Using your keywords

So where do you use your keywords?

Page title - This is the "title" tag in the head section of your html page. The text you enter here is used by google as the headline for the link to your site, it is displayed at the top of your browser when viewing a page and is the default text used when you bookmark a page. Limit your text to 65 characters (in spaces) or less. Ideally use different titles / keywords across your site for better google performance. For example we will add Hairdresser on our landing page for hairdressers but use MOT, Garage and Service on our landing page for garages. 

URL - Try to include 1-2 of your keywords in your page URLs, this can be both in the domain name and within the directory structure and file names. e.g. if we wanted to target "diary", "appointments" and "hairdressers" we could try something like www.OpenYourDiary.com/Appointments/Hairdresser.html 

Page description - Although this is not used by all search engines for ranking, the meta tag description is almost universally used on search engine results pages as the summary displayed to the user. Limit your text to 160 characters or less but make sure you include 2-3 of your key words/phrases. 

Page keywords - Again, this meta tag is not used by all search engines but adding it will no harm. Most SEO experts suggest 7-10 keywords but 2 targeted words per page may be a better bet. Don't include lots of keywords as some search engines will see this as spamming and penalise you accordingly.  

Page content - Try to sensibly use one or two of your keywords in the first paragraph of each page. 

Keyword Optimisation

The first step in the SEO process revolved around the researching keywords to target, finding out what people are searching for on the main search engines and then making sure your site is optimised to provide pages that will feature these. 

As Google takes 80% of the search traffic and the top three links in google search results get 75% of the click through, our goal is to be in this top 3 on google. To do this, we are going to look for search terms in which we can build our presence in these results. 

1) Generate some relevant search terms

Think of a search phrase or search term that defines your product offering or the goal of your site.  Now type this onto the google keyword tool to get suggested keywords and the associated stats. These results provide you with a list of relevant (in Google's eyes) and the number of searches carried out using these search terms. Save these results to your favourite spread sheet programme by clicking on the link (.csv) at the bottom right of the results table. 

2) Cull the list

First of all we are only interested in the keywords and the search volume, so delete the other columns. The we want to get rid of any keywords that are obviously not related to our site, the google software may think they are relevant but as a human we know they are not. Go ahead and delete the irrelevant words. 

3) Research the competition

Now we have our list of relevant keywords we need to decide which ones are worth targeting. We are going to try the low hanging fruit but this stage is rather long and tedious, so make yourself a cup of tea first. 

For each of the keywords, type it into google and record the number of matching pages in a new column in your spreadsheet. For example "Open Your Diary" has 2 million matching pages. 

Now divide the number of searches (average search volume) by the number of matching pages and express this as a percentage. Order by this new column.  

We now have an idea of both what people are searching for (the search volume) and the amount of competition (the number of results), so the ratio we've created helps us identify which terms we stand a better chance of appearing high in the search results. We'll pick 7-10 of these. 

4) The real competition

If you have a little more time, you can identify the real competition by using the search terms along with a couple of google commands (some extra text you add to the search to filter the results).  As google uses the presence of the keyword in the URL and in the page title to help build its results list, we can check the performance of the keywords within these with allintitle: and allinURL:. Try allintitle: Open Your Diary

With these you can build a similar ratios to see which of the keywords is worth competing on (which terms are searched for, but for which there are few competitors). 

5) Using your keywords

See the next post

How to make your web presence recession proof

Or tips for free online marketing. 

On Tuesday I attended a training seminar run by the Thames Valley Enterprise Hub at Sage House in Reading. The £35 (inc lunch) seminar covered basic search engine optimisation (SEO) including keyword research, where to use these keywords, using RSS feeds and blogs, free analysis tools, inbound linking strategies and social networking for business.

I'll cover briefly cover each of these to give you an overview of the content of the seminar (mainly as a vehicle to confirm my understanding and help me decide next steps). I'd also liek to thanks Stephen Murphy of Tennis Jeannie, Michelle Paice of Connection2 and Freddie Jones of Flat Rock Technology for their help and ideas on both marketing and pricing strategy.  

Anyway, back to the seminar which was led by Tony Treacy or eConsultants.it. 

The basic theme of the seminar revolved around using free online tools to market your website rather than paying for online advertising. So out with pay per click, banners ads and email campaigns and in with social networks, SEO and clever use of content. 

See the following posts for the next steps