It Is NOT All About Keyword Research Tools
How To Pick Keywords - Where To Find Keywords - Where To Put Keywords
In this section I will giving advice on keyword research and more specifically the thought processes of it - How to go about picking keywords, where to find keywords and where to put keywords. These are the type of thing that get you Traffic (Visitors). Keyword Research Tools (programs) can help but they should not dominate your traffic campaign.
Title / Meta Tags / File Name / Links
The Title you give to a web page is so important, as are its Meta Tags and File Name. If you have a cookery website for example; Do not just title a web
page page1.html or name it after a couple of keywords such as bakedcakes.html. These will mean nothing, "as is", to the search engines and
are far too common for searching. Not many people will type "baked cakes" only into a search engine. And this is a big clue.
Ask yourself What Would I Type Into A Search Engine If I Was Looking To Bake A Cake?.
Your first thought should be HOW DO I BAKE A CAKE? HOW DO I is a popular prefixed keyphrase but not as popular as HOW TO. I
is personal to you whereas HOW TO is more general. So think generally. With this kind of general thinking you should then be thinking
HOW TO BAKE A CAKE? and from there ask yourself What Kind Of Cake Am I Baking? - HOW TO BAKE A SPONGE CAKE? for example. Also ask
yourself about the utensils/equipment used to bake that cake - HOW TO BAKE A SPONGE CAKE WITH A MICROWAVE?. It is this kind of thinking pattern
that leads to great Titles, Meta Tags and File Names.
Question. What happens if you want to promote more than one title for the same web page?
Answer. Upload the same web page to your website once a month with a different title. That way you keep Google happy (because it prefers updated/ongoing
material) and you also become famous for your sponge cake, christmas cake and so on for example. Do not think small though.
In other words; Above I asked HOW TO, but if your cookery website is more of a Cookbook website than a HOW TO website consider ABSOLUTE BEGINNER'S
GUIDE TO COOKERY - HOW TO BAKE A CAKE as the title for web page 1 and ABSOLUTE BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO COOKERY - SPONGE CAKE RECIPES as the title
for web page 2. By doing this you are creating a sub-title for each web page but at the same time keeping your website famous for Absolute Beginner's
Guide.....to Cookery.
Although the above applies to a web page's Title, Meta Tags, File Name and Links you would not keep changing the file name and links around each month
simply because the old file names and links would become obsolete and you would need to update them from within Forums, Classified Ads and anywhere else
you have them linked. So the keywords/keyphrases for each file name and link should be precisely what someone is looking for in a search engine.
Keywords and Keyphrases
Sticking with the above example. At the time of writing; Typing how do I bake a cake into Google brings up 5+ Millions search results, as does typing how to bake a cake into Google. The difference though is in the number of suggestions, and the related searches, for each keyphrase. how to bake a cake for example is more popular than how do I bake a cake in terms of suggestions, which the general public would more than likely use.
Fig 1.0 Only two search suggestions for this keyphrase
Fig 1.1 Many search suggestions for this keyphrase
With the Suggestions (above) it is clear that you would want to incorporate the keyphrase HOW TO bake a cake, as opposed to HOW DO I bake a cake. And looking at the Related Searches (below) you would need to decide which direction your website is going in. Meaning. The slight difference between the keyphrases has given varied Search Results (taken from Page 2 of Google).
Fig 1.2 These, related, search results are based around Ingredients and Recipes
Fig 1.3 These, related, search results are based around How To and Types Of Cake
With these factors in mind, and by researching the Search Results, you will know if you are to cater for (pun intended!) the Baking audience,
Recipes/Ingredients audience, The Video audience and/or the Making audience. In other words, look at the Suggestions, Related Searches and the Search
Results (listings) to gather what your market is about in terms of the internet.
With meta tags for example I would incorporate keyphrases such as step by step, chocolate cake recipes,
sponge cake videos and victorian methods of cooking. For the title of the web page I might use how to bake a chocolate sponge cake in
the microwave oven and for the web page file name I might use how_to_bake_cook_microwave_delicious_vanilla_chocolate_sponge_cakes.html.
This would be based on more research such as Viewing The Competition's Website
and doing Domain Name Research, together with
Google Insights and
Google Analytics.
Keyword Research Tools
Doing keyword and keyphrase research with the above mentioned means you do not need a Keywords Analytic Tool. Manually searching the internet will get you
more reliable, up-to-date (Now!), results.
With a keywords analytic tool you tend to spend hours looking for a FREE one and then come to the conclusion that they are useless and time wasters. And
even if you sign up for a 30-day trial, software or online based, professional keywords analytic tool it normally never gives you all the information you
require until you buy it.
On top of this Google has its own keywords tools called Keyword Tool
and Search Keyword Tool, both a part of Google Adwords, which you can use for free. The
beauty of these keywords tools is that they can search a website (i.e. your website) and tell you about highly competitive keywords for that website.
So all you would need to do is incorporate some of those keywords into your website, if they are not already in your titles, meta tags, file names and links.
Overlap Keywords
Going back to the web page file name of:
how_to_bake_cook_microwave_delicious_vanilla_chocolate_sponge_cakes.html
Notice how I overlapped the keywords so that I could cover as many search terms (enquiries) as possible. For example, it covered the following search
terms:
how to bake delicious vanilla chocolate sponge cakes
how to cook delicious vanilla chocolate sponge cakes
how to microwave delicious vanilla chocolate sponge cakes
how to cook vanilla cakes
how to microwave chocolate sponge cakes
bake chocolate cakes
vanilla sponge cakes
.....AND SO ON
You get the idea. So basically add keywords into, or onto the end of, the keyphrase.....even if that keyphrase is in broken English - Google does not care
for IN THE, AND, OF THE, AS and so on. People search in broken English all the time.
Traffic And Keywords
At the end of the day Keyword Research, and more precisely Keyword Usage, is needed in order to make your website more popular with the search engines and
therefore bring in more Traffic (Visitors). The more web pages you have the more keywords you have, and the more keywords you have the more traffic you
have simply because your website is known for many more keywords. Keywords that people are searching for.
This does not mean your web pages should be full of keywords though, just for the sake of it. Write in a natural, human, style and not in a robotic
search engine kind of way whereby every sentence contains a keyword. If it naturally happens that way that's fine, but do not force keywords into your
web pages. So ignore any SEO "GURU" Advise that tells you to be a keyword junkster.