THIS IS STEP BY STEP SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION CHAPTER 2 PAGE 13 TO 16
Chapter 2
Not All Search Terms
Are Created Equal
When selecting which search terms, also known as keywords, you want to rank highly for, there are three important factors to consider: which keywords are most relevant for your site, which keywords have low competition, and which keywords have high search volume.
Formula for keyword research:
Low Competition
+
High Search Volume
+
High Visitor Value
=
Reaching Searchers Successfully
To discern which keywords make the most sense to optimize for your site, here is a 4-step process to identify the best keywords to target with your SEO efforts.
Step 1) Put together a list of keywords you think someone would use to find you.
Step 2) Go to the Google Keyword Tool here: https://adwords.google.com/o/KeywordTool and type in the list of keywords you came up with. Then once you’ve entered the target search terms, click on the search button to reveal a list of related terms and their corresponding monthly traffic volumes. Sometimes Google will change the link for this tool so if you have difficulty getting this link to work, just do a Google search for “Google Keyword Tool.” This tool is free and does a great job of recommending potential search terms.
Step 3) Download all of the keywords into an Excel spreadsheet by clicking on the download button.
Step 4) In your new Excel file, do a data sort of keywords with the highest traffic. To sort the data, you’ll have to go to the data tab at the top and click sort. If you’re having difficulties, do a Google search for sorting data in Excel. Ensure that you sort first by keywords with the highest monthly traffic volumes.
Once you’ve done all of this, select five to ten keywords toward the top of the list that you think are most relevant to your website.
Now that you have your initial search terms, we will want to determine how much competition there will be for these keywords. The Google Keyword Tool will provide its own competition estimate when you download the file. However, you should be aware that this estimate refers to the level of competition on the paid search side and isn’t a true reflection of how competitive a search term will be when attempting to optimize your website for organic rankings.
Google gives priority to sites that are seen as authoritative, have been around a long time, and are consistently creating and publishing useful information for their users. Therefore, if you do a search on your target keywords and see a bunch of sites appear that adhere closely to that description—such as Wikipedia or the New York Times—it’s going to be very difficult to make progress with even the best strategies in place.
When determining search term competition, there are plenty of great SEO tools out on the market. One that I tend to use quite a bit and highly recommend is Moz (www.moz.com) While this tool does cost some money, Moz offers a free thirty-day trial. This Seattle-based software company has acquired a particularly strong reputation in the SEO space and they have a very active community that’s always happy to answer SEO-related questions. This software will help you identify opportunities, while the community will put you in touch with experienced professionals who can answer questions and provide insights into SEO. If you do decide to use Moz on an ongoing basis, you’ll only need the minimum level of service, currently $100/month. Though, as mentioned, the company does offer a free one-month trial if you want to explore their tool set before making any type of commitment. Also important to note, you do not have to be a paying member of Moz to benefit from the information available on their blog. So feel free to check out their blog at any point if you have specific questions about SEO or simply want to check out what’s new in the industry.
Before going any further, it’s important to understand that there are some great SEO tools out there to help you reach your online goals. While Moz is one of the more prominent resources featured throughout this book, my goal is to showcase the value that tools like this can bring to the table when working on your search engine presence. Later in this book, there will be other tools mentioned that provide similar features to Moz. I want to give you some insights into what these tools can do for you and then give you the ability to go out and find the tools that will work best for your purposes.
With regard to these SEO tools, the strategies outlined in this book could absolutely be done for free, without having to spend any money on software or tools. If you would like to research keyword competitiveness with a tool that offers a free version, you can utilize WebSEO Analytics here: http://www.webseoanalytics.com/free/seo-tools/keyword-difficulty.php.
The software tools that I highlight throughout this book are designed to help with these SEO activities while speeding things up. However, you should never spend money on anything related to search engine optimization unless you can afford it and feel you will receive a future payback from your investment. With this in mind, let’s continue with our SEO keyword research.
Once you have an idea about which search terms you want to target based on relevancy and potential traffic, go to the Keyword Analysis tool in Moz or the free tool at WebSEO Analytics.
Once at the Keyword Analysis tool, you’re going to input the search terms to get an idea of how competitive they are on the major search engines so that you will get some idea around competition levels such as this:
The difficulty score takes into account the authority and page rank of sites that are currently enjoying strong rankings for our targeted search terms, along with how many websites are going after the same keywords and a few other additional factors. In my opinion, any search term that has a difficulty score in the low to medium range should be okay to go after initially. With Moz, this would be any term with a competition score under 50. However, the lower a search term’s score, the better, as it will be easier to get increased rankings. In the event that some of your targeted search terms are too competitive, it would be advisable to start with some of the other search terms from your initial list. After all, the goal is to increase your search traffic as quickly as possible, and choosing the right search terms to target is a key factor in this goal.
Once you’ve found the right combination of search terms based on traffic potential and overall competition, these will be the keywords we’ll target initially with our search engine optimization efforts. This list will be constantly changing as we obtain rankings, but this is where we’ll start. Once you obtain strong rankings on your first set of keywords, repeat the process and go after more search terms!
To go a step further, another useful tool for identifying potential search terms is SpyFu. This company can provide invaluable competitive insight. There are both free and paid versions; the free version will be more than ample for your needs when it comes to keyword evaluation.
First, navigate to spyfu.com and input a term you’re considering. For example, if I wanted to research the term “buy a car” on SpyFu, I would receive the following information in the organic search ranking analysis:
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