Keywords analysis and keywords research is the most critical thing you will do when planning to start a new website. To search engine optimize a website that had good keywords analysis before a line of code was written is significantly easier than a website that was changed to meet keyword phrases.
So what is a keyword phrase? – When anyone wants to find something on a search engine they type a number of words into the search box and hit search. These words are known as keyword phrases. The search engine will then look through its index of web pages trying to find the most relevant sites.
Lots of SEO companies will tell you that on-site optimization is essential and this is true but any optimization will only be as good as the keyword phrases you have researched and chosen.
Thus, keyword analysis must be carefully executed. The analysis needs to be performed in phases, and for each of the phrases researched we need to collect the following information for each keyword:
- Search volume – the number of searches made for this term
- Competition – the number of other sites that are competing for the phrase
- Competitors – the top 5 websites listing in results pages for the phrase
A useful FREE keyword analysis tool is Traffic Travis that gives lots of help around this research.
The three phases of keyword research are:
- Identify Generic Keywords Phrases. The first step is to investigate the generic terms around your line of business. These are typically the terms people use when browsing for information on a topic and will not necessarily bring buyers into your website. For example, Coast Accommodation or Beach Accommodation.
- Identify Niche Keywords. From the generic list we need to now find a niche in the market. Typically generic terms will have high number of requests and high competition. By going through each generic term and looking for niches that have a lower number of searches but with less competition will allow us to get a better ranking faster. An example niche could be Florida Beach Accommodation or Greek Islands Accommodation.
- Identify Long Tail. Now we have a number of niches selected we can find the specific keywords that will bring in visitors that want to buy our service or product. If you think about it people may well be looking for cheap hotels or to compare hotels. Thus, taking your niche list play around with the following methods:
- Adjective – add price or product qualifiers, e.g. cheap…
- Product Type – add a product type, e.g. villa, hostel, B&B
- Locations – e.g. Crete, Corfu, Jamaica
- Vendor or Brands – e.g. Hilton, Holiday Inn, Marriott
- Call to action – add words like: buy, solve, help, ways to
This will now give you your list of keyword phrases that your website needs to be targeted at. If you don’t have a website already you can now select your website domain names based on the niche selected. The advantage about doing keyword research first is that your domain name can include the keywords of your selected niche.
Once your have purchased your domain name you need to start with your website design and hosting. The first step is to host the website in your target region picking a supplier with a good track record of supporting its customers. Once your hosting plan is set-up you can now get a design company or create the website yourself. Our article on website design and hosting gives a lot more pointers to help you out here.
You should now have a website that has a domain name related to your keywords, has content or articles targeted at your keyword phrases. If you have done this correctly the website should start appearing in the search engine results but you will need to do some specific on-site optimization and off-site optimization to help your positioning in result lists. Another option whilst your organic results are improving is to start a Pay Per Click campaign which can bring well targeted visitors into your website on day one.
Don’t complain if you have no website visitors if you don’t have a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy.
Everyone website owner or marketeer is looking for the perfect search engine optimization strategy that has an outcome of a top search engine ranking i.e. your site on page one. This can be difficult when you think all your competitors are all trying to do the same.
Any search engine optimization strategy must encompass both on site and off site optimization and I don’t think it is worth investing in off-site strategies until you have a sound website that has passed through on-site optimization.
On-site Optimization
This should be the first step in an SEO strategy and for some with low competitive search terms may well be all you need. Don’t confuse this with Google Page Rank, Google has some 200 factors it considers of which a considerable amount are related to the website and individual pages. This phase also covers the initial writing of the pages so that when a customer lands [landing page] the page is relevant to the term they used and the call to action gets them to convert. It is NO good getting visitors to your site on a false pretense as you won’t get any money out of them.
On page optimization includes page design, page content, keyword selection and then optimization, alt tags on your images, deep navigation, seo friendly links, title tags, page speed and SEO friendly code.
Off-site Optimization
Off-site optimization is a balance between a number of techniques listed below:
- Article Marketing
Article marketing is another search engine optimization strategy that has been around for a long time and is remains highly successful. You will write articles with a single keyword focus and this article will link back to your website using anchor text relevant to the keyword. These articles are then uploaded to article directories. This can be very time consuming and a number of article networks with automated tools have appeared like SEOLinkVine (click for more info).
This gives you two advantages; (1) these articles provide high quality single way links to your site that the search engines index, and (2) you will get visitors directly from the article sites. Article marketing is not a one time process, you must continuously post new articles over time.
- Trusted Site Inbound Links
Article marketing generates inbound links, but if you want valuable inbound links, you need to find trusted sites. Trusted sites are those that Google holds in high regard or thinks are an authority on a topic. In general any domain that ends in .GOV or .EDU is regarded as a trusted site. Additionally, a few high level directories like DMOZ or Yahoo! are trusted sites, along with major forums or information resources. Google is known to hate paid links and so if you need to pay for a link you must check the site is trusted by the search engines or it could count against you.
- Link Baiting
If you take the time to create high quality content that people like this will naturally attract attention and over time you will find people link to the article from blogs or social bookmarking sites. The seach engines also like this as it starts to make them think you are an authority on a subject or niche area.
- Social Media Marketing
Social media is not new anymore and is used by a large percentage of the population, though many marketers still don’t know how to take advantage. The goal is to use sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to set yourself and your business up as an authority as well as a recognizable brand. You need to provide constant uptodate value that your followers/readers can participate in, the participate bit is key in that this is not about you telling them but about you listening and discussing with them.
- Viral Marketing
As a search engine optimization strategy, viral marketing is hard to measure, but can be one of the most successful ways of getting new visitors to your website. Examples of viral marketing include sending out free reports, video productions, and giving away free ebooks and software.
I hope you take away from this article that a Search Engine Optimization Strategy is a activity that is a blanace of techniques, both on-site and off-site. You don’t have to do it all at once, but do need to plan of what you will do and when you will do it, whilst keeping a measurmeent of which parts were successful and at what cost – ie. the Return on Investment (ROI).
If you are not using the strategies above, you’re missing an opportunity to get free targeted traffic for your site. A search engine optimization strategy starts with a long term view and a detailed plan on how to get your site to the top of your niche. Use multiple strategies, test constantly, and adjust when necessary – only then will you find the traffic you’ve been dreaming of.
For all those people that have spent hours trying to get quality backlinks to a website by writing articles will welcome SEOLinkVine. We all know that once you have your website optimized you need to start building up inbound on-way links, often referred to as link building. These need to be built up over time and only from quality, relevant sites. This costs a lot of money if you outsource to an agency purely because it is time consuming so when considering this product have the hourly rate of a good SEO agency in mind.
More information on SEOLinkVine can be found here!
So what does it do?
- First you need an article. You can write it yourself or get a freelancer to write it for you.
- Add backlinks with anchor text including your niche keywords.
- Submit the article to SEOLinkVine.
- All done! SEOLinkVine will take on the rest.
SO SIMPLE!
So this is really a mechanism to get access to a large network of article sites. The network sites included are quality independently owned.
This is a useful service for both the independent website owner wanting to execute SEO by themselves [DIY SEO] or for SEO agencies big or small. No limits just a monthly fee and if you don’t like it then get your money back.
No questions asked, money back guarantee – so give it a try!
The whole topic of duplicate content is discussed at length within Search Engine Optimization circles but becomes even more important within affiliate marketing.
Before we get started on this I am not talking about copyright infringement.
The search engines put a lot of effort into showing results with unique content and have to distinguish from multiple people discussing a topic in similar ways to people deliberately distributing the same topic multiple times to manipulate search engine rankings.
Duplicate content can fall into two categories: within a single domain or website and across multiple domains or websites.
Duplicate content within a single domain or website
Most cases here can be solved through correct configuration of the website. The two most common reasons for this are:
- The website has inbound links that use the “www.” and others that don’t, for example www.help2seo.com and help2seo.com would both reach the same page. This will mean that the search engines can have the same page indexed twice. This is simple to solve with a permanent redirect (301) which will change the unwanted domain to the wanted one, thus eliminating duplicates. Also Google Webmaster Tools allows you to set your preferred domain.
- The second main one is when a page can be reached through more than one route and the URL [address] is built up by the route taken. This often is in the case of shopping and sites built using Content Management Systems (CMS) tools. For example, a product page for an SEO Video Course could be advertised under the category SEO Tools and under a special offers category. This could result in the same page SEO-Video-Course.html being …./SEO-tools/SEO-Video-Course.html and …/Special-Offers/SEO-Video-Course.html.
This can be solved with the canonical tag that tells the search engine the preferred page which would be in this case the SEO-tools category.
Duplicate content across multiple domains or websites
There can be a number of reasons for multiple domains showing the same content. The first is with content syndication. This is where a single source feeds information to other sites, often a model used by the news sites. This is not really a problem as the search engines can identify this and will show the most relevant which is often from the most authoritative site offering the content.
The second main reason is in affiliate marketing. Often vendors offering items to affiliates also provide descriptive information. Again the search engines will do everything they can to not display the same results from different sites and will lean towards what they think is the more authoritative site. The simple way around this one is to change or rewrite anything provided by an affiliate so that it is unique to your own perspective and views.
—-//—-
To conclude you should always do everything in your power to change content provided by affiliate organisations so that it does not get detected as duplicate content. In fact you need to be different so remember whenever you have an affiliate programme you have a lot of affiliates and you need to stand out from the crowd. Pick a unique perspective of the content, product or service and target your rewrite at this, often this is referred to identifying a niche.
Illegal copying
If you believe another site has copied your content you need to take action very fast to stop your own version from being penalised. each search engine provides a means to report duplicate content.