Choosing your keywords is a massive part of the whole SEO and online presence experience, but the same old question as to how to choose them effectively still gets asked on a regular basis.
Keywords are still very, very important to search engines, and even if they now have a little less impact on ranking, they are still a vital part of your website and something you must get right. A few of the older search engines used to rely on meta keyword tags and nothing else, but as the engines are now more advanced they do not generally just focus on this, but they do use your keywords in many different ways.
Keywords are used in your Title tags, description tags and your keyword tags, but they are also used throughout all of your content, links and many other factors. So, it is so important that you get this right, or at least you start on the right road forward as the keywords can be tweaked throughout the life of your website.
The main question we tend to get asked about keywords is how to choose them and what do we base our suggestions on. Although we use a variety of methods, the two basic methods, and arguably the most efficient, is to look at what your competitors are doing and to use a couple of the keyword tools currently on the internet.
Any company, website, product or service can benefit from making sure they are using the correct keywords on their website. It is quite usual to see websites where webmasters have failed to complete their tags or have just not really given a thought to the keywords they should use, but don’t forget, visitors find your website through keywords, so it can never be overlooked.
Keyword Tools
There are a few keyword tools on the internet, with our favourites being the Google Adwords Keyword Tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal) and the paid version of Word Tracker (http://www.wordtracker.com).
For example, if you were selling property investments, you would type property investment into one of these keyword research tools. You would then be given a list of the keywords and the search volumes for each of them. Whereas it would take you a long time to rank top of Google for Property Investment, you can use the produced list to look for long tail alternatives and therefore focus on them.
Competitor Research
A good way of finding out about keywords, you could and possibly should be using is to take a look at what your competitors are doing. Simply choose a keyword, type it into Google and make a spreadsheet of your competitors and the Title, Description and Keywords they use in their tags. I would recommend doing this for the first ten results, or the first ten most relevant results if you only want to feature your competitors and not necessarily any website that is ranking.
If you do this for the top ten, you can then see straight away all of the keywords they are using, and you can then use this help plan your keywords, but do not copy them or simply duplicate them, use the information to try and capture the same search terms but mix in some of your own and use your own unique combinations.
The Next Steps
Once you have your data from the Keyword research tools and your competitor research, you can then begin to plan your keywords. As previously mentioned, you do not have to just focus on your main keyword. Use the research to pick out smaller, long tail keywords that are less competitive.
By doing this you might be appealing to less searchers, but you have more of a chance of ranking highly for the search term.
In my opinion, its better to come on the first page for a search term that might get 2,000 searches a month than page 20 for something that gets 20,000. All of the research you carry out will allow you to start aiming for some of the lesser searched keywords, whilst still making sure you are focusing on your main keywords, which will just take longer to get high rankings in Google for, if they are very, very popular and competitive.
You will then use your keywords for your meta tags, your content, page names, alt tags and linking campaigns, so it really does prove that the work you do now will be able to benefit many of your SEO challenges, meaning that keyword research is something you not only have to do, you have to do it from day one, even before you have launched your website.
Written By Ian Spencer - Website Design Gloucestershire
Thursday, 17 September 2009
Competitor Analysis – Why You Should Be Doing It For Your Business
Competitor analysis is not about spying, underhand tactics or being ruthless, it is simply about looking at your main competitors, working out what they do well and not so well and making sure you follow the same things that they are doing well and avoid doing things that are not being done quite so well.
Quite often, by looking at what your competitors are doing, you can quite often spot areas that they might not have exploited or areas of weaknesses that your company and / or website can take advantage of.
Most SEO consultancies offer a full competitor analysis report, once they have sat down with you and worked out for which products, services or keywords you are looking to perform for, they can then compile reports to suggest who your main competitors are, what they do well, how they are performing and then make suggestions based on this information to help you improve your website.
A good SEO company will look at many areas when undertaking this type of research and these include:
● In-depth look at the website
● Content
● Keywords
● Strengths of website
● Weaknesses of website
● Link building campaigns
● SERPs – how well they do in the search engines
They should also offer a lot more than is listed above, and can also work with you to make sure the type of research and analysis is related to exactly what you are seeking to know.
You can also complete most of this competitor analysis yourself, but you do have to remember it can be quite time consuming and you sometimes would benefit from specialist tools of the trade, that most SEO companies will be using when undertaking any kind of research.
Once you have this information, you can then identify suggestions as how to be more competitive and spot the areas that you feel you should be concentrating on and areas that you are maybe not making the most of. Any company, website or business can always learn from their competitors, as there are always so many things that you can improve on when it comes to running a successful business.
Written By Ian Spencer - SEO Gloucestershire
Quite often, by looking at what your competitors are doing, you can quite often spot areas that they might not have exploited or areas of weaknesses that your company and / or website can take advantage of.
Most SEO consultancies offer a full competitor analysis report, once they have sat down with you and worked out for which products, services or keywords you are looking to perform for, they can then compile reports to suggest who your main competitors are, what they do well, how they are performing and then make suggestions based on this information to help you improve your website.
A good SEO company will look at many areas when undertaking this type of research and these include:
● In-depth look at the website
● Content
● Keywords
● Strengths of website
● Weaknesses of website
● Link building campaigns
● SERPs – how well they do in the search engines
They should also offer a lot more than is listed above, and can also work with you to make sure the type of research and analysis is related to exactly what you are seeking to know.
You can also complete most of this competitor analysis yourself, but you do have to remember it can be quite time consuming and you sometimes would benefit from specialist tools of the trade, that most SEO companies will be using when undertaking any kind of research.
Once you have this information, you can then identify suggestions as how to be more competitive and spot the areas that you feel you should be concentrating on and areas that you are maybe not making the most of. Any company, website or business can always learn from their competitors, as there are always so many things that you can improve on when it comes to running a successful business.
Written By Ian Spencer - SEO Gloucestershire
Understanding On Page Optimisation And Why Its Vital To Get Right
One of the biggest things you can do or an SEO company can do for your existing or future website is to make sure each page is fully optimised for all of the major search engines, especially Google.
There are many factors involved with on page optimisation and if you manage to get all of them to be effective and optimised, this will have dramatic results on your search engine placements and therefore your website traffic, and hopefully conversions.
The process is very intense and somewhat complicated, but a general idea of what is involved in on page optimisation can be found below.
You need to look at the title of each page. The title is the wording you see in the blue bar of your browser, so for example, if you look at the top of your browser now, you will see the title text. Bearing in mind this is one of the first things Google or any engine sees when spidering your website, you need to try and identify each page and make each title unique, descriptive and worthwhile for the engines.
Try to include your business name and / or product and also a few keywords.
If you were selling washing machines, you could do something like:
Bobs Washing Machines
Discount Hotpoint, Bosch and Zanussi Washer Dryers
This would mean you manage to get the keywords for washing machines, some of the major brands and also washer dryers as well, which are all very searchable words in the search engines. Do not over do it though, limit the amount of words in your title as much as possible and never look to put lots of keywords or unrelated keywords into your title tag.
You also need to look at your other meta tags, including the description and keywords. The description tag is often used to display the search result description in Google and other engines, whereas the keywords are still a factor in search results, albeit probably not as influential as a few years ago.
Also look at your content. Has the content got a good level of keywords for that subject, is it well written, does it flow correctly and make sure you haven’t over stuffed the page with endless and pointless keywords. Google and few other search engines are very, very clever and you should never try to fool them or trick them, it will only backfire. Make sure all content is keyword rich, has good density and most importantly is well written
Make sure all of your links and images have alt tags, as they are also a contributing factor in search engines as well.
There are many other things that you can successfully complete with when it comes to On Page Optimisation, and by looking at each page and making suggestions, you or your SEO company can help you to make sure your site is optimised for both the search engines and your customers, which sometimes can be a hard balance to strike.
Written By Ian Spencer - Website Design Forest Of Dean
There are many factors involved with on page optimisation and if you manage to get all of them to be effective and optimised, this will have dramatic results on your search engine placements and therefore your website traffic, and hopefully conversions.
The process is very intense and somewhat complicated, but a general idea of what is involved in on page optimisation can be found below.
You need to look at the title of each page. The title is the wording you see in the blue bar of your browser, so for example, if you look at the top of your browser now, you will see the title text. Bearing in mind this is one of the first things Google or any engine sees when spidering your website, you need to try and identify each page and make each title unique, descriptive and worthwhile for the engines.
Try to include your business name and / or product and also a few keywords.
If you were selling washing machines, you could do something like:
Bobs Washing Machines
Discount Hotpoint, Bosch and Zanussi Washer Dryers
This would mean you manage to get the keywords for washing machines, some of the major brands and also washer dryers as well, which are all very searchable words in the search engines. Do not over do it though, limit the amount of words in your title as much as possible and never look to put lots of keywords or unrelated keywords into your title tag.
You also need to look at your other meta tags, including the description and keywords. The description tag is often used to display the search result description in Google and other engines, whereas the keywords are still a factor in search results, albeit probably not as influential as a few years ago.
Also look at your content. Has the content got a good level of keywords for that subject, is it well written, does it flow correctly and make sure you haven’t over stuffed the page with endless and pointless keywords. Google and few other search engines are very, very clever and you should never try to fool them or trick them, it will only backfire. Make sure all content is keyword rich, has good density and most importantly is well written
Make sure all of your links and images have alt tags, as they are also a contributing factor in search engines as well.
There are many other things that you can successfully complete with when it comes to On Page Optimisation, and by looking at each page and making suggestions, you or your SEO company can help you to make sure your site is optimised for both the search engines and your customers, which sometimes can be a hard balance to strike.
Written By Ian Spencer - Website Design Forest Of Dean
Charging For Content – Can It Really Work On The Internet?
As the internet has rapidly evolved from being an information portal to an ecommerce haven, the age old debate about charging for content that was once free has re-emerged, with the news that Rupert Murdoch has been considering charging users to access newspapers online. With the idea obvious to make money, it would seem only fair that if you have to buy a paper in the “real world” you should also pay to read online, but does everyone agree?
Any company that is considering charging for access to content faces a wealth of issues when actually looking at the implications of doing this. We have explored some of these issues below, but generally, this decision to step into the world of charging people to access something that was once free, could lead to devastating implications for the business.
Loss of Readers / Customers – It is fair to say the regular and loyal followers of your publication will probably pay to continue reading if you set the amount to be worthwhile to the consumer. But, you can also bet that the majority of people will simply just find the information elsewhere. You will probably end up diverting your customers onto other publications, ones they have never considered before and run the large possibility of losing that reader or consumer for the foreseeable future.
Google Can’t See It – The only way to stop people seeing the content for free is to hide it behind some sort of secured administration area, where only people that have paid can access it. Now, if you and I can not see the content unless we pay, not can Google and other engines, so you begin to lose the amount of content being indexed by the engines, you then start to lose search ranking placements and the overall consequence of this is your visitor numbers will drop rapidly. Content is the king for Google, and if it cant see it, then how can it possibly know how much you are releasing?
Advertising Revenue Falls – The less readers or visitors you have, the less advertising revenue you will earn, because the majority of advertisers set their budgets on the amount of exposure their advert will get. So if this drops, then its only fair to expect the advertiser will not pay you as much money to be on the site. This is also the same for Adsense revenue, if you have fewer visitors, you will have fewer clicks and thus lose money through this avenue as well.
Content Receives Less Exposure – Content on the internet becomes a massive hit in only one way, people spreading the word about it by blogging about it, posting about it, sending links to their friends and basically social networking measures. If this can not happen due to the content only being accessible to paid readers, you stand no chance of your latest publication finding its way around the internet and increasing your exposure.
There are times however when charging for content can work, and indeed has worked. Publishers of EBooks, resources and other types of publications do successful charge for access to their content, but whether this would work for say an online newspaper is debatable. People will pay for a well written guide to something they are interested in, but whether they would pay for something that they could probably find else where for free is the main issue.
In 2005, the NYTimes.com website started charging to access parts of its content. Two years later in September 2007, they decided to drop the charge and once again make the website free to access all areas, and this was at a time when people had more money and a freedom to spend, unlike today. And they only charged around $50 a year to access the website, which is a negligible amount when you think how much you would pay for a daily newspaper in publication. The report started that they project had met its targets, but when compared to the forecasted growth in online advertising revenue, it made the project unfeasible.
So, if publications do start to think about charging for access to the content in 2009 or 2010, for something that has always been traditionally free, it will be very interesting to see the effects on not only the said publication, but also the internet as a whole.
Written By Ian Spencer - Web Design Gloucestershire
Any company that is considering charging for access to content faces a wealth of issues when actually looking at the implications of doing this. We have explored some of these issues below, but generally, this decision to step into the world of charging people to access something that was once free, could lead to devastating implications for the business.
Loss of Readers / Customers – It is fair to say the regular and loyal followers of your publication will probably pay to continue reading if you set the amount to be worthwhile to the consumer. But, you can also bet that the majority of people will simply just find the information elsewhere. You will probably end up diverting your customers onto other publications, ones they have never considered before and run the large possibility of losing that reader or consumer for the foreseeable future.
Google Can’t See It – The only way to stop people seeing the content for free is to hide it behind some sort of secured administration area, where only people that have paid can access it. Now, if you and I can not see the content unless we pay, not can Google and other engines, so you begin to lose the amount of content being indexed by the engines, you then start to lose search ranking placements and the overall consequence of this is your visitor numbers will drop rapidly. Content is the king for Google, and if it cant see it, then how can it possibly know how much you are releasing?
Advertising Revenue Falls – The less readers or visitors you have, the less advertising revenue you will earn, because the majority of advertisers set their budgets on the amount of exposure their advert will get. So if this drops, then its only fair to expect the advertiser will not pay you as much money to be on the site. This is also the same for Adsense revenue, if you have fewer visitors, you will have fewer clicks and thus lose money through this avenue as well.
Content Receives Less Exposure – Content on the internet becomes a massive hit in only one way, people spreading the word about it by blogging about it, posting about it, sending links to their friends and basically social networking measures. If this can not happen due to the content only being accessible to paid readers, you stand no chance of your latest publication finding its way around the internet and increasing your exposure.
There are times however when charging for content can work, and indeed has worked. Publishers of EBooks, resources and other types of publications do successful charge for access to their content, but whether this would work for say an online newspaper is debatable. People will pay for a well written guide to something they are interested in, but whether they would pay for something that they could probably find else where for free is the main issue.
In 2005, the NYTimes.com website started charging to access parts of its content. Two years later in September 2007, they decided to drop the charge and once again make the website free to access all areas, and this was at a time when people had more money and a freedom to spend, unlike today. And they only charged around $50 a year to access the website, which is a negligible amount when you think how much you would pay for a daily newspaper in publication. The report started that they project had met its targets, but when compared to the forecasted growth in online advertising revenue, it made the project unfeasible.
So, if publications do start to think about charging for access to the content in 2009 or 2010, for something that has always been traditionally free, it will be very interesting to see the effects on not only the said publication, but also the internet as a whole.
Written By Ian Spencer - Web Design Gloucestershire
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