part of your search engine optimization campaign. How will you know if you are targeting the right keywords if you don't research them, refine them, and more importantly, test the keywords and keyword market?...
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