Corey’s Top 3 2013 SEO Recommendations
It’s that time of year when industry experts and practitioners reflect on the year that was and predict what is to come. Rather than making bold predictions about big news events in 2013, I have compiled some strong recommendations of things digital marketers should do (or at least be aware of) in the search marketing channel of the digital marketing mix, specifically organic search engine optimization (SEO).
Continued heavy Google updates
Tired of hearing about Pandas and Penguins? Did you hear about the EMD update that came after Penguin? Frequent updates are here to stay. There’s no reason to expect that Google will stop rolling out big updates wiping out a measurable percentage of its search index each time—all more evidence of the need to act naturally and to stay away from gray areas that could be gimmicky and risk your site being caught up in the next update. The risks of being labeled “black hat” are just too big now. You don’t want to have to spend half your annual marketing budget just trying to get out from under a zoo animal while your competitors are taking search and online market share. And trust me: no one wants to spend their time manually disavowing links. Enough said.- The critical need to follow, meet, and beat competitors
Go beyond best practices! Yes, you need unique title and meta descriptions on each page. Yes, you need at least 200 words of body copy per page. Yes, you need to make sure you don’t have too much duplicate content. NO, you shouldn’t spend all of your time focused on best practices as your end goal! You aren’t competing against the search engines, you’re competing against companies with real, live human beings behind the marketing. Know your end goals, the keywords and targets that will help you get there, and determine the plan of action based on what the norms are for those keywords and searchers. Best practices will be a part of what you do, but if everyone you compete with has 1000+ words per page, your 200 words won’t stack up.
- Don’t give up easily
This very well may be the year that we all need to have patience and adapt. A lot. Assuming you’re using purely white hat – non gimmicky – tactics, and that you heed the advice of number 2 above, you can still pretty much assume nothing. Just because your tried-and-true process has worked well in the past, doesn’t mean you can assume it will work as well going forward. I’m not talking about game-changing algorithm updates or stiff and agile competitors. This could very well be the year that we feel some pain of the evolution of SEO. Low hanging fruit will still be out there, but (whether you want to hear this or not) we all need to be considering ALL of the factors that go into search.Consider even those that feel “2nd degree,” like social media engagement and Twitter follower counts, as well as new-school optimization elements like structured data markup. (Not sure what that last one is? Give me a shout @coreydmorris.) Be ready to take a lot of deep breaths, dig in deeper, and do multiple rounds of on-page optimization and link building. Make friends with the social media team while you’re at it! You’re in this for the long haul together.
Hopefully some of this information is a recap of thoughts already going through your head. If it feels a little overwhelming, reach out to me. I’m happy to discuss further. Either way, take up the challenge, pack in the patience, and be ready for a rewarding 2013!
Corey Morris is the lead Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Strategist at emfluence. Call 877-813-6245 or comment below to dig in deeper with Corey.
the importance of SEO early in your website relaunch
This is an excellent case study from our friends at SEOMoz: The client did everything right with 301 redirects on their website relaunch. Maybe a little “too right” and ended up having to be flexible and make some quick fixes. Even when the SEO team and developers implemented everything perfectly, there were still issues and unknowns.
This article is a great tool to show your team how important it is to bring in an SEO voice early and often in every website relaunch project, even if you’re not changing your domain name and even if you’re not planning on doing ongoing SEO efforts.
Check out this must read for anyone involved in website relaunch projects, from your internal project managers to your website developers to the department head:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/uncrawled-301s-a-quick-fix-for-when-relaunches-go-too-well
If you have questions after reading or just want to talk to an SEO Strategist about the benefits of SEO during website relaunch and what to expect – both time and money – reach out to us at expert (at) emfluence (dot) com.
top 12 takeaways from SMX West
Search Marketing Expo (SMX) West took place last week in downtown San Jose, California at the McEnery Convention Center. This was “the biggest and best SMX show ever” according to Chris Sherman, Vice President of Event Programming for SMX. I agree! This show featured honest conversation, open sharing, and interaction between experts and novices alike.
Deciding which sessions to attend was tough – there were many great options. I focused heavily on SEO, with some local search and social mixed in. Here are the top 12 takeaways I brought back to Kansas City with me.
- Bing will not trust your sitemap if you have more than 1% inaccuracy with it, meaning of 100 URLs, you can’t have more than 1 bad or broken link in it.
- REL=”publisher” and REL=”author” tags must be used on blogs, site content articles, etc. It is really important to build up author and trust rank.
- Bing doesn’t like canonical tags that point to the same page you are on. However, the consensus was that best practices include canonical tags on every page, even if it is to the same URL in the event that query string parameters are indexed, etc.
- Use the rel=”prev” and rel=”next” canonical tags – they work well and there’s no excuse not to use them for pagination.
- Rel=”alternate” is a new construct to read more about and use properly. Maile from Google covered it and did a great job. Now it is on search experts to use it properly for international or multilingual sites.
- Bing Webmaster Tools’ API includes almost all your information (they leave out a couple non-critical items)! Make good use of it. It might even integrate into Google Analytics. Duane Forrester from Bing hopes so at least.
- If you’re not already, it is time to start experimenting with rich snippets and markup if at all possible. The case studies of those who had done it all attested that it helped their rankings. This is the direction the search engines are going!
- Get Neil Walker’s slides (tweet @theukseo to request). His presentation included a ton of great CTR and other data of interest for organic search positions within the SERPs
- Bing’s brand new keyword tool supposedly rocks. Plus, it’s powered by organic search data, not paid.
- Bing’s webmaster malware include alerts both on sites that you link to or that link to you, in addition to your own site’s alerts. It doesn’t list the external websites, so you may have to do some research on your own.
- Read up on the 40 new algorithm changes Google recently made. Especially take note that anchor text isn’t a discount in the value of anchor text as a ranking factor (according to Tiffany Oberoi from Google), but she didn’t rule out it involving text around the anchor text.
- Having social buttons on a site is not cool if the buttons don’t get interaction. In fact, this could hurt your rankings if they exist but don’t ever get clicked. The absence of click data signals the search giant that the page is unpopular or unworthy of clicks. This is great insight from Rae Hoffman-Dolan (@sugarrae).
solving problems and seeing success in Google Places
Last week, I had the privilege of speaking on a local search panel titled “Solving Problems and Seeing Success in Google Places.” On the panel, we presented recommendations for dealing with human support at Google places, tips from an agency perspective, and a look at case study information from my work with Houlihan’s restaurants. Download my Google Places panel presentation slides for more information.
For live blogging coverage and comprehensive recaps from great industry sources, see Search Engine Land’s pages linked below for rundowns of each day, including multiple live blog recaps for many of the sessions from great sources.
Here are the sessions I attended and recapped in my notes. They all offered a differing level of takeaways based on experience.
- Getting Personal, Part 1: How Google & Bing Personalize With Social Connections
- Getting Personal, Part 2: How Google & Bing Personalize With Search History & Geography
- Solving Problems and Seeing Success in Google Places
- Don’t Panic! A Hitchhiker’s Guide To Surviving SEO Changes
- Keynote with Susan Wojcicki, SVP Advertising, Google, Inc.
- Real Answers For Technical SEO Problems
- Schema.org, Rel=Author & Meta Tagging Best Practices
- Making Data From Google Webmaster Central & Bing Webmaster Tools Actionable
- Duplication, Aggregation, Syndication, Affiliates, Scraping And Information Architecture
- SEO Essentials For Migrating Websites
- Ask The SEOs – Open Q&A Forum
- Ask The Search Engines – Open Q&A Forum
If you have any questions on the notes, reach out to me on twitter any time at @coreydmorris.
how do search and social intersect?
How being “Liked” impacts rankings
By Corey Morris, SEO Strategist
Facts:
- Search engines have hundreds of variables that dictate the ranking of pages on the web for specific terms – this is what we know and try to address in SEO.
- People interact on social media sites and marketers use the sites to engage with customers – this is where we are with social media.
- Search engines have proven their interest in social signals with recent updates (ex: Google’s “Search, plus Your World”).
How do search and social intersect?
That’s a question worth considering, especially in light of the fact that our search team is often not the same as our social media team. There is a lot of good reading out there related to social media strategies. Engaging customers, driving site traffic, spreading viral content — all have the potential to attract new links to the site. This is a quality, content driven focus that works well. However, this isn’t tied to a direct relationship between social activity and rankings.
Important but often overlooked: How social and search directly intersect in terms of algorithm variables that impact ranking. Google and Bing (and thus Yahoo!) have different social signals built into their algorithms to allow social media popularity to impact rankings. Google uses the +1 button to determine the social popularity of content and Bing uses the Facebook “Like” button. As of now, Google does not have a partnership with Facebook and officially does not use Facebook data. Bing, however, does have a direct connection into the “fire hose” of Facebook data.
Advantage comes when opportunity knocks. How do we make sure we take advantage of this opportunity? We need to add Google +1 and Facebook “Like” buttons to any page on our site that makes sense. In some cases, this could be a page with video content, product pages, the home page, or every page on the site. A company or marketer doesn’t even need to have any type of social media strategy or presence on Google+ or Facebook to do this. Simply follow the instructions for adding the buttons to your site and get people to click them. Clicks of those buttons are tied to the “Likes” of the individual that clicks in their own Facebook account or Google+ account and the site gets credit.
Your homework for taking advantage of social’s impact on search engine optimization:
- Add the +1 and Like buttons to content on your site.
- Get clicks on those buttons, using your current or new marketing channels to get the word out.
- Monitor the impact on your rankings for terms related to the pages you have lots of clicks on.
- Celebrate!
when to involve the SEO team in your site redesign
from Corey Morris, emfluence Search Engine Marketing Strategist
How frustrating is it to see clients and colleagues miss opportunities? Answer: Not nearly as frustrating as seeing mistakes made that penalize website rankings over time.
As an SEO, I pride myself in being able to join a project at any point and welcome new challenges. But, there’s no doubt that being on a project from the beginning produces the best search engine optimization results. Here are three reasons why you should involve your search marketing team from the very beginning of your site design.
Reason 1 to involve your SEO team from the beginning: Usability
Much of the advice you receive from your SEO team involves action items catering to search engine robots. But don’t be fooled: the search team does really care about the human site visitors. The ultimate goal of your search marketing efforts should be conversions. While ensuring search engines rank your content well enough to send quality traffic to the site, conversion is the ultimate goal. Involving the SEO team early allows them to meet with all stakeholders from the management team to the creative and development teams. This is a crucial time for SEOs to ask questions and determine the objectives from all of the stakeholders. While it might be clear what the primary conversion metric is (impressions, leads, or sales), the SEO team needs to know what secondary objectives are desired. And they’ll also want to know what offline marketing and branding is planned so the site and any digital effort (email or social campaigns) align with.
SEO’s love the creative teams. We want to hear from them on their site design ideas, and in exchange we need for them to understand what is best for the user, the search engine, and the business. The alternative to not involving search from the beginning is that some design comps have to go back to the drawing board. I’ve never met a creative person who wants to do their work over again.
Reason 2 to involve your SEO team from the beginning: Understanding
Rather than handing off completed and approved concepts, wireframes, developing sites, or even published sites to an SEO team and to tell them to get to work, bring them in during the early stages so that the whole process of optimization can be a learning experience for all. There’s no black box or special tricks up the sleeves of white hat SEOs. Buy-in and understanding by all stakeholders is critical to the success of optimizing a site. Working with the management, marketing, creative, and development teams as they design and implement can go a long way toward fostering communication and allowing for everyone to be on the same page. This way, all teams can understand why site navigation needs to work a certain way or why AJAX everywhere isn’t the best idea. It’s definitely best to share this understanding before any work is done.
Reason 3 to involve your SEO team from the beginning: Savings
Cost and time efficiency is essential for all teams involved in a website launch. While it might be tempting to bid and budget for SEO services post-launch, this almost always drives up costs. The SEO team is likely to have to ask for revisions to ensure proper design, coding, and other elements to fully optimize the site. Let’s not forget 301 redirects, either, which preserve the existing website ranking presence. Without them, a website relaunch turns into an SEO restart….as in, restart from 0. 301 redirects can’t be fixed or undone retroactively, no matter how talented your development and SEO teams are.
Whenever you start considering your website relaunch, be sure to include all your stakeholders from day 1, and be sure that includes a seat for SEO.
not all keywords are created equal in SEO
8 aspects of your search engine optimization to review on a keyword-by-keyword basis
by Corey Morris, emfluence Search Engine Marketing Strategist
Your e-commerce site competes in every channel, not the least of which is Google’s organic rankings. To get over the hump of being indexed and found, you worked hard on your keywords, picking 8 that helped the search engines identify and categorize your site and content.
Let’s say one of those is “Coffee”. And let’s further say your SEO (search engine optimization) team advised you to write 10 pages of coffee related articles for your site. And they also advised that the word “coffee” should appear 12 times in a 300-375 word article. That’s a lot of writing, and a lot of coffee! But you have the strategy, so off you go.
Another keyword of yours is “Air Roasted Coffee”. Some people might think they should write 10 pages of Air Roasted Coffee articles, with that phrase appearing 12 times per page of 300-375 words.
Those people would be incorrect. Not all keywords compete equally.
Ranking well across different high value organic search terms means avoiding the temptation to adopt a one-size-fits-all optimization strategy for a website.
Different sites rank well in different searches. And here’s where it gets a bit technical. Each keyword has a different “norm” that is shaped largely by the sites that are ranking well. For example, if the top 3 sites in Google for a term each have about 10,000 pages, then the norm has been skewed from what we’d likely consider a best practice (unless your vertical lends itself to that many pages naturally).
Some examples of things to consider on a keyword by keyword basis:
- Keyword usage in title and meta tags, plus the length of the tags
- Keyword usage in heading (<H>) tags.
- Number of words on the page (the page ranked in the search engine results)
- Number of pages on the topic within the site – and on the site as a whole
- The architecture of the section about the topic – and on the site as a whole
- How Google PageRank (link value points) is managed throughout the site
- The number and value of links are pointing to the page – and to those that funnel PageRank to it
- Keywords in anchor text of links pointing to the page
The list above is not all-inclusive, and not all of those items apply in every situation. On your next copy writing voyage, remember the norms are different on a keyword-by-keyword basis – they are often shaped by the sites in your market at the top of search rankings.
seo news: how JCPenney and social media are affecting Google’s results
(Courtesy of emfluence lead SEO strategist, Corey Morris)
Here are a few notes about things in the search engine optimization (SEO) world that you may or may not have heard about:
Google Algorithm Changes – As the JCPenney example showed the world, buying links works still in Google. Google is working very, very hard to protect the integrity of their system and recent changes were made to their algorithm to specifically target spam. These were rolled out in January and are focused on “low quality sites” in Google’s eyes. Highlights of what these changes target:
- Better detection of sites that have been hacked
- Better detection of sites that have duplicate content and little original content
- Better detection of sites that use lots of spammy words, or use regular words in a spammy manner (out of tolerance with norms for keyword competition)
- Better detection/action taken against content farms
Read more about the changes from Google
Paid/Purchased Links and Google – It has always been a violation of Google’s quality guidelines to purchase links for SEO benefit. There also has always been a perceived gray area of links purchased for SEO versus legitimate buys for banner advertising, etc. It is very important to be crystal clear in your intentions, as Google is finally cracking down hard on those who are buying links (see JCPenney again), and even those without the scope or intent of the JCP scale are in line to get penalized or lose money. The big takeaway here is don’t ever buy links to gain PageRank or for any other SEO benefit. If you are buying banners, do so for traffic to the site and exposure, not SEO. Make sure that the site posting your banner uses a rel=”nofollow” attribute in the link tag to make it clear to Google that this is an advertisement, not a paid link.
Read more good stuff about this from Bruce Clay, Inc
Quality Content – How do we make sure we don’t fall into that category that Google is now calling “low quality” sites, which it is looking to purge from it’s index? There are a lot of good resources for how to create good content and copy. Bruce Clay has posted a good article that defines and details it.
Google’s Results are Getting More Social – Another layer of social integration (minus Facebook for now) are being integrated with the search results in Google. This is supposed to also impact how sites rank, as social is blending with organic more than in the past. Here’s a great article with screenshots and detailed description of how it works.
Questions on the world of search engine optimization? Give us a call and we’ll answer away: 877-813-6245.
Here are a few notes about things in the SEO world that you may or may not have heard about (and may/may not care about), that I thought I’d pass along. I’ve included a short blurb of my own thoughts and an introduction of the topic, as well as links to articles.
·Google Algorithm Changes – As the JCPenney example showed the world (read more here if you don’t know what I’m talking about: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/business/13search.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=jcpenney&st=cse), buying links works still in Google. Google is working very, very hard to protect the integrity of their system and recent changes were made to their algorithm to specifically target spam. These were rolled out in January and are focused on “low quality sites” in Google’s eyes. Highlights of what these changes target:
oBetter detection of sites that have been hacked
oBetter detection of sites that have duplicate content and little original content
oBetter detection of sites that use lots of spammy words, or use regular words in a spammy manner (out of tolerance with norms for keyword competition)
oBetter detection/action taken against content farms
Read more about this from Google: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/google-search-and-search-engine-spam.html
·Paid/Purchased Links and Google – It has always been a violation of Google’s quality guidelines to purchase links for SEO benefit. There also has always been a perceived gray area of links purchased for SEO versus legitimate buys for banner advertising, etc. It is very important to be crystal clear in your intentions as Google is finally cracking down hard on those who are buying links (see JCPenney again), and even those without the scope or intent of the JCP scale are in line to get penalized or lose money. The big takeaway here is don’t ever buy links to gain PageRank or for any other SEO benefit. If you are buying banners, do so for traffic to the site and exposure, not SEO. Make sure that the site posting your banner uses a rel=”nofollow” attribute in the link tag to make it clear to Google that this is an advertisement, not a paid link.
Read more good stuff about this from Bruce Clay, Inc: http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/2011/01/paid-links-penalty/?bcinlsrc=v88-cc
·Quality Content – How do we make sure we don’t fall into that category that Google is now calling “low quality” sites, which it is looking to purge from it’s index? There are a lot of good resources for how to create good content and copy. Here’s a good article that defines and details it: http://www.bruceclay.com/newsletter/volume88/contentfarms.htm?bcinlsrc=v88-cc. This might be a good resource for a copywriter, client, etc.
·Google’s Results are Getting More Social – Another layer of social integration (minus Facebook – for now) are being integrated wit
Here are a few notes about things in the SEO world that you may or may not have heard about (and may/may not care about), that I thought I’d pass along. I’ve included a short blurb of my own thoughts and an introduction of the topic, as well as links to articles.
• Google Algorithm Changes – As the JCPenney example showed the world (read more here if you don’t know what I’m talking about: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/business/13search.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=jcpenney&st=cse), buying links works still in Google. Google is working very, very hard to protect the integrity of their system and recent changes were made to their algorithm to specifically target spam. These were rolled out in January and are focused on “low quality sites” in Google’s eyes. Highlights of what these changes target:
o Better detection of sites that have been hacked
o Better detection of sites that have duplicate content and little original content
o Better detection of sites that use lots of spammy words, or use regular words in a spammy manner (out of tolerance with norms for keyword competition)
o Better detection/action taken against content farms
Read more about this from Google: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/google-search-and-search-engine-spam.html
• Paid/Purchased Links and Google – It has always been a violation of Google’s quality guidelines to purchase links for SEO benefit. There also has always been a perceived gray area of links purchased for SEO versus legitimate buys for banner advertising, etc. It is very important to be crystal clear in your intentions as Google is finally cracking down hard on those who are buying links (see JCPenney again), and even those without the scope or intent of the JCP scale are in line to get penalized or lose money. The big takeaway here is don’t ever buy links to gain PageRank or for any other SEO benefit. If you are buying banners, do so for traffic to the site and exposure, not SEO. Make sure that the site posting your banner uses a rel=”nofollow” attribute in the link tag to make it clear to Google that this is an advertisement, not a paid link.
Read more good stuff about this from Bruce Clay, Inc: http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/2011/01/paid-links-penalty/?bcinlsrc=v88-cc
• Quality Content – How do we make sure we don’t fall into that category that Google is now calling “low quality” sites, which it is looking to purge from it’s index? There are a lot of good resources for how to create good content and copy. Here’s a good article that defines and details it: http://www.bruceclay.com/newsletter/volume88/contentfarms.htm?bcinlsrc=v88-cc. This might be a good resource for a copywriter, client, etc.
• Google’s Results are Getting More Social – Another layer of social integration (minus Facebook – for now) are being integrated with the search results in Google. This is supposed to also impact how sites rank as social is blending with organic more than in the past. Here’s a great article with screenshots and detailed description of how it works: http://searchengineland.com/google-expands-social-circle-in-search-results-including-page-rankings-65202
Hope some of this content is of interest or value to you.
h the search results in Google. This is supposed to also impact how sites rank as social is blending with organic more than in the past. Here’s a great article with screenshots and detailed description of how it works: http://searchengineland.com/google-expands-social-circle-in-search-results-including-page-rankings-65202
Hope some of this content is of interest or value to you.
it’s a new year & it’s time to get local in search marketing
Ok, so the time to get local was last year, or the year before. But if you haven’t taken the time, or are new to the search marketing arena, here’s some insight that you want to take note of: local search is changing. Components are merging and the lines are blurring in the search world and businesses that aren’t paying attention are falling behind. The good news is, this is a good — no, a great opportunity to get on board. And when better than at the start of a new year?
Where to Start?
Mapping websites were popular before we all had GPS devices in our cars, on our phones, and built into every gadget within reach. Don’t ask me how long directory sites have been around. Why it has taken so long for the two to merge? I don’t know. Maybe out of necessity as phone books became obsolete (mostly due to ad revenues moving to mobile mapping devices)? It is time to create or claim, and really own your listings.
If you’re only starting with one, start with Google, the search traffic giant. A few years back, Google Maps became Google Local, and now the business side is labeled as Google Places (http://google.com/places). This is where you should go to create an account and find and claim your listing. Have more than 10 locations? Lucky you, they have a bulk upload and verification process. No excuses not to do it, even if you are a mega-sized corporation with retail outlets all over the country.
Why Now?
As Google and others are refining their products, Google Places has recently been integrated more deeply into organic (non-paid) search results. In a recent update, Google even placed the Local results map above the paid search results in the right hand column. You’ll notice it if you type in a geo-targeted search. Read more from Google on layout change.
Not convinced this is the time to get into local? If you are asking how much this will cost, consider this, Google Local listings cost nothing to add, claim and update. More importantly, with Local listings showing up in the organic search results above even highly ranking organic results, you need to be working in this space.
What Else?
There’s more to ranking well than claiming your location(s) and updating the addresses, but the first steps are important. Get to know the factors that influence your rankings in Google Local. There’s a lot of reading you can do on the topic, but your best bet is to look at the other sites that provide content for your Google Places page like Yelp and others. See if you can claim and update your company’s listings on those sites. Also, make sure the information on your company’s Google Places pages and your website match. The more consistent you are in all places, the more Google knows you are really about what you say you’re about. Get the drift?
Need Help?
Getting started is pretty easy. Branching out to the content provider sites is another thing entirely and is where it can start to get overwhelming for an individual marketer. If you need help, there are some savvy companies out there that specialize in everything from strictly local search to full service digital marketing. As the lines of search results blur, Local is a component that any good SEO specialist should have in his or her toolbox. Don’t be afraid to reach out for help if you get overwhelmed, but know that even the basics will help and you can get started any time. If you aren’t moving forward, you’re getting pushed back by those that surf the changes in the local search landscape. Don’t get left behind!
Shameless plug time: emfluence is a full service digital marketing agency. Our search marketing team has experience helping clients create, claim and optimize local listings, as well as work with external content provider sites that influence rankings in local search. If you’d like more information on the services available and how we can help, let us know!
choosing the right keywords for website optimization
Imagine if your website had more than one doorway, i.e. the home page. What if you could roll out a welcome mat at each page of your site, making it possible for Joe Searcher to come in via the page that is most interesting to him?
Optimize your page well, friends, and it’s possible. So, how do you pick which keywords to target with Search Engine Optimization? How many terms can you optimize a single page or section for?
Choosing the Right Keywords
For a jumping off point, look at your website analytics to see what keywords are already bringing in converting traffic. If you saw 3 new sales last week from the search phrase “Camaros in Kansas City,” it’s likely to be a good phrase for you to target.
Add to that list with various – usually free – keyword tools, like Google’s. Look at search volume to assess what words are getting attention in the search field. Google will also make recommendations for alternative keywords based on the area you’re interested in or can crawl your site in order to make suggestions. Wordtracker is another tool, but is paid. You can actually Google “keyword tools” for a full list. Don’t be surprised if Google’s own tool shows up on top!
Then trim by starting with the basics: you’re looking for keywords that drive not just a lot of traffic, but targeted traffic. Better yet, you want keywords that drive traffic that converts. ROI is the magic word. Usually, three- or four-word phrases convert better than one- or two-word phrases. It’s more likely that they’re shopping rather than ‘just browsing.’
One-word nouns like “cars” aren’t great for focused traffic and you’ll be in heavy competitive territory. If you aim to target these simple phrases, be prepared to develop massive amounts of content and to be in it for the long haul. Try variations of the keyword – “cars,” “automobiles” to fight off saturation.
To flush out your list of keywords, add descriptors like brand, color, size and location information. How do you win business offline? Use those adjectives and adverbs to target search traffic online, too.
You probably want to try to limit yourself to 5 keywords of a similar theme when optimizing a page or section of your site.
After you have created the lists of keywords you want to target, the next step is to check your current ranking on these keywords. This will help you benchmark your progress, as well as help you determine if your pages are currently ranking well. There are various websites and pieces of software that can do this for you, or you can go to the top three search engines (Bing, Yahoo!, and Google) and perform searches by hand. Record the results somewhere so that in a month or two following your initial site changes, you can measure your results.
Sign up for emsights, the emfluence monthly newsletter, to receive tips and tricks right in your inbox at www.emfluence.com.
Monday January 07th 2013, 3:07 pm 
Wednesday January 05th 2011, 8:21 pm