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Basics Part 2 - Fun with Keywords!
Posted 07-18-2009 at 12:42 AM by student4ever
Tags
coding
,
html
,
keyword phrases
,
keywords
,
seo
Time for “Basics Part Two”
If you have not read HTML Anchor Text - Anchors Away!, do that now so you have the full concept. That's part #1.
Where should you get this anchor text? Ideally, you’ve done some keyword research before building your site. If you just asked “what’s a keyword” deduct 50 points from your score right this instant. ‘Keywords’ and ‘keyword phrases’ are what people are actually searching for on the Internet. If you know your market, then you likely have a good idea what people commonly search for in that market. BUT you may not know all the terms that are searched for. It’s these other terms that you need to know. You also want to be SURE that what you think people are searching for, they are ACTUALLY searching for. It’s easy to rank #1 in Google for something nobody ever searches for. Here’s your bonus term for today – ‘keyword competition’. If nobody is searching for a term and no other webmasters are using that term because of it, there is no ‘keyword competition’ for that keyword. On the upside, you can be #1 in Google for that term! Won’t get any traffic, but you’re #1!
That goes to an important point too, beware of SEO people that say they will get you a #1 slot in G - be SURE of what the term will be and that it's a worthy term! Some SEO people also talk about how many #1 rankings they have... find out some of their terms and see if anybody actually searches for them...
Popular single word terms have HUGE keyword competition. You’ll have monster sized challenges ahead of you if you are trying to rank well in Google with the word ‘porn’. Two word keyword phrases get a little easier. Ranking for ‘BBW porn’ is a little more specific and will have less keyword competition, but it’s likely a fairly competitive term anyway. If you wanted to rank for ‘Samurai porn’, you’d likely stand a chance. A few people are searching for it and there is not likely a ton of keyword competition for it.
As a general rule, the more words in a keyword phrase, the fewer searches there will be for the phrase. That does NOT mean there won’t be searches for it, just fewer searches. If you wanted to rank for 'WWII Swords for forum avatars', there is a chance somebody may search for this, but it’s a long enough term there is not likely much competition for it. This starts getting into the area of “long tail” phrases. Those are 3-4+ word phrases that are VERY specific to the content on the page. They may not show up as things that are searched for in various tools, but you will likely find that they pull in traffic from the SE’s.
Next we need to answer the question of... So where do you find out how many searches there are for a keyword and/or keyword phrase? Go someplace like WordTracker to find out ALL about keywords and how many searches there have been for them. This type of site should be your first stop when researching how to put together a new website. They have a nice free tool - freekeywords.wordtracker.com to help you find keywords. Use the free one for a starting point, but check out the paid tools when you are ready to get serious.
The basic concept of the free keywords tool is to put in a general word or term that you want to research. Let’s say you have a toy store and you want to find out what people are searching for related to that. You could start by putting in the word ‘toy’. Be sure to turn the ‘adult filter’ off. As I’m writing this, you would see that the top two related terms that would be of interest to you in the results would be ‘sex toys’ with 8,377 searches in the last month and ‘adult toys’ with 2,775 searches in the last month.
Those are pretty nice numbers. They also mean that there will likely be a good amount of keyword competition for them. That doesn’t mean that you don’t shoot for them someplace, but don’t count on ranking for them easily.
You’ll also notice that there are a LOT of results that won’t apply to you what you are trying to accomplish. Let’s try the same search, but with the ‘adult filter’ set to ‘adult only’. It’s not a perfect filter, but you get a lot closer to the terms you were looking for. Now, let’s scroll down to the bottom of the list. Look for where the number of searches is at 100 or more. For a lot of people, that’s about the minimum number for monthly searches to be a productive keyword/phrase. The good news there is that these are often the terms with less competition, so they ‘can’ be easier to rank for.
If you use the paid version of WordTracker, you will find some cool tools that give you an idea of the real competition for terms as well as how many searches are done for the term.
Part 3 coming sometime soon, we’ll talk about ways of roughly determining keyword competition.
Enjoy!
If you have not read HTML Anchor Text - Anchors Away!, do that now so you have the full concept. That's part #1.
Where should you get this anchor text? Ideally, you’ve done some keyword research before building your site. If you just asked “what’s a keyword” deduct 50 points from your score right this instant. ‘Keywords’ and ‘keyword phrases’ are what people are actually searching for on the Internet. If you know your market, then you likely have a good idea what people commonly search for in that market. BUT you may not know all the terms that are searched for. It’s these other terms that you need to know. You also want to be SURE that what you think people are searching for, they are ACTUALLY searching for. It’s easy to rank #1 in Google for something nobody ever searches for. Here’s your bonus term for today – ‘keyword competition’. If nobody is searching for a term and no other webmasters are using that term because of it, there is no ‘keyword competition’ for that keyword. On the upside, you can be #1 in Google for that term! Won’t get any traffic, but you’re #1!
That goes to an important point too, beware of SEO people that say they will get you a #1 slot in G - be SURE of what the term will be and that it's a worthy term! Some SEO people also talk about how many #1 rankings they have... find out some of their terms and see if anybody actually searches for them...
Popular single word terms have HUGE keyword competition. You’ll have monster sized challenges ahead of you if you are trying to rank well in Google with the word ‘porn’. Two word keyword phrases get a little easier. Ranking for ‘BBW porn’ is a little more specific and will have less keyword competition, but it’s likely a fairly competitive term anyway. If you wanted to rank for ‘Samurai porn’, you’d likely stand a chance. A few people are searching for it and there is not likely a ton of keyword competition for it.
As a general rule, the more words in a keyword phrase, the fewer searches there will be for the phrase. That does NOT mean there won’t be searches for it, just fewer searches. If you wanted to rank for 'WWII Swords for forum avatars', there is a chance somebody may search for this, but it’s a long enough term there is not likely much competition for it. This starts getting into the area of “long tail” phrases. Those are 3-4+ word phrases that are VERY specific to the content on the page. They may not show up as things that are searched for in various tools, but you will likely find that they pull in traffic from the SE’s.
Next we need to answer the question of... So where do you find out how many searches there are for a keyword and/or keyword phrase? Go someplace like WordTracker to find out ALL about keywords and how many searches there have been for them. This type of site should be your first stop when researching how to put together a new website. They have a nice free tool - freekeywords.wordtracker.com to help you find keywords. Use the free one for a starting point, but check out the paid tools when you are ready to get serious.
The basic concept of the free keywords tool is to put in a general word or term that you want to research. Let’s say you have a toy store and you want to find out what people are searching for related to that. You could start by putting in the word ‘toy’. Be sure to turn the ‘adult filter’ off. As I’m writing this, you would see that the top two related terms that would be of interest to you in the results would be ‘sex toys’ with 8,377 searches in the last month and ‘adult toys’ with 2,775 searches in the last month.
Those are pretty nice numbers. They also mean that there will likely be a good amount of keyword competition for them. That doesn’t mean that you don’t shoot for them someplace, but don’t count on ranking for them easily.
You’ll also notice that there are a LOT of results that won’t apply to you what you are trying to accomplish. Let’s try the same search, but with the ‘adult filter’ set to ‘adult only’. It’s not a perfect filter, but you get a lot closer to the terms you were looking for. Now, let’s scroll down to the bottom of the list. Look for where the number of searches is at 100 or more. For a lot of people, that’s about the minimum number for monthly searches to be a productive keyword/phrase. The good news there is that these are often the terms with less competition, so they ‘can’ be easier to rank for.
If you use the paid version of WordTracker, you will find some cool tools that give you an idea of the real competition for terms as well as how many searches are done for the term.
Part 3 coming sometime soon, we’ll talk about ways of roughly determining keyword competition.
Enjoy!
Total Comments 1
Comments
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Wow...I like these blogs...helpful to me already...part 3 eta?Posted 08-09-2009 at 04:31 PM by bjindustries
