Understanding Keyword Phrases
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Not long ago, I was invited to be a speaker at the Alaska Small Business Development "Biz Fair" in Soldotna Alaska on the topic of search engine optimization and SERPs. One of the members allowed me to use their personal site as the example. Like most sites we encounter in SEO, the site although informative on the topic was less than focused in its efforts to establish a strong keyword presence. I'd like to share a few tidbits from the presentation with you.
Keywords are often confusing. Most companies know a great deal about what they do, but seldom actually understand the thought process of their visitors. This becomes especially apparent when choosing your keywords. I should also add at this point that "keywords" are no longer being used by the big 3 search engines in the meta sense, but they establish a theme for the rest of your site and other less popular search engines still use them in their native method.
When choosing keywords with search engine ranking pages (SERPs) in mind, it's ALWAYS best to start with some research. I guess the probable question that gets asked next would be "how do I research my keywords?". There are many ways, and for the sake of this article we are going to focus on free tools. Google is well known for its website tools, specifically Adwords, but let's not overlook Google Trends.
Google Adwords is a mechanism by which you can enter a few keywords (or even have it spider your site and suggest them). The keywords chosen are then expanded on to show you popular and related keyword phrases which may be suited to your business or operation. When viewing the information however, you may want to pay attention to the competition column. This area will give you the estimated competition for that keyword or phrase as Google sees it. The next areas are those which are relative to what kind of business you have, for instance "local" or "global" monthly views. If you are a tourism company focusing on a more global client list, then stick with the global monthly views column. These monthly view columns tell you the overall searches both expected and literal within the Google family for that keyword phrase. A good keyword phrase (global or monthly view volume) along with low competition allows you a better chance of ranking well.
I mentioned trending earlier, and it seems a valuable time to embark on what this is. Trending is like watching stock quotes or current fads. It allows you to watch the searches associated with a trend. We would use this type of information to determine whether a keyword or phrase will stand the test of time. Even if your phrases can't, it doesn't mean they are not useful. "Riding the buzz" is a reference to choosing topics related to the here and now, and discussing them (as long as they are related to your site). Riding the buzz can be very useful when generating traffic, and we see it a lot in the blogsphere. In short it's playing to the follower of a given fad.
So how does it all relate? If you chose keyword phrases that carry a high volume of searches, are relative to your site, are trending well and have low competition, then you are probably going to place well. Know your visitors and how they think, search and interact with your site and you will find you experience a higher growth and ROI than you've ever seen before.
Good luck in optimizing your site and remember that research demographics are your key to success!
Sites mentioned in this article - Google Adwords | Google Trends | Google Insights
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