Keyword Research, Search Engine Optimization, Uncategorized |

May 19, 2016

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How To Do Keyword Research And Slay It

The advent of effective marketing tools has made the business setting nowadays a daunting arena for brands who want to gain a market spot and succeed.

More efficient tools would mean more opportunities in reaching a larger and broader market that no enterprise can obtain when exhausting conventional marketing methods.

On top of the list is– search.

Today, if people seeks info about almost anything such as getting news and updates or getting more facts about a certain brand, products or services – most depend on what the search engines show them. Most of these users wouldn’t even seek further than the first page of the results shown.

Now, as an entrepreneur, there’s no other option to survive in the modern marketplace than to rank high in Google.

How to acquire high rankings in SERPs then?

It may all begin in pursuing the right keywords to concentrate on your digital marketing battle.

Keyword research is certainly one of the most crucial aspects of a digital marketing campaign, particularly in SEO. The following will  show you why.

The Importance of Excellent Keyword Research

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The majority of online users use search engines in looking out for figures and information. They type in keywords. And in return, search engine’s complicated set of algorithms examines the vast amount of web pages indexed by the crawlers. These ‘spiders’ are software crawling through the contents of the web pages, then the search engine would match the keyword phrase used during the searches to give the users relevant answers.

Indeed, keywords are extremely significant in the course of matching the contents of your site on what your target audience are actually eyeing for.

The keywords must be targeted on the traffic that you want to come to your website, a traffic that eventually converts into profit generating customers. Otherwise, using wrong keywords will only entice traffic that isn’t going to contribute anything to your business.

Indeed, if few words are able to define what your site contents must be, that is probably because you are using right keyword phrases.

Ideally, you must hunt for keywords that the majority of people are using in their online searches but are used by a relatively small number of competitors. That is  possible if you are able to know the following considerations in keyword research.

Vital Concerns On Keyword Research

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As an entrepreneur, you surely would want to create a name in the marketplace, the proper keyword research procedure could be your best ticket to obtaining success in this field. We have listed few vital concerns while doing keyword research, take a look.

    • Create Your Preliminary Keyword Lists

By placing yourself on your targeted visitors’ shoes, you can  have a list of keyword phrases that they are probably using in finding the kinds of services or products you are actually offering.

Primarily, this line of lists can come from guesses drawn out from squeaky air or things you assume individuals will be using to search for the things offered on your website. Consider thinking about where, what, why and how and other possible queries that your targeted audience are possibly using.

    • Restructure Your List With A Keyword Research Tool

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Sometimes, keyword research can be a real pain. Looking out for good tools in making the entire process less time-consuming and efficient can be, too.

The research process is not really something you can just skip if you don’t have time or resources available.

After having your preliminary list, it will be important if you can surely come up with the most right keywords with the aid of a keyword research tool – the most used is the Keyword Google Planner.

In accessing this free software, you must have an AdWords account. The Google Keyword Planner will show you neat stats including average monthly searches, competition level, the average cost per click and so on.

  • Polish Your List Through The Aid of Keyword Suggestions

If you’re finished shortlisting an updated keyword phrases, polish your list more by utilizing various keyword suggestions offered by the keyword research tool. The tool could help you by giving healthier insights on the way targeted audiences arrange, subtract or words from keyword phrases in every actual search. But, you must be extra careful in your enhancement process to guarantee that your final selection of keywords aren’t just related to the contents of your website alone but must actually and correctly describe what your content is really all about.

  • Be Cautious About Utilizing General Keywords

Various online users may use general keywords such as “healthy ice cream” for the duration of a particular search, but again, be careful in using this type of keyword as this may put you in the ocean of rivalry. There will be also an influx of visitors that are not as targeted like you thought and thus cannot offer you any money. General keywords are deemed to be useful only for those businesses who wish to target customers internationally.

However if your business is situated in a specific city, adding in specific name of the place with your keyword like “healthy ice cream New York” can offer you better results. True, this kind of phrases may attract lesser search volume but these searches are the ones that every business website must be drawing – the kind that may convert into paying customers.

  • Do Separate Keyword Research For Precise Products You Offer

You may be proposing services or products that are under different classification or category. You must be able to do isolated keyword research of each of the categories. This could be a bit tiresome especially if you own an ecommerce site that that needs to feature numerous categories. But, being able to target your keyword on this manner will offer you a better chance of inviting more qualified leads that are exactly eyeing for the precise types of products that are featured in your site on a specific category.

  • Exploit Long Tail Keywords

Consider using long tail keywords. These keywords may not have too many searches however the people who are doing long tail searches may generally have specific concerns that they need to resolve. The critical idea is to target numerous and significant long tail keywords in your site contents to allow you have a continuous flow of highly targeted visitors to your site

Technically, to categorize long tail keywords related to your niche, you need to put additional words to your root keywords. For example, our original keyword is ‘healthy restaurant New York’, it may become a long tail if we put ‘where is the best healthy restaurant in New York’. Most SEO elites utilize long tail keywords with their posts to get higher ranking in SERPs.

Takeaway

Once more, in carrying out a successful keyword research campaign, it is essential that you are able to put yourself in your target audience shoes and try to see through their eyes and ideas. You must be able to figure out on how they pick words to use in doing online searches.

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Certainly, keyword research has an extremely important role in this regard to help streamline your SEO campaign and carry in targeted visitors that offer profitable results.

 

 

7Author Bio

 

Patrick P. is the CEO and founder of LinkVista Digital Inc, a company which provides cost-efficient online solutions such as content and SEO management.

 

 

 

 

Keyword Research |

January 20, 2015

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How To Choose The Right Keywords For Your Business

Researching Keywords

Source: Maple Wood Web Design

Planning Content For SEO

Many of you have likely heard the phrase “Content is king.” Publishing content is a search engine optimization technique used to rank for keywords and keyword phrases. For those of you that don’t understand search engine optimization, this is a process of techniques that are used to increase your visibility online. Content plays a vital role in the online world, every website uses some type of content planning for SEO. Most plan their content knowingly, others may not. If you don’t plan your content out or you haven’t begun publishing content yet, take this information to heart. Before you publish your next article, post, or page, you need to make sure you choose the right keywords.

So, how can you choose the right keywords? In this article, we’re going to explore how you can research the right keywords for your website, blog or business. So before you start your content, you need to take the time to start building your keyword list to plan your content around. Let’s start determining which keywords that you need to target and why.

Choosing The Correct Keywords For Your Business

While it’s never too late to start using the correct keywords, those of you that have a lot of published post and pages will need to re-evaluate your keyword panel. If your keywords are working for you, the changes may be easy for some. If your not seeing traffic and sales, obviously the keywords you have chose are not working and need to be evaluated. Choosing the correct keywords for your business is vital to your success online. This is an area where inexperienced SEOs and webmasters fail.

There’s a number of different ways to figure out which keywords work best for your business. Easier said then done though. You could be at a stage where your more advanced then others, perhaps others are just starting out, I’ll touch on as much as I see appropriately. Your keywords are going to be based on your business, your services or your products. For our example, we’ll take a look at the keyword “Social Media Marketing.” There’s thousands of companies that offer social media marketing. If a company is offering it as a service, then it would be a good keyword to target, right? Let’s analyze it.

How To Choose The Best Keywords

Keyword Research

Now, if you look at the screenshot above, you’ll see that we researched the keyword social media marketing to see how many monthly searches the keyword gets. This is only one element of the keyword. We see that the competition level for the keyword is 84 percent, which represents that it’s a high competition keyword. Social media marketing gets 18,000 searches in the United States and over 60,000 globally. We also see that this keyword has an ad cost of around $14.02 per click.

When your researching keywords for your business or project, you need to be extremely careful choosing the keywords you want to target. This is where many SEOs, webmasters and business professionals make mistakes. We already know the results from the keyword, social media marketing. It has everything you look for, right? High traffic, locally and globally. The bid is high, we’d much rather rank this keyword organically. The competition is high, but we’ve ranked high competition keywords before.

Although this keyword has everything you want, social media marketing may not be a good keyword to target. Now, there’s some factors in this decision. An authority aged domain would have an easier time ranking for this keyword then a start-up or website that has less authority. This matters, if my website is an 60-80 percent authority rating, I could target the keyword with success, but it still is a broad keyword. Social media marketing is used for a variety of different purposes, which makes is that much harder to rank for.

Rather then using a broad keyword like social media marketing, I’m willing to research more keywords and try to find keywords that would better describe the services or products that I offer.

Keyword Research

Keyword Results And Suggestions For Social Media Marketing

When researching your keywords, most popular keywords have a diamond in the rough and the same can be said for social media marketing. When we did our keyword search, we found the keyword marketing by social media. This keyword has nearly double the amount of searches, has a lower ad bid and only 29 percent competition. If this keyword reflects what your business does, which it does in our example, we’d rather target this keyword over social media marketing.

Targeting The Right Keyword And Audience

Every SEO campaign or project is different, it doesn’t matter if you have two cases that are in the same niche and field. Circumstances are always different. One thing that will never change is the importance of targeting the right keyword and audience. The right keyword will bring the right audience, only when your keyword choice is correct. Confusing? Perhaps a little, so let me explain.

At Hale Web Development, most of our clients are start-ups. The other portion are commonly those who have seen failure with their SEO attempts. We do our audit, evaluate their website and we determine a plan based on their needs. We are often asked to rank their keywords. When I research their keywords, I find that all of them have extensive search volumes. I get the thinking behind it, but this is the wrong manner to choose your keywords.

Keywords That Bring Conversions

Again, it all depends on your project, but you should never go down the line choosing high volume keywords only. You have to keep conversion in mind when choosing your keywords. Just because it is a keyword that has high volume doesn’t mean that the keyword is right for you. Makes sense, right? You have to open up a whole new level of researching keywords and that is keeping conversions in mind.

Once you get your keywords together, make sure you evaluate them. Get signed up with Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools. If you’re doing marketing, SEO, you need some SEO software as well. We use SEO Profiler. You have Moz, Raven Tools, there’s a variety of SEO software providers that can be used. Analytics and Webmaster Tools are great if you don’t have anything, but you’re going to need more.

Back to keywords and conversions, what are you offering? Likely a service or product, right? SEO is used for organic traffic, so which keywords should we target? It should be keywords that describe that product, that describe that service. Why? Because that’s how we get organic conversions.

Let me explain this better. For example, I have a store online and I sell shirts for men. The ultimate goal is to sell shirts. Since shirts are my product, it only makes sense to target keywords that users can search for to find my products. It doesn’t do me any good to target pants or women’s shirts, I sell men’s shirts. In simple terms, your products are your keywords. You either try to rank for it organically or you pay Google for ads.

Keyword Ranking Factors

Every website has different keyword ranking factors, so results are always going to vary. Important to keep in mind. If you have a new website, it can take a long time before you’ll see your keywords ranking. With all the changes with Google, domain age is an important website metric. New websites are at a disadvantage from the get go, but don’t let it discourage you. SEO is a process that takes time and effort. Once you gain trust from Google and authority websites, the keyword ranking process becomes quicker and more efficient.

Growing your page authority, domain authority, link index value, Moz trust rank, all of these website metrics are important. As you grow these metrics over time, you should see increases in your keyword rankings across the board. The more authority your website has, the quicker your keywords will rank. You’ll be able to rank new keywords quicker and you should see content being indexed quicker also.

Optimizing Your Keywords

Optimizing keywords is probably the most important SEO technique that you need to apply and watch out on your website. Sometimes it can be very difficult for website owners who are not familiar with the SEO process. Developing content and link building strategies that grow your audience, build your brand, and increase your SEO and revenue is crucial for your business. OutreachMama has the latest info and strategies on how to do this.”

Keyword Research, Search Engine Optimization, Uncategorized, Web Development |

July 30, 2014

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Why You Should Start Your SEO With Long-Tail Keywords

 

Benefits Of Long-Tail Keywords

Long-Tail Keywords

SEO, also known as search engine optimization, is a field that is ever changing and often out of our control as SEO experts. Competition is fierce for all competitive keywords and start-up websites are off to big disadvantages from day one. Nearly August 2014 and SEO is different then now then it was at the beginning of 2014. No matter what, Google controls your results, not your SEO. Important to remember. Key point? Abide by Google’s rules, it’s that simple. Don’t worry about short-term gains with unfavorable SEO techniques. Your rankings will pay for it later.

Now, to our topic of this article, long-tail keywords. We all should have some concept of a keyword and the importance of such words in search engine rankings.  If you don’t, a keyword is a term that you try to rank for to benefit the goals of your website. Your goal could be traffic, email signups, to sell a product or service. What ever the need may be, you have to rank for keywords, keyword phrases, key terms or any other word used to describe keywords. With most websites, conversions are the goal and this can be accomplished by ranking high for your search queries. More traffic equals more opportunity to sell.

So, why should a website want to rank for long-tail keywords as we call them? There’s a number of different reasons that you want to begin ranking with long-tailed keywords. For one and possibly most important, long-tail keywords are targeted less. Most companies choose to bypass long-tail keywords in hope of ranking for higher traffic keywords. This is often a mistake and a costly one at that. Two word keywords can take months and years to rank for, these keywords should be part of your long-term SEO process.

Another important reason why you want to target long-tail keywords is to target a specific demographic to buy a product or service. Just because a keyword has less traffic doesn’t mean that it isn’t a good keyword to use. For example, we’ll use the keyword Samsung Galaxy S5 16GB Smartphone. This is considered to be a long-tail keyword, (5) words make up this one keyword. It would be easier to rank for this keyword compared to Samsung Galaxy Smartphone or Samsung Galaxy S5. This is only an example, remember that. This keyword is going to be highly competitive, but this is an example only. I can hear the other SEOs now! Point noted.

Now, what is another benefit of having long-tail keyword campaigns? We will once again look at the same long-tail keyword, Samsung Galaxy S5 16GB Smartphone. Although this is only one keyword, how many keyword are actually in this long-tail term? Now I have you thinking. I can name 5 different combinations off the top. BINGO! This is a great SEO technique to use. You get the benefit of 5 keywords with one long-tail term. Yes, the search bot can read it as one term or many. I’ve tested this before, I’m sure other SEOs have as well. When using long-tail keywords, we ranked for other keywords within our long-tail keyword. It works, it is an effective SEO technique to use.

Retail websites, ecommerce websites, webmasters, you want to use detailed keywords for your products, right? If you’re not, you need to switch your focus. I know many of you focus on high traffic keywords and rightfully so. However, you have to mix these long-tail keywords in with your keyword plan. You may have 50,000 monthly searches for Samsung Galaxy Smartphone but only 300 for Samsung Galaxy S5 16GB White Smartphone. Why be descriptive and detailed? Many shoppers are looking for specific products. If they search for Samsung Galaxy S5 16GB White Smartphone, that is what they want. In most cases, the long-tail keywords are easier to rank for. If I have a top keyword bringing in 30,000 of the 50,000 monthly searches, I’m not worried about it. If that BIG TRAFFIC keyword is only bringing in 1 visitor a month, I would rather target the long-tail term to increase my opportunity for sales. Affiliate marketers, this goes for you too.

Your website should be diverse in key terms anyway, a great mixture of short and long-tail keywords. Retail has once again been hit with a Google update. A lot of traffic has been lost. Did you hear about this? Go search for a few terms. When I did, all I saw were local rankings. I’ve seen it with a few clients of my own and traffic is down for all our retail clients. I haven’t read much about it or I would have shared a link, I apologize. A little off topic but something to be aware of.

 You don’t want to abandon your keyword campaigns. Short-tail keywords are still priority. They bring in the most traffic and always will. However, there is a benefit for the long-tail terms. Learn how you can use all types of keywords to benefit your rankings, traffic and conversions. Thanks for taking the time to read my article. As always, it’s greatly appreciated. If you liked it, please take the time to share it to help others. You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Google, YouTube and LinkedIn.

Keyword Research, Search Engine Optimization |

June 20, 2014

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Search Engine Optimization-Growing Search Engine Rankings With Content

Content SEO RankingsSearch engine optimization has come a long way over the years as SEOs and webmasters continuously test and evaluate their techniques used to increase search engine rankings. Over the past few years, established domains or not, I’ve always suggested the importance of content. If you’ve been a webmaster for some time or a SEO, even a new SEO, you’ve probably heard the phrase, “content is king.” This is SEO terminology, content is king and you better have some type of content campaign if you want to grow your search engine rankings.

Content Benefits

Content has a number of different benefits, of course increasing search engine rankings is one of the top perks. This is a given though, what else can content do for you? Content can help you brand your name, brand your company, right? Content can also be used for marketing purposes, an easy way to promote yourself or your business. Content can help you increase traffic and sales, that is a given. As you build search rankings, you build more traffic and more traffic equals sales.

Building content can also establish a level of trust with you and your customers/clients. It can also help you become an authority in your chosen niche. For example, if you’re looking for SEO services, reading a SEO’s blog would give you a general idea of the authenticity of the SEO. The same can be said about any type of service that you may offer. A blog with updated content can help you in many ways.

Content can also help you with link building. For those of you that build links, you can use content on other domains to link back to your website and articles. You want to make sure that the content is unique, don’t continue to use the same article over and over. Useful content will attract new users which can increase your numbers across the board.

Content Should Be Diverse

Your content, on-site and off-site, should be original and diverse. You should strive to aim for useful content, don’t write just to be writing. If your content has no value to the user, you won’t see the return on your investment. Each article should have a purpose. Yes, you do want to publish content daily, but don’t get lazy. You should strive for high quality content that will be shared and linked to due to. If your producing content with half the effort, you’ll see half the results.

Using the right keywords and phrases in your articles is equally important. This is an area where many SEOs make mistakes, choosing the right keywords that bring conversions. Unless you already know which keywords are bring the best conversion, you’re going to need to evaluate and test different keywords in your content. Use a wide range of primary keywords and secondary keywords in your content marketing campaign. You want to closely track your keywords and learn which keywords are bringing in traffic and leading to sales. When you know which specific keywords are working, use these keywords more.

Important to note since we are on the subject, don’t worry about your word count in your articles. This has been a debate for years. How many words should my article have? What percentage should my keywords be? Forget all that. While it is true that you don’t want to over use your keywords, I’ve seen articles rank at all word levels.  I’ve seen 3,000 word articles rank on the first page and I’ve seen 300 word articles do the same. As I said before, concentrate on making your content useful.

Organizing Your Content

To get the full SEO benefits of your content, you need to make sure you content is properly organized. The same can be said about your URLs, even though it is a little off topic. Since we’re talking about search engine optimization anyway, you want your URLs to match your content. SEO 101 perhaps but it’s important, so keep an eye on your permalinks.

Now, in terms of keeping your content organized, most content management systems have categories where content can be stored and organized. In terms of search engine optimization, categories tend to have higher values since multiple articles can be stored there. Not only do you get the benefits of having the article published, you also get the added benefits of having multiple content published and organized in categories.

Make sure your categories are your top keywords while your articles can be diverse and more wide spread. Some articles can be stored in multiple categories. This can also make the user experience more enjoyable and beneficial.

Publish Content Daily

It’s extremely important to keep your blog up-to-date and important to publish content daily. Easier said then done, right? If possible, I would suggest publishing 2-3 articles a day. The more content you publish, the more results you’re going to see. Content increases your indexed pages in search engines, search engine rankings, traffic and we all know that more traffic increase your chances of making sales or conversions.

SEO takes time and rankings can can’t be established overnight. A blog will be a huge benefit for those of you that have a new domain. The key is getting content published when you are first trying to establish web rankings. For those of you that are already established, if you don’t have a blog, this may be what it missing in your ranking equation. You can’t never go wrong with content. Make it useful, beneficial and you’ll see users coming back time and time again.

Keyword Research, Search Engine Optimization |

June 8, 2014

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Search Engine Optimization-Keyword Research And Choosing Keywords

Keyword Research

Researching KeywordsKeywords are going to be an important process of your search engine optimization efforts. Keywords will always be dependent on the type of website you operate, the type of niche and even your competition. Choosing the right keywords and phrases will be extremely important. Your keywords will determine your website’s traffic and revenue. It doesn’t matter if you’re selling products or services, the more keywords you rank for, the more traffic you’ll bring.

Google Keyword Planner

Keywords can easily be searched for with Google Keyword Planner. Google Keyword Planner is free to use and displays keywords, the keyword’s search volumes, competition level of the keyword and bids for the keyword if you choose to run a PPC campaign. Before you start your keyword research, you’ll need to know which keywords to search for. This depends on the type of keywords that you need to optimize your website. Since every website has different needs for keywords, you need to use Google Keyword Planner to search for keywords and phrases. Afterward, you need to determine which keywords will be used for your website or blog.

First, why do we recommend using Google Keyword Planner? Google search engines control around 68 percent of the world’s searches. No other search engine compares to Google, certainly not Bing and Yahoo. Your keyword ranking efforts should be aimed at ranking for Google, not the other search engines. Google Keyword Planner only includes information from Google searches, important to know.

Most websites are classified as follows; (1) Selling Products or (2) Selling Services. Now, if you’re selling products, these products are going to be your keywords. For example only, we’ll say we’re selling products from BeachBody. We’ll say we’re an affiliate. One of their products is P90X3. Since my goal is to sell such products, my keywords will be based with the product name in it. I would search for traffic volumes such as P90X3 workout, P90X3 benefits, P90X3 pros and cons. If you sell products, in order to get traffic to your website for those products, you’ll need to rank keywords with the product brand name. Common sense.Keyword Research

Now, continuing our example, we also know that PX903 is a home workout. Based on my experience, I would say that workout or home workout are also high searched keywords. You can also use this technique when looking for keywords. When choosing keywords, think about what the product is for, what the product does. Is there a more common term that describes this product? If you went to Google to search for such products, what would you type in the search field? You can usually find high traffic keywords using this keyword research technique.

Keyword Research-Search Volumes And Traffic

Most people want to automatically take the highest volume keywords and phrases when choosing keywords. Sounds about right, or is it? Truth be told, in most cases, we do want to use the keyword that has the highest searches. If a keyword is searched for 20,000 times a month, that is 20,000 chances your website could be found. Sure, this is true but if you don’t rank for that keyword, the search volume might as well be zero. High traffic keywords are great but often hard to rank for. On top of that, you may have a specific situation where a less searched keyword better fits your needs.

Researching And Choosing Keywords

When researching and choosing keywords, you’ll need to determine which keywords best fit your needs. Some keywords are not being searched for. Although the keyword sounds great, if it doesn’t have traffic, you can waste your time trying to rank for it. You should target keywords that are specific and have traffic. It is easier for an established website to rank for a competitive keyword over a new website. It may be best for you to target less competitive keywords with your new website at first. Once you build authority and rankings, you can then target higher competitive keywords with more traffic.

Choosing keywords is always important for search engine optimization. Without keyword rankings, you are lost in a sea of millions of websites. You need to think about how your going to grow your search rankings, keyword rankings. Most websites grow their keyword rankings through content, images or videos. There’s a number of different keywords that can be used to help you build traffic and ultimately sales. It will be up to you to determine which keywords to go after.