Keyword Research: The Competition

One of the most important thing to know when going into a SEO campaign is how much work is going to be involved. I would never advise anyone not to partake in a good fight, it could be fun, but you should always know if you will need to pack a lunch. When you research your keywords and have a good list of what you are going to use, check out the competition for the phrases.

First thing you need to do is check out the keyword density of the competing site. Look at the amount of text, meta tags and alt tags. You should take serious notes about every page and apply these numbers to your site. You have to beat them in this category, no questions. This research will give you a serious, temporary advantage. The key to maintaining top positions is keeping track of what the competition is doing to catch up.

Search for the keywords you have in mind and check out the top sites. Look at how many pages they have indexed (site:www.sitename.com), if they have 300 pages to their site and you only have 12, you will need to either strap in for a long one, or put it on the back burner. The size of the site matters in terms of relevant internal links. You should also check out the page rank of those pages.

Next, look at the amount and quality of inbound links the competition has. The link:www.sitename.com method will show you the links that Google has indexed, and some people say only inks with a PR<4 show up. Download a good SEO browser plugin for your favorite open source browser, they tend to show you the inbound links recognized by all the major search engines. Taking note of how many inbound links the site has will help you evaluate how much effort you need to put into link building. If the competition has thousands of quality inbound links, you may want to hold off on that keyword for a bit, until you have enough momentum to gain big links. If the competition has only a few links, you may be able to get by with a few blog comments and a reciprocal exchange.

Lastly, watch the site for a while. Do they make regular updates? If the competition is a stagnant web site, then the search engines may reward you for frequent updates. Fresh content that is chock-full of keywords may be all it takes to push you over the competition.

Giant sites that are as old as the internet itself are not impossible to topple, and if you are like me, you will love the fight. The proper amount of knowledge about the competitions site can go a long way. Just remember, when you do reach the top, don't stop and relax. Your new goal is ensuring your site maintains it's position. SEO is more like a marathon, than a sprint, but there is no finish line. And of course I only encourage whitehat methods, no dirty stuff.

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Note about keyword research: Frequency and Distribution

When choosing keywords one must keep in mind the frequency that the targeted term is searched for. You shouldn't optimized your site for a keyword or term that gets only 10 or so searches a month. When using the different keyword tracker tools, look for a high traffic keyword or key term to be the primary focus of your optimization. Leave the words or phrases that get around 100 searches a month to be your secondary keyword for that page. The object of keyword research is to find out what people are searching for when they look for products and services like yours, you can't force people to search for anything.

If you have a new product that no one has ever heard of, it is best not to use the product name as your primary keyword until the brand is established. If this is the case, use terms related to the product, or function of the product.

Remember to use individual landing pages with only a few keywords related to each individual page, don't try to work all your keywords into one page. Optimizing a site is exactly that, optimizing the entire site. You are not just trying to get traffic to your home page.

When building links, route different links to the pages they are most related to. If you business is web design and SEO, you should have one or more pages about web design a a few about SEO. Links from web design firms should go to the web design pages, and links from SEO companies should go to your SEO related pages.

Some niches are harder to break into, so do some background research on the sites that are scoring high for your target terms. Find out how many links they have to that page, the age of the domain, and the keyword density. It is not impossible to break into a niche with established sites, but it will take more onsite and offsite SEO to do it, but don't be scared.

Keyword Density, Spamming and Stuffing

When optimizing a website for the search engines you have to weigh your keyword density and how it effects the quality of your content. The most important thing is providing quality content your readers can use and content that gives them a reason to either come back or link to your website or blog. If your keyword density percentage is too high, it could interfere with the delivery and readability of the content. As a general rule, your keyword density should be between 3-5%, that is just enough to say what you have to say without suspiciously over emphasizing, or repeating the same words over and over again.

Having your keyword density too high, say 10-12%, will interfere your message and could be seen as keyword stuffing to the search engines. Keyword Stuffing is simply that, when your keyword density is so high that no reader can get any use out of the content containing the content.

Good SEO copy:
Goatsmilktavern Studios is a New Orleans based SEO company, we have provided Search Engine Optimization for many clients, whilst keeping up to date on the latest search engine changes. gmtS can design your website in a search engine friendly way and optimize it with the latest SEO strategies.

As you can see this copy delivers a clear statement that is not hindered by the terms SEO and search engine optimization.

Pushing the SEO copy (might not get you banned):
SEO Goatsmilktavern Studios is a New Orleans based SEO, Goatsmilktavern SEO has only Done Search Engine Optimization for many SEO Clients, whilst keeping up to date on the latest SEO and search engine changes, This SEO found designing the sites for SEO Clients, that we could control on their SEO needs. For more on SEO, contact Goatsmilktavern Studios a New Orleans SEO.

That example might not get you banned, but can you see how it is harder to read.

Almost or good chance of being banned by the almighty google:
SEO Goatsmilktavern is a New Orleans based SEO, this SEO has only Done Search Engine Optimisation for large SEO our clients, whilst keeping up to date on the latest SEO and search engine changes, This SEO found designing websites for SEO Clients, we could concentrate on their SEO needs. For more on SEO, contact Goatsmilktavern a New Orleans SEO.

Tags : Seo, Search Engine Optimisation,Search Engine Optimization, New Orleans SEO, SEO in New Orleans, not Cheap SEO

Bad SEO Copy and keyword stuffing (will get you banned)

I stole that pic from Dave Naylor's weblog because there is no way in hell I'm gonna type it on my site.

Keyword spamming is using keywords that are not relevant to your website. For instance if you are selling shoelaces, don't put plasma screen TVs in on your website, it is not relevant and will interfere with you selling shoelaces. The coolest example of this can be found at Matt Cutt's blog.

The website in the example is selling the secret to eternal youth and says that being banned by Google is a conspiracy to cover the truth, and has nothing to do with the invisible text field at the bottom left hand side of the screen.

Here is the text field:

As you can see keyword spamming can look quite sill, and yes, you may get away with it for a while, but you will be "covered-up" by the almighty Google eventually.

My point is, say what you need to say and give your visitors good information and the search engine gods will reward you for helping make the internet a better place. I'm not saying don't do keyword research and don't tailor you content to your KEI, just don't make your copy sound like crap.

About Keyword Selection "Phase 2- Refining Core Terms"

Now that you have brainstormed and discovered the basic keywords that you will be using, it is time to refine that list into a list of keywords that people are actually searching for and them map them to your pages. During the brainstorming process we didn't think about what people actually search for, now we will discover these magic words as they relate to your site. This phase of the process will require the use of a few online tools, don't worry, we are gonna stick to the free ones.

The Overture Keyword Tool is a great place to start for this step in the process, but Wordtracker is one of the best. You can also use the keyword selection tool at Google Adwords, just sign-up for adwords, and use the tool, you don't have to give them any money.

Keyword Clusters
Now, to use the keyword selection tool, just enter in your keyword one at a time and we are gonna look for the top 10 variations of that individual keyword. Examine the variations of our keyword and note whether or not they are relevant to your web site, if so write them down. These will be your keyword "clusters". You want about 10-15 clusters that you know for certain people are searching for.

Prioritizing Your Keywords
Let's talk about prioritizing these clusters, some of these keyword clusters that you have stumbled upon maybe niches that are impossible to crack without spending thousands of dollars on links. I would go to the big 3 search engines and just scope out the pagerank and amount of links the competition has. If #9 has a pagerank of 9 and 300,000 inbound links, maybe you should take another approach.

Modifiers and Localization
For each cluster, you need to come up with a list of modifiers like "free". Go back to your keyword tool of choice, and add a simple modifier to a keyword, and look at the top 10-20, you will see "free", "tips, "help, and so on. Write these down, we are going to add these modifiers to to our keyword clusters whenever possible.

Localization means adding your city and state, or region to the clusters so your neighbors will be able to find your services in their area.

The next phase we will cover will be "Mapping Keyword Clusters to Pages.

Author: Murry Daniels
Murry Daniels is the owner of Goatsmilktavern Studios, a web design and search engine optimization company located in New Orleans, LA.

About Keyword Selection "Phase 1- Brainstorming"

Keyword research is the cornerstone of SEO, without good keyword research, your chances of a well optimized website are pretty slim. Keyword research is no longer just for a long list of terms in your keyword tag, but from an optimization standpoint, it will dictate the wording of most of your websites content.

Understanding keyword research and development begins with understanding how your clientele use the search engines. First of all you should brainstorm with a pencil and paper and come up with 5-10 "major" keywords that best describe your website, these should be one or two word phrases, like "web design" or "SEO". These 5-10 keywords will be the backbone of your keyword development strategy.

Core Terms
Now, using the 5-10 "major" keywords you should expand them to 2-4 word phrases, try to get about 10-20 of these. These "core terms" will not cover all of the searches people use to get to your sit, but they will cover about 60% of them. Try to keep some sort of organization with the core terms under the major keywords, when doing keyword research organization is very important. I use diagrams to show the relationship between keywords to make sure they overlap and cover every topic on the site I am optimizing.

Singulars and Plurals
Search engines can't discern between singular and plural versions of a word (yet?), so you need to account for all the people who search for "concert ticket" and those who search for "concert tickets". Keep in mind some singulars and plurals are not as important as others, like "shoe" and "shoes".

Stemming and Misspellings
Stemming and misspellings are a major pain, but let's face it, most of us either don't look when we type, or are bad spellers. I put these two into the same category because they are the "real world" problems you will encounter when optimizing your keyword selection and usage.

Stemming involves words with a suffix, like "web design" and "web designer". Stemming can include all the "-ing, -ed, -er" versions of your keywords. When you write your optimized content for your web site, try to use as many versions of your keywords as possible to cover all the potential searches.

A couple of tips to discovering misspellings are to type the word phonetically, leave out letters, or use letters next to it on the keyboard.

Stop Words
Stop words are common usage words like "a, and, the", there are hundreds of stop words, so just use your head when you look for them. Try not to use stop words in places like title tags and heading tags.

Related Terms
The last step in brainstorming is finding related terms. Related terms are keyword phrases that are closely related to your website, but not exactly what your site is about. Optimizing your related terms will help with your offsite optimization efforts like link popularity and link relevance.

The next phase will deal with finding important keywords you didn't find in the brainstorming process, and refining your list of keywords.

Author: Murry Daniels
Murry Daniels is the owner of Goatsmilktavern Studios, a web design and search engine optimization company located in New Orleans, LA.