For anyone who wants to use KeywordDiscovery for just finding keywords, you don't have to sign up for their free trial. Their open free tool is: http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html which returns up to 100 keywords like Wordtracker.
Does anyone have links for GOOD localised keyword tools, the only one i stumpled upon once was http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword/ but I would love to see alternatives from several countries.
I found a pretty decent keyword tool you can add as a bookmarklet to your firefox browser.
According to the author's post, what it does is use Google's keyword suggestion tool "…to analyze any page you are currently visiting to extract and generate thematically-related keywords, together with their prices in the adwords system (in US$)…" in an html table for easy viewing and importing.
I love the book. It's really well done and organized.
I've got lots of product pages. I need to do a lot of work on keywords and I was wondering if it would be better for me to optimize the product pages for one key word rather than 2 or 3. The category pages would need to be optimized for 2-3, of course.
I also need to look at tracking software so that I can measure (a unique concept). I was looking at the package from keyword discovery but noticed that you suggested Advanced Web Ranking. Are there real differences I should pay attention to? Also, If I get the Advanced Web Ranking do I need the standard or pro to handle several websites?
That makes sense, Lisa - just realize that at the level of product pages, you're going to see a lot of long tail type terms if you have good product descriptions.
I haven't used Trellian's tool, but with Advanced Web Ranking the choice of standard vs. pro pretty much boils down to whether you want to be able to output customizable reports. That's probably not important if it's just you looking.
Dan(or any of you) have you ever tried the msn keyword research tool from MSN Adlab? What do you think if we compare it to wordtracker and keyworddiscovery?
I didn't know about this tool. Although I haven't compared it to Wordtracker & Keyword Discovery, it is good for forecasting and checking seasonal trends of my keywords. The keyword mutation detection is very useful in my niche too.
The Adcenter Labs tools are cool, but I'm waiting for them to get a consistent data set between all the tools. I know it's coming, and I'd bet that it will happen before SES San Jose (August).
I have not yet checked he ADcenter tools yet. Butthink this product will help a lot of webmasters in their endeavour to do many things associated with online web tools.
Really enjoying the fast start. On the first page of the Keyowrds chapter you mention an Excel psreadsheet you use for keyword mapping. Is this available to download anywhere?
Dan,
I just finished reading the 'keyword' section of your ebook. I have a quick question. You had mentioned that we should target the top 2-3 keyword clusters for a particular keyword term. Just to quantify, how many searches per period (month)is considered a good keyword term? 10,000/mo, 1,000/mo?
Thanks,
Bob
Really enjoying reading the comments in this community.
I have a major problem with Keywords in that I don't know what keywords to optimise my site for - my past record hasn't been too great, where I choose a keyword which I think would be popular, optimise the page for that keyword term and it turns out to not drive much traffic at all.
They are so many keyword tools, but which one(s) are the the best?
Also, how many keyword term's would you optimise a page for?
Darren, you should refer back to the SEO Fast Start book. In Chapter 3 Dan recommends Keyword Discovery & Wordtracker. There are more tools in the above posts that are useful (in my opinion).
Typically, 2-4 keywords in the title works well for me. Make sure your keywords are targeted. If you are not sure what I mean, refer back to the SEO Fast Start book. In addition, having other long tail keywords on the page and links to other pages will increase traffic.
I have a question about local markets and services. I have several client's sites that need the local market and not the world wide web. How does one increase local traffic (city, maybe region)? Google Analytics shows much of the traffic bouncing back out, and presume much of this is due to locality. As a hands on local service, the bottom line is to get local people responding. How can i think about this to get better results (conversions), not just traffic.
Thanks for all the information Dan, that you have provided. The videos are choke full too. I'm really enjoying them.
Claudia, if you haven't already looked at Google Adwords, you should check it out. The benefit for you is this. You can have an ad show up in the exact area where you are doing business. You need to do keyword research.
Also, your home page title does not appear to be keyword rich. Refer back to the SEO Fast Start book.
If keyword research supports local markets, you should be able to get traffic utilizing SEO and/or Adwords.
In regards to conversion, Dan is an expert and often discusses user acceptance. You may want to consider a Hacker Safe logo and/or BBB logo. They are proven to increase conversion. Also, consider putting your 828 # above the fold in the top right corner.
Claudia, if you haven't already looked at Google Adwords, you should check it out. The benefit for you is this. You can have an ad show up in the exact area where you are doing business. You need to do keyword research.
Also, your home page title does not appear to be keyword rich. Refer back to the SEO Fast Start book.
If keyword research supports local markets, you should be able to get traffic utilizing SEO and/or Adwords.
In regards to conversion, Dan is an expert and often discusses user acceptance. You may want to consider a Hacker Safe logo and/or BBB logo. They are proven to increase conversion. Also, consider putting your 828 # above the fold in the top right corner.
Jeff, thank you. Useful tips. I've considered Adwords, and wanted to get the site fully optimized before i did that to see what natural search brought in. Actually, site conversion HAS increased…i think the free consultation has done that, tho it is buried at the bottom…point being that only the serious need apply. But i like the idea of the phone number up top too.
Regarding the keyword rich title, our thinking on this page was to use the general asheville acupuncture and licensed acupuncturist keywords in the title.
Are you saying that is not keyword rich because the page has all sorts of other keywords in it? We are working on making all page titles and descriptions unique, and i'm not sure how to handle the homepage i guess. I'll look over SEO FastStart again and see what i'm missing…
Although a good percentage of monthly searches are unique, I don't think the majority of the words in your title are searched. Therefore, they are not useful keywords. Check out the recommended keyword tools in above posts and plug in those words….you will see what I mean.
Your time might be better spent adding a subdomain for "general asheville acupuncture" in-case that term is ever searched. There is a big 0 for that search…
Your home page will typically receive the most traffic and rank ahead of interior pages. In saying this, your home page title should contain your best and most optimal keywords.
Work other 2nd & 3rd tier pages around the home.
The keyword has a total of 1200 and when I click on help it says thats the number of people searching for the keyword within 12 months - have I read this right. If so, it means that the keyword isn't searched that often over 12 months, does it?
Continuing the discussion about how to optimize for a local market, the single word 'acupuncture' gets a lot of searches, so using this single word would be more powerful than 'asheville acupuncture'?
Other high demand words would be 'fertility', 'chinese medicine'?
(why does wordtracker show NO results for 'chinese medicine', while overture shows over 600? (i'm using digital point)
I guess i can qualify the traffic by adding Asheville in the description, rather than the title?
Do i assume searches from Asheville, and North Carolina, would show higher results for this site, than i would doing a search from another state? When i test, i always have to add Asheville nor North Carolina to the search to see results. I'm never really sure what is happening, although the site does seem to rank well when i add those modifiers. I just don't know what the local market is truly seeing.
I am working my way thru the SEO FastStart keyword search chapter to get top keywords, the core terms, etc. So i may have more questions. I know i have asked a lot here, and i appreciate the great feedback.
Great stuff, especially when taking the time to really understand it. I have many client sites to use this on and practice should make perfect (sorta).
Merry, it varies but… I typically optimize for 2-4 keywords (in the title tag). These are for 2nd tier
keywords (categories) and are what we consider a medium level of difficulty. You can typically pick up more long tail / 3rd tier searches by working the linking structure
on the page.
FYI: You may want to take a look at your title tag on your home page. I see that your title is your domain. Check the search volume for your natural domain name.
Darren, I hear you on being up until 2:00AM.
Dan's material is well worth it!!!
You should check out Aaron Walls keyword tool
and compare notes. There are several other keyword
tools to locate from there(if that tool is down). http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword/
Claudia, although 'acupuncture' has a high search
volume over the search term 'asheville acupuncture'
(with 0 volume), it will not necessarily deliver
better results. You will have to follow the
principals in the 'SEO Fast Start' book.
This below page is on page 1 of Google after
searching 'asheville acupuncture'). http://www.chimedicineworks.com/acupuncture.html
If your not receiving traffic from that page,
again…it's related to search volume.
I am coming up with different results for:
'chinese medicine'. You may want to rerun the
term. I believe Wordtracker uses a different
keyword database than the Overture tool.
It is a reasonable assumption that Asheville
and North Carolina would be a higher result than
other states. This is due to obvious on page factors (:
Dan, I was using the digitalpoint tool where wordtracker results were coming up empty, and overture had signifcant numbers. I'll just go ahead and use wordtracker directly. Digitalpoint wasn't useful.
Also, i had my client search her keywords from asheville (w/o using the word Asheville), and most SERPS were info/directory websites, so she ended up way down the list. From my state, when i search her keywords with Asheville, she comes up on top. Naturally, the results from the local market are more important than the results i'm seeing (and i'm doing the SEO).
Having read (at least browsed - no pun intended) the SEO Fast Start document, I am a bit puzzled as to how to proceed with allotting keywords to my church web site http://www.ansteymethodist.org the pages of which are generated from a database via PHP. The site uses a standard template, only varying from page to page by the content which is drawn from the database. This template includes in it's header the keywords I have decided on, and these appear on EVERY page. Any thoughts ?
Claudia, again probably an SEO myth, but someone recently told me that the capitalization of keywords carrys more weight. He optimises all of his sites and uses capitals in the title tag and some keywords on the page.
Personally, I think it makes a site look ugly, and yes I want traffic, but I don't want an ugly looking site in the process.
It sounds like the usual SEO problem with local sites - if the search engine doesn't insert local results (which means you'd want to be listed in the Google Local/Maps database for example) then the only way to get seen on general search terms is PPC with geotargeting.
For example, if I search for "brake repair," I get a bunch of info/directory sites in the organic results, and a few local folks in the paid listings. If I do "brake repair 75035" or "brake repair frisco tx" then I get some local results mixed in, and the organic results are better.
Wordtracker does a lot of stuff like that, Claudia, which makes no sense but it's sort of left over from way back in the day. Search engines aren't going to be concerned with capitalization.
Thanks Dan. It does appear that the local results are pretty poor (searches from locals sitting in that locale), if they don't also search on the locale.
We've also notice pretty poor results with google business maps too. Searching 'acupuncture asheville', the local person will get chiropractors, etc etc, and acupuncture will be far down the list. My client is frustrated with all of that, but i guess that is a google thing they need to clean up.
I've read the keywords section a few times, because I feel this is an area where I struggle on.
I have ski chalets in a number of countries in Europe, and I want people to rent them for holidays. They are so many different types of keywords terms that I struggle to find which is the most used by searchers.
I then end up changing the targeted keywords over and over again, and in the process not getting very far
Darren, put yourself in your customers shoes… What would you search for if you wanted to stay at a Ski Chalet in Europe?
Typically, the longer search terms will convert better. Also, they are almost always easier to rank in the SERP's.
So obviously… skip Europe and work the term Ski Chalet since it appears relevant to your site. Ski Chalet would be considered a medium level of difficulty based on volume, etc. You could go after the tail of that term. ie: "Affordable Ski Chalet Rentals In Europe", etc.
Do the research and start building and linking up 2nd & 3rd tier pages. Once you put up a page that makes sense, don't take it down unless you know exactly why you are doing so.
I try to put myself in my customers shoes, but its difficult. You mention targeting 'ski chalet' but would customers just type in that keyword term, or am I targeting that because it's the primary keyword and less competitive keywords would be easier to rank if I was ranked well for ski chalet?
Darren, it's hard to say if your customers will type in ski chalet. However, since it is a search term, and your business…I would say it has some relevance.
It is not going to directly help the 3rd tier keywords: "Affordable Ski Chalet Rentals In Europe" rank if you rank "Ski Chalet". But setting it up correctly, you should get them both to rank on page one…one under the other.
I was reading with interest about creating two pages to target the same keyword terms so you rank one under the other. Something I had never thought about until joining this community.
Darren, unique titles and descriptions for every page is the best, but unique titles are far more important. If you can't create a unique meta description, I usually recommend just leaving that tag off the page and letting the search engine grab a snippet.
Now that's interesting, because all of my ski chalet pages are dynamic, and the data is taken from a database, so all the France ski chalet's usually have the same title and description, but recently I added in the chalet name and number of bedrooms, into the title and description to make it more unqiue.
I'm monitoring what effect that has over the next month or so.
I've been putting your ideas into practice, and have seen one of my primary keyword terms jump from 19 to 14, within the last 5 days, so I'm hoping it hits the 1st page in the next week [fingers crossed]
David, I have SEO Elite. I mainly use it to track my keywords. It is also useful for monitoring anchor text, competitor backlinks and a whole lot more that I don't have much time for…
When you go to sign-in, click the YES button to be taken to the download area. There are many help videos to walk you through SEO Elite sections.
I can't believe I am still anguishing over keywords & titles. I think i'm all squared away, and then doubt creeps in and i get confused and insecure.
Anyway, when determining keywords for titles, does one select the highest demand keywords (in the case of this site's homepage: acupuncture, alternative medicine, chinese medicine) even though if i look at the competition # in wordtracker, it looks like i'd never rank for it?
Also, for the content, i probably should be adding longer tail keywords rather than repeating the shorter terms, is that correct?
So in summary, do i put high demand more competitive terms in the and longer tail in the content?
Typically, you want to concentrate the most relevant search terms on the 1st tier (home page). Add those keywords to your title and sprinkle naturally in the body copy. You can add some of the long tail to the home page to rank there too.
So… don't just add the competitive terms to your title without adding them on the page and to your description tag.
Also, your 2nd tier (off your nav) will more likely rank the medium level of difficulty keywords. Therefore, add those keywords to the title and repeating above …
The longer tail or 3rd tier keywords can be added to your 3rd tier title pages. Link the 3rd tier from and to your 2nd tier pages.
I guess i am also having trouble with the Tier structure. I am updating an existing site, and didn't plan for Tier 4+ years ago when i built the site.
We basically have a homepage and then the navigation. This navigation is sounding like it should be Tier 2, with more general topic information (tho i'm not entirely clear the scope of that information).
Third Tier sounds like it will be more specific, narrow topics. So for a second Tier page on Pain management, a third tier would be back pain (and how acupuncture can relieve that pain)?
If we used the pain management page (tier 2) as an example, would the content and keywords be about some general topic about pain and acupuncture? Tier 3 would have gobs of pages for pain (back pain & acupuncture, knee pain & acupuncture, etc?) Seems like these tier 3 pages would start sounding redundant, except for changing back pain to knee pain.
While i'm struggling with keywords, i am also (and maybe really struggling) with content???
Claudia, the best advice I could ever give you on keyword strategy and SEO is:
IGNORE. THE. COMPETITION.
Focus on relevance. Focus on getting the right keywords on the right pages, so that when you are #1, searchers will get to the best page.
Even if you can never beat the competition, people who come to your site will expect to find good, relevant information. The keywords that tell you what they're searching for also tell you what you need to show them once they get there.
The worst advice I have ever seen, and I see it on forums every day, is when some would-be expert tells someone to optimize their home page for some minor search term because it will be easier to get it ranked. Yeah… it will be. But you'd be bringing people to the wrong page.
I find researching the competition is good when you first start out, especially when creating your business plan, BUT, forget them once you have the site up and running, because you spend all the time concentrating on your competition, rather than optimising your site and writing unique content.
I spend a few days getting a few links and completing some onpage SEO, and I move slowly up the 2nd page of the SERPs, and then BOOM, I'm down to page 4, there's just one keyword I cannot seem to get on the 1st page for no matter how hard I try.
Darren, let that 1 ranking go for now. I understand how you feel and have been in your position. But if your stuck on that one ranking, your probably missing out on other opportunities for building the authority of your site.
If it's a Google ranking and your backlinks exceed your competitors, then the authority of those links could be playing a role (+ many other factors). Yahoo & MSN as you may already know, tend to be weighted toward on-page factors.
If the keyword falls on the 2nd or 3rd tier, try deep linking to that page from the recommended directories in the SEOFS.
Thanks Jeff, your right I need to put my energy elsewhere now.
What's annoying is that I got a nice PR7 one-way link for that anchor text, and it's since then it fell down the SERPs. I know you shouldn't really worry too much on PR, but it's had the opposite effect!
Don't draw conclusions too fast, Darren. You have to give this stuff time. Checking rankings too often can drive you crazy. With that said… check the date on the cached copy of the page, it's unlikely that a link will have its full effect until they've fetched the page again after finding the link.
I am bit confused by terms used in SEOFS, Could you clarify,
Say I sell "Scarf" from my website…
So "Scarf" is one Main Term
Then by brainstorming I found women scarf, ladies scarf, men scarf, pashmina scarf, cashmere scarf, wool scarf Now I find variations of these terms like pure pashmina scarf , 100% wool scarf, etc etc.
Do you mean that all the above search terms form part of ONE CLUSTOR. Or you would say all variations under WOMEN SCARF will be said as one cluster.
What is the strategy for keywords for a local market. I manage several client sites for which only local traffic is relevant. How can i boost local traffic? Is it a matter of using the local city names in key places on a page? I had 'asheville acupuncture' in the title and while that term doesn't get lots of traffic, it is MOST relevant when someone does search it.
I'm thinking i need to find other related terms (ailments, etc) for which someone might be looking for treatment but not necessarily acupuncture. But then, i don't know that that wouldn't just bring more untargeted traffic.
Thanks Jeff for the tool suggestion above…however it said that my site had no pages in the google main index!!! When i search site:www.chimedicineworks.com in google, i have about 10-15 in the index (or so i thought). I've been working hard to get the other 20 pages out of the SI, but now the picture looks even bleaker.
Maybe getting more pages into the google main index will bring more targeted traffic (???). I'm finding the whole local thing frustrating.
Hi Claudia, try site:www.chimedicineworks.com again. I am coming up with 13 of 38 pages NOT in the supplemental index.
For local traffic, you need to look at the big picture. The big picture is this… What search terms are being searched by those local markets? How do you determine that? Go to your keyword tools and get to work. If there is no volume for the terms your considering, forget about them. In my opinion, until those no volume terms are born, they are not considered long tail (3rd tier).
Sure, a good percentage of monthly searches are unique. Therefore, you might miss out on a few searches but that's okay. Because it's possible to get some traffic from them if those words appear on your pages. Go after the local terms that have search volume.
A solution for the rest… Are you applying Google Adwords campaigns to your sites? If it's no, then you may want to consider it for your local markets.
This might be a stupid question, but has anyone had a keyword which won't rank 1st page no matter what you do SEO wise? I've stopped concentrating on this keyword, but I got it to the top of the 2nd page, but its jumped to the 4th.
I used to be no.1 for the keyword for 2 yrs, but neglected the site, and it suddently dropped outta no where one day.
Darren, it sounds like the competition pulled a sneak attack on you!
lol I would give you the secret formula but since you won't show your site, I can't analyze it…so your out of luck
Seriously though, if you analyzed the sites above you and can't make heads or tails, dig a little deeper. Do you have the term linked to high quality directories (per SEO Fast Start)? Do you have pages within the site linked to that page with the term in the link text (pages that are not in supplemental)? How are the on-page factors?
If you aleady have plenty of modifiers pumped into the page without over optimizing, then try linking the page to itself. Try linking the page in the header and body.
Jeff,
Thanks for your earlier response. I did another search in google on site:www.chimedicineworks.com and i come up with 13 indexed pages and 24 supplemental. Not sure why we each are coming up with different results.
I'm working on coming up with terms the local market is search, but not sure i would know what the local market is searching. Is there a particular tool that would help with local market results? I've been using wordtracker, but unless i add asheville to the search, i have no idea what the local market is searching. Most asheville searches are around tourism. Most local business stuff doesn't appear to get much searching. What am i missing here?
The keyword makes up part of my companies name, so is used in nearly all directory submissions. One keyword 'holiday' is used 19 times within the homepage, could it be that I am keyword stuffing?
All of the pages link to the homepage using the keyword term.
The competition looks weak, but I was wondering if there's a tool where I can find out what anchor text people are using to link to me, to see how many links are using this keyword term.
I've got top 10 rankings for other keywords on the homepage, just not this one.
Claudia, try copying and pasting this into the Google search box: site:www.chimedicineworks.com/& Thanks to Mike in another post, it will display all of your supplemental.
I don't think you are really missing anything. There doesn't appear to be local search volume for Asheville Acupuncture, etc. Even if you were to receive traffic for some of your terms: Acupuncture | Alternative Medicine | Chinese Medicine, they are not really targeted to a local market.
A relevant term would be: Asheville Acupuncture or Chinese Medicine in Asheville. But there is no search volume. In order to maximize the sites potential, the on-line may need to find a unique business idea to work with the off-line business.
I'm out of supplemental! woohoo…must have been the sitemap submission. Took about a week.
Jeff, i used to have Asheville Acupuncture, but since it had little search volume, i put in words that at least were searched. But yes, not necessarily locally. So are you saying it would be better to use Asheville in the title? I actually don't think it will make a difference. People searching Asheville Acu find her anyway.
To clarify, are you saying that the website should include some unique business idea that is promoted to get the local traffic?
Thanks for all the ideas. I am going to have to go thru the pages of the portal and copy out all the snippets of information and put them all in one place. It gets difficult finding things. But i love coming here…
Claudia, great job on getting out of supplemental!
Either way…since Asheville has little volume at best, as long as those words appear on the page you are fine. Yes, if you can do something to spread the word locally, it could help with traffic.
Dont look at quantity results, but look at news search, directories, tags. etc.If you find there information, then i guess it has a buzz, otherwise
check using google adwords. Create 2 campaigns one for national and one for locally (geotargeting).Create a small ad group and bid at least to be in position 4-7. After you receive some descent impressions, use the query search performance to see what people searching when you are using the keyword Asheville acupuncture (broad match). If this doesnt work then you should consider other keywords.
Also i found out that the keyword asheville acupuncture at keyworddiscovery gave me 18 results the last 12 months
I guess it's important for Google to be in control even if it feels like they are playing us like a puppet. If they continue to ground the hacks and uniform the process, I am all over it.
Claudia, you'll have to do some testing on Adwords. I would be careful with a national market campaign. Especially if you don't have backend products to sell. If you geotarget to local market, it might take a while to get some goods results but you won't be bleeding money on a non targeted campaign.
Yep, i searched for terms that should bring up some of the pages in SI and other pages come up instead for those terms. So i guess i have some heavy duty internal linking to do that point to those SI pages…
Jeff, thanks for all the tips. Yes, I have used adwords and would only do a local campaign. No need for national since there is no online product.
You mentioned: the on-line may need to find a unique business idea to work with the off-line business. Can you give an example? We are trying to wrap our heads around that.
Alas, there are still significant pages in SI. Somehow when i copied and pasted the link before, it returned no files and i thought i was free and clear. Apparently what i pasted was garbled and not slash ampersand.
Why are newly created pages going straight into supplemental for this site?
Claudia, don't be too concerned about having a few pages in the SI. If you randomly started checking sites, you'll find that most websites have pages in the SI.
Walmart (my competitor) has 90K / 41% of their pages in SI. How about GOOGLE? Try 84K / 16% in SI. Also, I have a great deal of respect for Brad Fallon from My Wedding Favors & Shirley from American Bridal so I peek at their sites often. YES, they have pages in SI too. I am surprised because I thought I checked Shirley's site not too long ago and came up with a bog 0.
The point is: Relax just a little on SI.
_______
You need an idea for the business? I am unsure of your budget so lets just go with the obvious. GET A BILLBOARD!!! lol
Just kidding!
Ask yourself the below questions…
*Do all advertisements include the URL?
*For new and existing customers, are they leaving your facility with a refer a friend card to receive 5% off their next visit? Or 10% off to the referrer and 5% for the new.
*Are you using a "Spread The Word" technique?
*Does every single piece of stationary have your URL on it?
*What about your local phone listings?
*Are you in all books driving customers to the site.
*Are you pushing the site to new and existing customers. And do you have sufficient articles and content to keep their interest when they land on the site?
I have many more ideas. Probably too many…
For now, check the immediate concerns above.
Relax…ah, that sounds good. Trouble is, two-thirds of the pages are in SI. And all new ones are going in.
I still need to review the site for the buddy system, tho i'm pretty sure much of that is in place.
Jeff, thanks for the good list of offline. I think my client has slacked in the offline, hoping online was doing the job. Lots of money goes into all of this, and i think small businesses can do one or the other…slowly. Until cients do the SEO stuff themselves (which won't happen), they pay me to do it. I feel an obligation to get results! So i keep trying to improve.
Claudia, I don't blame you for wanting to get all of your pages out of the SI. Especially since the site is not all that big. You can try using the tactic in Dan's "How To Get Pages Out Of SI" by linking to the pages out of the SI - in the body of the pages in the SI.
Also, you can build a little more on-page by having pages link to themselves and add a home link in the copyright (like I do with my site).
Has anyone seen a dip in their main Google keywords? I just received more backlinks but still lost 300 places for my main keyword. It's a big volume keyword (estimated at 835K monthly searches). I am on page 1 of Yahoo & MSN. I was clawing to get on page 2 of Google and then POOF.
2nd & 3rd tier keywords are fine along with Yahoo & MSN.
Dan,
Thanks so much for the Fast Start Book! I have read thousands of pages out there on the subject and always came away with unanswered questions and confusion. You have helped me tremendously. We have a very large site that needs lots of SEO help. It took me a long time to really understand fact that Search Engines don't think like a human so when I built the site I made mistakes in the meta tags titles, descriptions, keywords and on site content. I am in the process of revising them now with the advice from your book.
Here are my questions:
When you optimize more than one category page for related search terms what is the best way to avoid duplicate copy issues? Using the example from your keyword spreadsheet, cheap flowers and discount flowers. As I understand it you are recommending building two category pages. Is it enough just to write two different titles, meta descriptions and on page descriptions? What other tips do you have for avoiding the duplicate content issue?
When you have the following situation:
-Page is optimized for a keyword phrase that has been indexed in the Search Engines but is not showing up in that top 1000
-You now know using your intitle: check that the keyword phrase above is very competitive
Would you leave that page on the site and optimize another keyword phrase or would junk that page content and revise it using the better keyword phrase? I have the ability to leave pages on our site but to leave them out of the main navigation so it would not be confusing to customers to have two pages. What approach is best?
Thanks so much for the book and your help! I can not tell you how much I appreciate your willingness to share your knowledge.
For cheap flowers and discount flowers, I think you could probably have the same page as the primary target. The second URL is not really important until your primary URL is on the first page of search results - then it's nice to bring a second page up so you can have a double listing.
You should start with the home page. Towards the bottom of your home, you say: "Listed below are a few of our favorite Art Towns". It looks like there are hundreds of Towns with extremely small print. It's hard for me to make them out even with my MEGA LG Flatron Wide Panel. The major cities reference (for delivery) is a bit much too.
Also, check your home page title. It should have your core terms in it and not be too long… It looks like your length may be an issue and you have two titles on the page.
I'm working my way through your SEO guide, and my honest opinion it's one of the better ones available on the web - I particularly appreciate the fact that there is a solid framework behind it.
However I am struggling a little in getting my head round the keyword map in Excel (I tend to learn visually.) Is there perhaps a diagram or sample Excel file demonstrating how you organise your core terms into clusters? You mention above a downloadable Excel file, but I can't seem to locate it.
Thanks for the link. Hopefully you don't mind answering one more question!? In stage 1.4 you mention mapping clusters to pages. How would you map the following cluster:
Would you try and target 2 of the above core search terms on the same page (eg. 'indian restaurant', and 'curry restaurant'), and maybe create a new separate page of content for the term 'tandoori restaurant' OR would you try and target all 3 terms on the same page?
I feel like I am trying to match core search terms to pages, rather than clusters to pages - maybe I've picked things up wrong.
I am working my way through your book and enjoying the Aha! moments.
I have a question about the spreadsheet example. I will probably have another Aha! moment over this.
What do the columns G, M and Y represent? The only thing I could think of is Google, MSN, and Yahoo. Do the values there represent the number of hits, or what?
@Al, those probably all map to the home page together. Try to think - "what's the best page on my site for someone who has just searched for ____?"
@Rod, you should ignore that other stuff - we were using @ SEO Research Labs this to help illustrate how someone might use one of our keyword research reports.
Comments on Keyword Strategy Questions »
What is the best strategy; Lots of niche keywords or a few of the most popular in your opinion? Thanks
For anyone who wants to use KeywordDiscovery for just finding keywords, you don't have to sign up for their free trial. Their open free tool is: http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html which returns up to 100 keywords like Wordtracker.
Joe, I wouldn't say either extreme is the best strategy.
David, thanks for the link - those guys never miss a beat.
Does anyone have links for GOOD localised keyword tools, the only one i stumpled upon once was http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword/ but I would love to see alternatives from several countries.
Here you go Dennis…
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion
http://www.goodkeywords.com
You can download the good keywords software for free. Make sure you turn off your firewall or allow it to your firewall.
Jeff
I found a pretty decent keyword tool you can add as a bookmarklet to your firefox browser.
According to the author's post, what it does is use Google's keyword suggestion tool "…to analyze any page you are currently visiting to extract and generate thematically-related keywords, together with their prices in the adwords system (in US$)…" in an html table for easy viewing and importing.
find it at:
http://www.seoprotoolz.com/little-automation-in-keywords-generation-and-their-prices-too
Dennis, I forgot to mention…
The Digital Point tool is good for measuring singular and plural searches from Wordtracker. It also measures Overture.
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion
ie:
Wordtracker
treadmill 1,301.0 /day
treadmills 1,004.0 /day
Overture
treadmill 7,745.0 /day
Jeff
Ron, thanks for the cool plug-in.
Dan,
I love the book. It's really well done and organized.
I've got lots of product pages. I need to do a lot of work on keywords and I was wondering if it would be better for me to optimize the product pages for one key word rather than 2 or 3. The category pages would need to be optimized for 2-3, of course.
I also need to look at tracking software so that I can measure (a unique concept). I was looking at the package from keyword discovery but noticed that you suggested Advanced Web Ranking. Are there real differences I should pay attention to? Also, If I get the Advanced Web Ranking do I need the standard or pro to handle several websites?
That makes sense, Lisa - just realize that at the level of product pages, you're going to see a lot of long tail type terms if you have good product descriptions.
I haven't used Trellian's tool, but with Advanced Web Ranking the choice of standard vs. pro pretty much boils down to whether you want to be able to output customizable reports. That's probably not important if it's just you looking.
I use wordtracker (paid version) and then i peel out their keywords and put it on adwords also. this helps me a lot.
Dennis it depends, which country, keyworddiscovery supports a major regional search engines, but for small countries im using google adwords.
Dan(or any of you) have you ever tried the msn keyword research tool from MSN Adlab? What do you think if we compare it to wordtracker and keyworddiscovery?
http://adlab.msn.com
I didn't know about this tool. Although I haven't compared it to Wordtracker & Keyword Discovery, it is good for forecasting and checking seasonal trends of my keywords. The keyword mutation detection is very useful in my niche too.
Thanks for the tool!
Jeff
The Adcenter Labs tools are cool, but I'm waiting for them to get a consistent data set between all the tools. I know it's coming, and I'd bet that it will happen before SES San Jose (August).
I have not yet checked he ADcenter tools yet. Butthink this product will help a lot of webmasters in their endeavour to do many things associated with online web tools.
Hi Dan,
Really enjoying the fast start. On the first page of the Keyowrds chapter you mention an Excel psreadsheet you use for keyword mapping. Is this available to download anywhere?
Thanks,
Dave
OOOOOPS, Dave! Let me holler at someone and we'll get that spreadsheet posted today.
Dan,
I just finished reading the 'keyword' section of your ebook. I have a quick question. You had mentioned that we should target the top 2-3 keyword clusters for a particular keyword term. Just to quantify, how many searches per period (month)is considered a good keyword term? 10,000/mo, 1,000/mo?
Thanks,
Bob
Bob, that's going to totally depend on the market. I know folks who are doing fine with a few dozen visitors a day.
Really enjoying reading the comments in this community.
I have a major problem with Keywords in that I don't know what keywords to optimise my site for - my past record hasn't been too great, where I choose a keyword which I think would be popular, optimise the page for that keyword term and it turns out to not drive much traffic at all.
They are so many keyword tools, but which one(s) are the the best?
Also, how many keyword term's would you optimise a page for?
Darren, you should refer back to the SEO Fast Start book. In Chapter 3 Dan recommends Keyword Discovery & Wordtracker. There are more tools in the above posts that are useful (in my opinion).
Typically, 2-4 keywords in the title works well for me. Make sure your keywords are targeted. If you are not sure what I mean, refer back to the SEO Fast Start book. In addition, having other long tail keywords on the page and links to other pages will increase traffic.
Jeff
I have a question about local markets and services. I have several client's sites that need the local market and not the world wide web. How does one increase local traffic (city, maybe region)? Google Analytics shows much of the traffic bouncing back out, and presume much of this is due to locality. As a hands on local service, the bottom line is to get local people responding. How can i think about this to get better results (conversions), not just traffic.
Thanks for all the information Dan, that you have provided. The videos are choke full too. I'm really enjoying them.
Claudia, if you haven't already looked at Google Adwords, you should check it out. The benefit for you is this. You can have an ad show up in the exact area where you are doing business. You need to do keyword research.
Also, your home page title does not appear to be keyword rich. Refer back to the SEO Fast Start book.
If keyword research supports local markets, you should be able to get traffic utilizing SEO and/or Adwords.
In regards to conversion, Dan is an expert and often discusses user acceptance. You may want to consider a Hacker Safe logo and/or BBB logo. They are proven to increase conversion. Also, consider putting your 828 # above the fold in the top right corner.
Jeff
conversion
Claudia, if you haven't already looked at Google Adwords, you should check it out. The benefit for you is this. You can have an ad show up in the exact area where you are doing business. You need to do keyword research.
Also, your home page title does not appear to be keyword rich. Refer back to the SEO Fast Start book.
If keyword research supports local markets, you should be able to get traffic utilizing SEO and/or Adwords.
In regards to conversion, Dan is an expert and often discusses user acceptance. You may want to consider a Hacker Safe logo and/or BBB logo. They are proven to increase conversion. Also, consider putting your 828 # above the fold in the top right corner.
Jeff
Jeff, thank you. Useful tips. I've considered Adwords, and wanted to get the site fully optimized before i did that to see what natural search brought in. Actually, site conversion HAS increased…i think the free consultation has done that, tho it is buried at the bottom…point being that only the serious need apply. But i like the idea of the phone number up top too.
Regarding the keyword rich title, our thinking on this page was to use the general asheville acupuncture and licensed acupuncturist keywords in the title.
Are you saying that is not keyword rich because the page has all sorts of other keywords in it? We are working on making all page titles and descriptions unique, and i'm not sure how to handle the homepage i guess. I'll look over SEO FastStart again and see what i'm missing…
Thanks again,
claudia
Your welcome Claudia. I am here to help.
Although a good percentage of monthly searches are unique, I don't think the majority of the words in your title are searched. Therefore, they are not useful keywords. Check out the recommended keyword tools in above posts and plug in those words….you will see what I mean.
Your time might be better spent adding a subdomain for "general asheville acupuncture" in-case that term is ever searched. There is a big 0 for that search…
Your home page will typically receive the most traffic and rank ahead of interior pages. In saying this, your home page title should contain your best and most optimal keywords.
Work other 2nd & 3rd tier pages around the home.
Jeff
Just how many keywords can one use in each category on a site? It is so hard to decide which ones to use.
I fell asleep the book in my arms last night, not because it was boring, but because I was up until 2am reading it and making notes!
Absolutely love http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html - great tool
Just one question;
The keyword has a total of 1200 and when I click on help it says thats the number of people searching for the keyword within 12 months - have I read this right. If so, it means that the keyword isn't searched that often over 12 months, does it?
Continuing the discussion about how to optimize for a local market, the single word 'acupuncture' gets a lot of searches, so using this single word would be more powerful than 'asheville acupuncture'?
Other high demand words would be 'fertility', 'chinese medicine'?
(why does wordtracker show NO results for 'chinese medicine', while overture shows over 600? (i'm using digital point)
I guess i can qualify the traffic by adding Asheville in the description, rather than the title?
Do i assume searches from Asheville, and North Carolina, would show higher results for this site, than i would doing a search from another state? When i test, i always have to add Asheville nor North Carolina to the search to see results. I'm never really sure what is happening, although the site does seem to rank well when i add those modifiers. I just don't know what the local market is truly seeing.
I am working my way thru the SEO FastStart keyword search chapter to get top keywords, the core terms, etc. So i may have more questions. I know i have asked a lot here, and i appreciate the great feedback.
Great stuff, especially when taking the time to really understand it. I have many client sites to use this on and practice should make perfect (sorta).
Thanks again,
claudia
Merry, it varies but… I typically optimize for 2-4 keywords (in the title tag). These are for 2nd tier
keywords (categories) and are what we consider a medium level of difficulty. You can typically pick up more long tail / 3rd tier searches by working the linking structure
on the page.
FYI: You may want to take a look at your title tag on your home page. I see that your title is your domain. Check the search volume for your natural domain name.
Jeff
Darren, I hear you on being up until 2:00AM.
Dan's material is well worth it!!!
You should check out Aaron Walls keyword tool
and compare notes. There are several other keyword
tools to locate from there(if that tool is down).
http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword/
Jeff (:
Claudia, although 'acupuncture' has a high search
volume over the search term 'asheville acupuncture'
(with 0 volume), it will not necessarily deliver
better results. You will have to follow the
principals in the 'SEO Fast Start' book.
This below page is on page 1 of Google after
searching 'asheville acupuncture').
http://www.chimedicineworks.com/acupuncture.html
If your not receiving traffic from that page,
again…it's related to search volume.
I am coming up with different results for:
'chinese medicine'. You may want to rerun the
term. I believe Wordtracker uses a different
keyword database than the Overture tool.
It is a reasonable assumption that Asheville
and North Carolina would be a higher result than
other states. This is due to obvious on page factors (:
Jeff
Claudia:
Are you using the paid version of Wordtracker? I get these counts:
chinese medicine 332
chinese herbal medicine 189
traditional chinese medicine 187
Dan, I was using the digitalpoint tool where wordtracker results were coming up empty, and overture had signifcant numbers. I'll just go ahead and use wordtracker directly. Digitalpoint wasn't useful.
Also, i had my client search her keywords from asheville (w/o using the word Asheville), and most SERPS were info/directory websites, so she ended up way down the list. From my state, when i search her keywords with Asheville, she comes up on top. Naturally, the results from the local market are more important than the results i'm seeing (and i'm doing the SEO).
How does one deal with this?
Thanks!
Looking at wordtracker results, I notice that capitalization of keywords seems to matter. Does it for the and on page content?
Thanks for clarifying…
Having read (at least browsed - no pun intended) the SEO Fast Start document, I am a bit puzzled as to how to proceed with allotting keywords to my church web site http://www.ansteymethodist.org the pages of which are generated from a database via PHP. The site uses a standard template, only varying from page to page by the content which is drawn from the database. This template includes in it's header the keywords I have decided on, and these appear on EVERY page. Any thoughts ?
Claudia, again probably an SEO myth, but someone recently told me that the capitalization of keywords carrys more weight. He optimises all of his sites and uses capitals in the title tag and some keywords on the page.
Personally, I think it makes a site look ugly, and yes I want traffic, but I don't want an ugly looking site in the process.
Claudia,
I'm not sure if I'm really understanding the question @ http://www.seofaststart.com/portal/keywords/keyword-strategy-questions#comment-259
It sounds like the usual SEO problem with local sites - if the search engine doesn't insert local results (which means you'd want to be listed in the Google Local/Maps database for example) then the only way to get seen on general search terms is PPC with geotargeting.
For example, if I search for "brake repair," I get a bunch of info/directory sites in the organic results, and a few local folks in the paid listings. If I do "brake repair 75035" or "brake repair frisco tx" then I get some local results mixed in, and the organic results are better.
Dan
Gordon, sounds like you're talking about the keywords META tag, and that's not worth worrying about. Search engines aren't going to rely on that.
Wordtracker does a lot of stuff like that, Claudia, which makes no sense but it's sort of left over from way back in the day. Search engines aren't going to be concerned with capitalization.
Thanks Dan. It does appear that the local results are pretty poor (searches from locals sitting in that locale), if they don't also search on the locale.
We've also notice pretty poor results with google business maps too. Searching 'acupuncture asheville', the local person will get chiropractors, etc etc, and acupuncture will be far down the list. My client is frustrated with all of that, but i guess that is a google thing they need to clean up.
I've read the keywords section a few times, because I feel this is an area where I struggle on.
I have ski chalets in a number of countries in Europe, and I want people to rent them for holidays. They are so many different types of keywords terms that I struggle to find which is the most used by searchers.
I then end up changing the targeted keywords over and over again, and in the process not getting very far
Does anyone have any tips?
Darren, put yourself in your customers shoes… What would you search for if you wanted to stay at a Ski Chalet in Europe?
Typically, the longer search terms will convert better. Also, they are almost always easier to rank in the SERP's.
So obviously… skip Europe and work the term Ski Chalet since it appears relevant to your site. Ski Chalet would be considered a medium level of difficulty based on volume, etc. You could go after the tail of that term. ie: "Affordable Ski Chalet Rentals In Europe", etc.
Do the research and start building and linking up 2nd & 3rd tier pages. Once you put up a page that makes sense, don't take it down unless you know exactly why you are doing so.
Jeff
Thanks Jeff.
I try to put myself in my customers shoes, but its difficult. You mention targeting 'ski chalet' but would customers just type in that keyword term, or am I targeting that because it's the primary keyword and less competitive keywords would be easier to rank if I was ranked well for ski chalet?
Darren, it's hard to say if your customers will type in ski chalet. However, since it is a search term, and your business…I would say it has some relevance.
It is not going to directly help the 3rd tier keywords: "Affordable Ski Chalet Rentals In Europe" rank if you rank "Ski Chalet". But setting it up correctly, you should get them both to rank on page one…one under the other.
Jeff
Thanks Jeff.
I was reading with interest about creating two pages to target the same keyword terms so you rank one under the other. Something I had never thought about until joining this community.
The only way is UP!
[hopefully!]
Great Darren!
Ranking the top two can be done… It is cool to see the two rank in the proper order. The 1st one would convert the best.
Jeff
Hi Dan,
GREAT book! What about the link for the spreadsheet
Robin
Sorry, another question.
I was just about to create a page, and write some content, but I was wondering.
I have page #1 that is targeting A,B,C keywords, am I best using a different title, description tags, maybe using C,A,B keywords in a different order?
Robin, you can get a sample spreadsheet at http://www.seofaststart.com/bonus/matrix.zip
Darren, unique titles and descriptions for every page is the best, but unique titles are far more important. If you can't create a unique meta description, I usually recommend just leaving that tag off the page and letting the search engine grab a snippet.
Now that's interesting, because all of my ski chalet pages are dynamic, and the data is taken from a database, so all the France ski chalet's usually have the same title and description, but recently I added in the chalet name and number of bedrooms, into the title and description to make it more unqiue.
I'm monitoring what effect that has over the next month or so.
I've been putting your ideas into practice, and have seen one of my primary keyword terms jump from 19 to 14, within the last 5 days, so I'm hoping it hits the 1st page in the next week [fingers crossed]
Darren
Can anyone who has keyword elite tell me how you would complete the keyword strategy with it and does it work well?
David, I have SEO Elite. I mainly use it to track my keywords. It is also useful for monitoring anchor text, competitor backlinks and a whole lot more that I don't have much time for…
When you go to sign-in, click the YES button to be taken to the download area. There are many help videos to walk you through SEO Elite sections.
Jeff
I can't believe I am still anguishing over keywords & titles. I think i'm all squared away, and then doubt creeps in and i get confused and insecure.
Anyway, when determining keywords for titles, does one select the highest demand keywords (in the case of this site's homepage: acupuncture, alternative medicine, chinese medicine) even though if i look at the competition # in wordtracker, it looks like i'd never rank for it?
Also, for the content, i probably should be adding longer tail keywords rather than repeating the shorter terms, is that correct?
So in summary, do i put high demand more competitive terms in the and longer tail in the content?
Thanks all…
claudia
Claudia, your persistance will pay off!
Typically, you want to concentrate the most relevant search terms on the 1st tier (home page). Add those keywords to your title and sprinkle naturally in the body copy. You can add some of the long tail to the home page to rank there too.
So… don't just add the competitive terms to your title without adding them on the page and to your description tag.
Also, your 2nd tier (off your nav) will more likely rank the medium level of difficulty keywords. Therefore, add those keywords to the title and repeating above …
The longer tail or 3rd tier keywords can be added to your 3rd tier title pages. Link the 3rd tier from and to your 2nd tier pages.
Jeff
Thanks Jeff (for the encouragement too).
I guess i am also having trouble with the Tier structure. I am updating an existing site, and didn't plan for Tier 4+ years ago when i built the site.
We basically have a homepage and then the navigation. This navigation is sounding like it should be Tier 2, with more general topic information (tho i'm not entirely clear the scope of that information).
Third Tier sounds like it will be more specific, narrow topics. So for a second Tier page on Pain management, a third tier would be back pain (and how acupuncture can relieve that pain)?
If we used the pain management page (tier 2) as an example, would the content and keywords be about some general topic about pain and acupuncture? Tier 3 would have gobs of pages for pain (back pain & acupuncture, knee pain & acupuncture, etc?) Seems like these tier 3 pages would start sounding redundant, except for changing back pain to knee pain.
While i'm struggling with keywords, i am also (and maybe really struggling) with content???
Thanks!
claudia
Claudia, the best advice I could ever give you on keyword strategy and SEO is:
IGNORE. THE. COMPETITION.
Focus on relevance. Focus on getting the right keywords on the right pages, so that when you are #1, searchers will get to the best page.
Even if you can never beat the competition, people who come to your site will expect to find good, relevant information. The keywords that tell you what they're searching for also tell you what you need to show them once they get there.
The worst advice I have ever seen, and I see it on forums every day, is when some would-be expert tells someone to optimize their home page for some minor search term because it will be easier to get it ranked. Yeah… it will be. But you'd be bringing people to the wrong page.
Interesting point about the competition Dan.
I find researching the competition is good when you first start out, especially when creating your business plan, BUT, forget them once you have the site up and running, because you spend all the time concentrating on your competition, rather than optimising your site and writing unique content.
Dan, great advice! Thanks for sharing.
The right keywords on the right pages will help to increase conversion too eh… (:
Jeff
I don't get it.
I spend a few days getting a few links and completing some onpage SEO, and I move slowly up the 2nd page of the SERPs, and then BOOM, I'm down to page 4, there's just one keyword I cannot seem to get on the 1st page for no matter how hard I try.
Does anyone have the same frustrating scenario.
Darren, let that 1 ranking go for now. I understand how you feel and have been in your position. But if your stuck on that one ranking, your probably missing out on other opportunities for building the authority of your site.
If it's a Google ranking and your backlinks exceed your competitors, then the authority of those links could be playing a role (+ many other factors). Yahoo & MSN as you may already know, tend to be weighted toward on-page factors.
If the keyword falls on the 2nd or 3rd tier, try deep linking to that page from the recommended directories in the SEOFS.
Jeff
Thanks Jeff, your right I need to put my energy elsewhere now.
What's annoying is that I got a nice PR7 one-way link for that anchor text, and it's since then it fell down the SERPs. I know you shouldn't really worry too much on PR, but it's had the opposite effect!
p.s. and no I didn't buy the PR7 link!
Don't draw conclusions too fast, Darren. You have to give this stuff time. Checking rankings too often can drive you crazy. With that said… check the date on the cached copy of the page, it's unlikely that a link will have its full effect until they've fetched the page again after finding the link.
Hi All,
I am bit confused by terms used in SEOFS, Could you clarify,
Say I sell "Scarf" from my website…
So "Scarf" is one Main Term
Then by brainstorming I found women scarf, ladies scarf, men scarf, pashmina scarf, cashmere scarf, wool scarf Now I find variations of these terms like pure pashmina scarf , 100% wool scarf, etc etc.
Do you mean that all the above search terms form part of ONE CLUSTOR. Or you would say all variations under WOMEN SCARF will be said as one cluster.
It's sort of both, Maninder - you'd probably have a top level cluster around scarf/scarves generally, then a womens/ladies cluster, etc.
Remember, you can have two pages should on search results for a query, so a little overlap is a good thing.
Also a ton of free keyword tools at http://www.seotoolland.com
Mark, thanks for the resource. This link popularity checker displays in detail and includes supplemental.
http://www.elixirsystems.com/tools/linkpopularity.php
Jeff
What is the strategy for keywords for a local market. I manage several client sites for which only local traffic is relevant. How can i boost local traffic? Is it a matter of using the local city names in key places on a page? I had 'asheville acupuncture' in the title and while that term doesn't get lots of traffic, it is MOST relevant when someone does search it.
I'm thinking i need to find other related terms (ailments, etc) for which someone might be looking for treatment but not necessarily acupuncture. But then, i don't know that that wouldn't just bring more untargeted traffic.
Thanks Jeff for the tool suggestion above…however it said that my site had no pages in the google main index!!! When i search site:www.chimedicineworks.com in google, i have about 10-15 in the index (or so i thought). I've been working hard to get the other 20 pages out of the SI, but now the picture looks even bleaker.
Maybe getting more pages into the google main index will bring more targeted traffic (???). I'm finding the whole local thing frustrating.
claudia
Hi Claudia, try site:www.chimedicineworks.com again. I am coming up with 13 of 38 pages NOT in the supplemental index.
For local traffic, you need to look at the big picture. The big picture is this… What search terms are being searched by those local markets? How do you determine that? Go to your keyword tools and get to work. If there is no volume for the terms your considering, forget about them. In my opinion, until those no volume terms are born, they are not considered long tail (3rd tier).
Sure, a good percentage of monthly searches are unique. Therefore, you might miss out on a few searches but that's okay. Because it's possible to get some traffic from them if those words appear on your pages. Go after the local terms that have search volume.
A solution for the rest… Are you applying Google Adwords campaigns to your sites? If it's no, then you may want to consider it for your local markets.
Jeff
This might be a stupid question, but has anyone had a keyword which won't rank 1st page no matter what you do SEO wise? I've stopped concentrating on this keyword, but I got it to the top of the 2nd page, but its jumped to the 4th.
I used to be no.1 for the keyword for 2 yrs, but neglected the site, and it suddently dropped outta no where one day.
one should look for more popular search keywords.keyword phrases containg more generic keywords explaining your website.
Darren, it sounds like the competition pulled a sneak attack on you!
lol I would give you the secret formula but since you won't show your site, I can't analyze it…so your out of luck
Seriously though, if you analyzed the sites above you and can't make heads or tails, dig a little deeper. Do you have the term linked to high quality directories (per SEO Fast Start)? Do you have pages within the site linked to that page with the term in the link text (pages that are not in supplemental)? How are the on-page factors?
If you aleady have plenty of modifiers pumped into the page without over optimizing, then try linking the page to itself. Try linking the page in the header and body.
Jeff
Jeff,
Thanks for your earlier response. I did another search in google on site:www.chimedicineworks.com and i come up with 13 indexed pages and 24 supplemental. Not sure why we each are coming up with different results.
I'm working on coming up with terms the local market is search, but not sure i would know what the local market is searching. Is there a particular tool that would help with local market results? I've been using wordtracker, but unless i add asheville to the search, i have no idea what the local market is searching. Most asheville searches are around tourism. Most local business stuff doesn't appear to get much searching. What am i missing here?
Thanks again for feedback…
claudia
Jeff,
The keyword makes up part of my companies name, so is used in nearly all directory submissions. One keyword 'holiday' is used 19 times within the homepage, could it be that I am keyword stuffing?
All of the pages link to the homepage using the keyword term.
The competition looks weak, but I was wondering if there's a tool where I can find out what anchor text people are using to link to me, to see how many links are using this keyword term.
I've got top 10 rankings for other keywords on the homepage, just not this one.
Darren, it doesn't sound like your over optimized. You said you were #1 for 2 years so I doubt that's the case.
I use SEO Elite but Dan previously recommended Aaron's free tool: http://tools.seobook.com/backlink-analyzer/
Jeff
Claudia, try copying and pasting this into the Google search box: site:www.chimedicineworks.com/& Thanks to Mike in another post, it will display all of your supplemental.
I don't think you are really missing anything. There doesn't appear to be local search volume for Asheville Acupuncture, etc. Even if you were to receive traffic for some of your terms: Acupuncture | Alternative Medicine | Chinese Medicine, they are not really targeted to a local market.
A relevant term would be: Asheville Acupuncture or Chinese Medicine in Asheville. But there is no search volume. In order to maximize the sites potential, the on-line may need to find a unique business idea to work with the off-line business.
Jeff
I'm out of supplemental! woohoo…must have been the sitemap submission. Took about a week.
Jeff, i used to have Asheville Acupuncture, but since it had little search volume, i put in words that at least were searched. But yes, not necessarily locally. So are you saying it would be better to use Asheville in the title? I actually don't think it will make a difference. People searching Asheville Acu find her anyway.
To clarify, are you saying that the website should include some unique business idea that is promoted to get the local traffic?
Thanks for all the ideas. I am going to have to go thru the pages of the portal and copy out all the snippets of information and put them all in one place. It gets difficult finding things. But i love coming here…
claudia
Claudia, great job on getting out of supplemental!
Either way…since Asheville has little volume at best, as long as those words appear on the page you are fine. Yes, if you can do something to spread the word locally, it could help with traffic.
Jeff
Claudia
try aaron wall's keyword tool
http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword/#results
Dont look at quantity results, but look at news search, directories, tags. etc.If you find there information, then i guess it has a buzz, otherwise
check using google adwords. Create 2 campaigns one for national and one for locally (geotargeting).Create a small ad group and bid at least to be in position 4-7. After you receive some descent impressions, use the query search performance to see what people searching when you are using the keyword Asheville acupuncture (broad match). If this doesnt work then you should consider other keywords.
Also i found out that the keyword asheville acupuncture at keyworddiscovery gave me 18 results the last 12 months
http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html
The SI label has been removed from search results, Claudia, but the SI still exists, and the hack Mike Belasco posted still works.
I guess it's important for Google to be in control even if it feels like they are playing us like a puppet. If they continue to ground the hacks and uniform the process, I am all over it.
Claudia, you'll have to do some testing on Adwords. I would be careful with a national market campaign. Especially if you don't have backend products to sell. If you geotarget to local market, it might take a while to get some goods results but you won't be bleeding money on a non targeted campaign.
Jeff
Dan,
I ran the hack and i get that it doesn't match any documents.
So are you saying the pages are still in SI but google isn't showing the label anymore…
i hope that's not what you are saying because i feel sick now.
Yep, i searched for terms that should bring up some of the pages in SI and other pages come up instead for those terms. So i guess i have some heavy duty internal linking to do that point to those SI pages…
Claudia, I got 24 SI pages:
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awww.chimedicineworks.com%2F%26
Jeff, thanks for all the tips. Yes, I have used adwords and would only do a local campaign. No need for national since there is no online product.
You mentioned: the on-line may need to find a unique business idea to work with the off-line business. Can you give an example? We are trying to wrap our heads around that.
Alas, there are still significant pages in SI. Somehow when i copied and pasted the link before, it returned no files and i thought i was free and clear. Apparently what i pasted was garbled and not slash ampersand.
Why are newly created pages going straight into supplemental for this site?
Thanks,
claudia
Claudia, don't be too concerned about having a few pages in the SI. If you randomly started checking sites, you'll find that most websites have pages in the SI.
Walmart (my competitor) has 90K / 41% of their pages in SI. How about GOOGLE? Try 84K / 16% in SI. Also, I have a great deal of respect for Brad Fallon from My Wedding Favors & Shirley from American Bridal so I peek at their sites often. YES, they have pages in SI too. I am surprised because I thought I checked Shirley's site not too long ago and came up with a bog 0.
The point is: Relax just a little on SI.
_______
You need an idea for the business? I am unsure of your budget so lets just go with the obvious. GET A BILLBOARD!!! lol
Just kidding!
Ask yourself the below questions…
*Do all advertisements include the URL?
*For new and existing customers, are they leaving your facility with a refer a friend card to receive 5% off their next visit? Or 10% off to the referrer and 5% for the new.
*Are you using a "Spread The Word" technique?
*Does every single piece of stationary have your URL on it?
*What about your local phone listings?
*Are you in all books driving customers to the site.
*Are you pushing the site to new and existing customers. And do you have sufficient articles and content to keep their interest when they land on the site?
I have many more ideas. Probably too many…
For now, check the immediate concerns above.
Jeff
Relax…ah, that sounds good. Trouble is, two-thirds of the pages are in SI. And all new ones are going in.
I still need to review the site for the buddy system, tho i'm pretty sure much of that is in place.
Jeff, thanks for the good list of offline. I think my client has slacked in the offline, hoping online was doing the job. Lots of money goes into all of this, and i think small businesses can do one or the other…slowly. Until cients do the SEO stuff themselves (which won't happen), they pay me to do it. I feel an obligation to get results! So i keep trying to improve.
claudia
Claudia, I don't blame you for wanting to get all of your pages out of the SI. Especially since the site is not all that big. You can try using the tactic in Dan's "How To Get Pages Out Of SI" by linking to the pages out of the SI - in the body of the pages in the SI.
Also, you can build a little more on-page by having pages link to themselves and add a home link in the copyright (like I do with my site).
Jeff
Has anyone seen a dip in their main Google keywords? I just received more backlinks but still lost 300 places for my main keyword. It's a big volume keyword (estimated at 835K monthly searches). I am on page 1 of Yahoo & MSN. I was clawing to get on page 2 of Google and then POOF.
2nd & 3rd tier keywords are fine along with Yahoo & MSN.
Thanks,
Jeff
Jeff, this sounds like the dip that I mentioned on the 29 July.
It's slowly starting to recover, but I am really surprised the PR7 link I received [one-way] had very little impact on the SERPs.
Dan,
Thanks so much for the Fast Start Book! I have read thousands of pages out there on the subject and always came away with unanswered questions and confusion. You have helped me tremendously. We have a very large site that needs lots of SEO help. It took me a long time to really understand fact that Search Engines don't think like a human so when I built the site I made mistakes in the meta tags titles, descriptions, keywords and on site content. I am in the process of revising them now with the advice from your book.
Here are my questions:
When you optimize more than one category page for related search terms what is the best way to avoid duplicate copy issues? Using the example from your keyword spreadsheet, cheap flowers and discount flowers. As I understand it you are recommending building two category pages. Is it enough just to write two different titles, meta descriptions and on page descriptions? What other tips do you have for avoiding the duplicate content issue?
When you have the following situation:
-Page is optimized for a keyword phrase that has been indexed in the Search Engines but is not showing up in that top 1000
-You now know using your intitle: check that the keyword phrase above is very competitive
Would you leave that page on the site and optimize another keyword phrase or would junk that page content and revise it using the better keyword phrase? I have the ability to leave pages on our site but to leave them out of the main navigation so it would not be confusing to customers to have two pages. What approach is best?
Thanks so much for the book and your help! I can not tell you how much I appreciate your willingness to share your knowledge.
Joey
Joey,
For cheap flowers and discount flowers, I think you could probably have the same page as the primary target. The second URL is not really important until your primary URL is on the first page of search results - then it's nice to bring a second page up so you can have a double listing.
Hi Joey, I was checking out your site a little…
You should start with the home page. Towards the bottom of your home, you say: "Listed below are a few of our favorite Art Towns". It looks like there are hundreds of Towns with extremely small print. It's hard for me to make them out even with my MEGA LG Flatron Wide Panel. The major cities reference (for delivery) is a bit much too.
Also, check your home page title. It should have your core terms in it and not be too long… It looks like your length may be an issue and you have two titles on the page.
Jeff
Hi Dan
I'm working my way through your SEO guide, and my honest opinion it's one of the better ones available on the web - I particularly appreciate the fact that there is a solid framework behind it.
However I am struggling a little in getting my head round the keyword map in Excel (I tend to learn visually.) Is there perhaps a diagram or sample Excel file demonstrating how you organise your core terms into clusters? You mention above a downloadable Excel file, but I can't seem to locate it.
Cheers
Sample of the spreadsheet is here.
Hi Dan
Thanks for the link. Hopefully you don't mind answering one more question!? In stage 1.4 you mention mapping clusters to pages. How would you map the following cluster:
Cluster: restaurant
1)indian restaurant
2)curry restaurant
3)tandoori restaurant
Would you try and target 2 of the above core search terms on the same page (eg. 'indian restaurant', and 'curry restaurant'), and maybe create a new separate page of content for the term 'tandoori restaurant' OR would you try and target all 3 terms on the same page?
I feel like I am trying to match core search terms to pages, rather than clusters to pages - maybe I've picked things up wrong.
Thanks in advance for any advice.
Hi Dan,
I am working my way through your book and enjoying the Aha! moments.
I have a question about the spreadsheet example. I will probably have another Aha! moment over this.
What do the columns G, M and Y represent? The only thing I could think of is Google, MSN, and Yahoo. Do the values there represent the number of hits, or what?
Take Care
@Al, those probably all map to the home page together. Try to think - "what's the best page on my site for someone who has just searched for ____?"
@Rod, you should ignore that other stuff - we were using @ SEO Research Labs this to help illustrate how someone might use one of our keyword research reports.
Rod, the documentation for the keyword reports is in http://www.seoresearchlabs.com/flowers.zip