Who Wants To Optimise Their Own Website?

Part One: Keyword Research

Many people with personal websites or young start-up companies cannot afford Web marketing services. Others may have gained a recent interest in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) but are a bit overwhelmed by how complex it can appear.

This is not a guide into the nuts and bolts of SEO, but attempts to present the basics clearly to those with a do it yourself attitude.

NOTE: For on-site edits involved, a very basic knowledge of HTML is assumed.

Beginning keyword research

Arguably the most important aspect of a successful Web marketing campaign, effective keyword research will:

1. Identify what your visitors and potential visitors are typing into the search engines;
2. Determine what your competitors are using;
3. Estimate how competitive these keywords are;
4. Find niche keywords that are more relevant and less competitive.

When someone types in something like “city breaks” into a search engine, the vagueness of the search-term reflects that they’re at the information-gathering phase and are shopping around. Sure, they can attract vast amounts of traffic, but their conversion rates are relatively low. These keywords are also hugely competitive and do take a relatively long time to rank highly for.

“Cheap city breaks to Amsterdam” implies that they’ve done their research, decided where they want to go and are thinking about booking something. Getting into the mindset of valuing niche key-terms over more generic terms encourages higher conversion rates, always attempting to target the “buying” or “converting” visitor. Importantly, these key-terms are generally easier to gain rankings for.

Now that we know about keywords, how do we find them?

The SEO Book Keyword Research Tool is an ideal starting point. It offers traffic estimates based on Yahoo’s Overture data. There are also many alternative keyword research avenues to explore via this tool.

Google doesn’t release any natural search data, but it does provide a Google AdWords Keyword Tool, which includes “Search Volume” and “Advertiser Competition” data and a useful variety of keyword data displays. Their Google Suggest tool is also useful to research related search terms and synonyms.

Remember to get all this down clearly on a spreadsheet, preferably categorised into “generic”, “niche” and “local”.

Using this research, it is beneficial to have a look around Google, Yahoo!, MSN and possibly Ask to discover who is ranking for what and how they’re using keywords on their sites. This will help considerably with regard to finding a less competitive niche to target and learning about your online marketplace.

Now that we know how to find them, what do we do with them?

In short, you’re going to want to think about the following five page elements:

1. Meta Keywords
2. Meta Description
3. Title
4. Heading tag(s)
5. Main content

These are the elements that can generally be edited quickly and easily without doing any damage to your site, with virtually no HTML experience required. Don’t worry too much about the URL at this point in time. Changing URLs incorrectly can have the effect of wiping clean years of effort!

In the following example of a piercing jewellery website named SecondSkin, each of these five elements have been optimised for “Body Piercing Jewellery”:

Comments on SecondSkin content

To make a page as usable and accessible to human visitors and search engines alike, it is important to clearly explain what the page is about. Each element here clearly targets the homepage to “body piercing jewellery”, which is a more realistic goal than going straight for “jewellery”.

The target keywords have been included in each of the five elements discussed earlier. There is no need to go overboard and include 20+ Meta “Keywords”. Keep it specific, simple and targeted.

The Meta “description” is informative and contains a call to action: “Make the most of our special offers today.” As this tag is frequently displayed in the search engine results pages (SERPs), it is a valuable marketing tool. Well-written Meta descriptions can encourage more people to click through to a website.

It can be initially difficult to resist placing keywords everywhere in the content, but this is self-defeating, as the content becomes difficult to read and more sophisticated search engines may “tag” you for overdoing things. If you can read it aloud naturally and it sounds natural, then that’s a good thing. Don’t sacrifice legibility just to get a keyword in.

The next things to do

Read more:

• Doing Keyword Research? Here Are Some Resources To Help! - Danny Sullivan
• Five Steps to Effective Keyword Research. - Lisa Barone
• Use Old Words When Writing for Findability - Excellent, authoritative and downright wise words from Jakob Nielsen.

Start playing around with keyword research tools and spend a lot of time looking at your competitors, the ones that rank in the top five are obviously doing something right!

Create a nice new spreadsheet to keep your keyword research in one place.

Start making changes on your homepage, ensuring that each page has a unique title, Meta “Description” and main heading if you start optimising any other pages.

Check back soon for the next instalment of the “Who Wants To Optimise Their Own Website?” series: “Making Websites Search Engine Friendly”.

3 September 2007 | Keyword Research, SEO, Who Wants To Optimise Their Own Website? | Comments