How many keywords to use?
Let’s start with the basics…
What is a keyword?
Keywords are the magical words your potential customers are actually searching for. Get your keywords right and the writing on your web pages alone can boost your search engine rank. Get it wrong and you could find yourself snubbed by Google et al.
You need to put your thinking cap on. Let’s say you own a hotel in
Edinburgh. You could write lots of text utilising the single keyword
‘hotel’ but this would be a mistake. Most people searching for a hotel
will be looking for one in a specific place and may type ‘Edinburgh
hotel’ or similar. The people searching for that keyphrase are your potential customers.
‘Aha’ you think. I get it now. My hotel has a spa, people might
search for ‘hotels with spas’. It also has an outstanding restaurant;
people might search for ‘hotels with good restaurants’. Well yes but then again maybe they won’t.
Before you get carried away you don’t want to spend time optimising
your site for phrase no-one is looking for even though you think it’s a
dead cert.
What are people searching for?
How do you really know what people are searching for? Where can you find this information?
If you’re just starting out Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly Overture) http://searchmarketing.yahoo.co.uk/ offers
a free keyword suggestion tool. You type in a keyword or phrase and it
tells you how many times that keyword or phrase was searched for over
the past month. It also helpfully provides a range of similar phrases
people have searched for.
Once you become a little more serious it may be worth subscribing to Wordtracker http://www.wordtracker.com/
This is the industry standard tool for keyword research. It’s one of
the resources I use. It’s very powerful but it’s not intuitive. You
need to know how Wordtracker works in order to get most from it. You’ll
also need to know a little about how the search engines work.
Wordtracker’s range of keyword tools allows you to hone your
keyword choice. It searches its database of over 300 million searches
compiled over the past 90 days and projects how much your proposed
keyword is likely to be searched for in the future. It also lets you
know how much competition there is for that keyword i.e.) how many
sites there are out there who also rely on that keyword. It uses
something called the KEI index to do this.
How does the KEI index work?
The KEI index looks at how much your proposed keyword or phrase was searched for in conjunction with how much competition you’re likely to be up against. Then it effectively allocates each keyword or phrase a score; the higher the score the better the phrase. It’s way more complicated than that though. Sometimes it’s worth targeting a low scoring phrase if you can do it better than other websites.
What else can Wordtracker do?
Wordtracker is also a powerful market research tool which allows you to analyse your potential customers’ behaviour. What are the latest search trends relating to your business? This can point you towards new markets and opportunities. But I can’t stress enough that you need to know what you’re doing.
Is this why I need a Search Engine Ranking Company?
Exactly; a good Search Engine Ranking Company will
- Guide you towards the best keywords and keyphrases
- Offer clear, measurable goals
- Help you target your audience
- Help you plan an effective sales message tailored to the web
- Help you come up with a design which appeals to customers and search engines
- Provide an easy-to-use interface
- Help you plan for fresh content
- Help you set up a promotional plan to attract initial traffic
- Offer ongoing ROI tracking and adjustments
At GET we’re search engine specialists. We understand how these guys work.
You’ve taken years to understand your own business. It’s what you
do best and with GET that’s all you need to do. We work with you to
hone your key words and phrases. We can also create the copy for your
site.
Why can’t I use my regular literature?
It’s a good question but a common mistake. While your website copy can be based on your regular printed literature, website copy needs to appeal both to the general public and to the search engines. Unfortunately what the general public is looking for and what the search engines look for are two entirely different things. Being able to write copy which appeals to both parties is a highly specialised skill. GET has a full time web copy writer to do just that. She can research articles from scratch or convert your own literature to web friendly copy.
I hope these two articles have gone some way towards answering your questions about how to improve your search engine rank. Please contact us if we can be of further assistance.
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