Step Wise SEO

Ask any SEO pro what the single most important part of an SEO campaign is and we bet you’ll get this answer: “Keyword choice!” Here’s why:

The keywords you choose will be the focus of your entire optimization process.

Keywords (also referred to as keyword phrases, keyphrases, keyterms, and just terms) are the short, descriptive phrases that you want to be found with on the search engines.

If you put the time into choosing powerful keywords now, you are likely to be rewarded not only with higher ranks, but also with these benefits:

• A well-optimized site, because your writers and other content producers will feel more comfortable working with well-chosen keywords as they add new site text

• More click-throughs once searchers see your listing, because your keywords will
be highly relevant to your site’s content

• More conversions once your visitors come to your site, because the right keywords will help you attract a more targeted audience

There is no special formula that will work for every site all the time. And this applies to your keyword targeting strategy.

We suggest that by the end of this week, you should have 10 target keyword phrases in hand.

We believe that this is a reasonable level if you give it one hour a day. But you may be more comfortable with 2 or 20 keywords. We welcome you to adjust according to your individual needs.

Here are your daily assignments for this week:

Your Keyword Gut Check

Resources to Expand and Enhance the Keyword List

Keyword Data Tools

Keyword Data Gathering

Your Short List

Your Keyword Gut Check
Here you’re going to do a brain dump of possible target keywords for your organization.

For now, you’ll jot down whatever comes to mind, and save the fine-tuning for later. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

Be the searcher. For each conversion you wrote on your Goals Worksheet, take a few minutes to put yourself in the mind of each target audience that you listed.

Imagine that you are this person, sitting in front of a search engine. What do you type in the search box?

Name who you are and what you offer. No keyword list is complete without your organization’s name and the products, services, or information you offer.

Make sure to think about generic and proprietary descriptions. One may jot down more generic words like “baby shower gifts” and “baby clothes,” but he/she should also include trademarked names like “Babyfuzzkin” and a list of the brand names they’re selling.

Likewise, if it’s equally accurate to describe the products for sale on your website with the terms “spray bottles” or “X7 MistMaker Series,” add both to your list.

Name the need you fill. It’s not just what you offer, it’s the itch that your product or service scratches.

So one might write down “baby shower gift ideas” or “baby clothes tree shipping.” If you sold home alarm systems on your site, you might want to list terms that describe your customers’ needs, such as “protect my home” and “prevent burglary.”

Think seasonal. Does your product or service vary from season to season? Do you offer special services for special events?

Think through your whole calendar year. The person at Babyfuzzkin may want to list words like “baby swimsuits” and “Size 2T Santa sweaters.”

A spa resort may want to list things like “Mother’s Day Getaway Ideas” and “Tax Time Stress Relief.”

Embrace misspellings and slang. Here’s something you probably know better than any SEO expert: alternate spellings and regional variations on your keywords.

On a regional note, a company selling soft drink vending machines had better remember to add both “soda” and “pop.”

You do not need to consider variations in capitalization because search engines are not sensitive to caps (besides, the vast majority of searches are lowercase).

However, you should include singular and plural forms on your list for further evaluation.

Locate yourself. Brick-and-mortar organizations include variations on their company name and location in the keywords list.

If your company does business only in Michigan, you really don’t want to waste your SEO efforts on a searcher in Nevada.

And, it is worth mentioning that search engines sometimes aren’t all that smart? They do not necessarily know that “NY” and “New York” are the same thing. So be sure to include every variation you can think of.

Now that you’ve got an idea of what you’re looking for, you can choose to brainstorm your list alone, or, better yet, brainstorm with members of your PR, sales, marketing, and writing teams.

This can work well as an e-mail exercise, too; just shoot out a request for your colleagues to send you their own ideas for keywords.

When Homographs Attack
Homographs are words that have the same spelling but different meanings. For example, invalid means both “not valid” and “a person who can’t get out of bed.” Search engines have struggled with homographs since their inception.

As mothers to young children, we have a strong interest in making sure our homes are lead-free.

So naturally, we use the search engines to learn how. Unfortunately, the word lead, meaning “a soft heavy toxic malleable metallic element,” happens to have a homograph: lead meaning “travel in front of.”

The environmental lead testing search results are crowded out by pages with information on leadership!

In order to get the information we need, we have to lengthen our search phrases: “lead abatement,” “lead contamination,” and “lead poisoning.”

Acronyms are particularly susceptible to this problem. Massive Media, Inc., has spent years targeting the term “AMC,” which is an acronym for one of its products.

But just in the top 10 Google results, this term is represented by the following entities:

• AMC Theatres
• The AMC network movie channel
• The Appalachian Mountain Club
• Albany Medical Center
• Australian Maritime College
• American Mathematics Competitions
• Applied Microsystems Corporation

None of these has anything to do with what Massive Media was trying to promote! Clearly, in targeting this acronym, it was navigating the wrong waters. It doesn’t make sense to spend your energy competing with such a broad field.

If you are unfortunate enough to be promoting a company or product with a name that shares spelling with a common word or acronym, you will need to brainstorm on what secondary terms your target audience is likely to add and combine words to find a more appropriate term to target.

Possibilities are the geographical location of your company, the generic term for the product, names of well-known executives, or the term company or inc. And, as a general rule, don’t target acronyms shorter than four letters long.

Once you start spitting out your list, don’t over-edit yourself; you’ll have time for editing later.

For now, we just want you to get all of your keyword ideas in writing.

Resources to Expand and Enhance the List
On your Keywords Worksheet, you already have a nice long list of possible target phrases.

But are there any you missed? You’ll troll on- and offline for additional keyword ideas. We’ve listed some of the places that additional keyword phrase ideas could pop up.

There are more ideas here than you can use in just one hour, so pick and choose based on what’s available to you and what feels most appropriate to your situation:

Your Coworkers If you didn’t get your team involved in keyword brainstorming, be sure that they jump on board here.

It will help your campaign in two ways: first, they’ll provide valuable new perspectives and ideas for keywords, and second, they’ll feel involved and empowered as participants in the plan.

Your Website Have you looked through your website to find all variations of your possible keyword phrases?

Terms that are already used on your site are great choices for target keywords because they will be easier to incorporate into your content.

Industry Media If there are any magazines or websites devoted to your trade, take a look and see what terminology they are using to describe your product or service.

Remember, now is not the time to edit your terms! So if the words are in use out there, be sure to include them on this list.

Your Website Statistics If you have access to a program that shows statistics on your website, review it to see what search terms are currently sending traffic your way. Terms that are already working well for you can be great choices for target keywords.

Your Customers If you (or anyone on your SEO team) have the ability to check in with customers about what phrases they use to describe your products or services, now is the time to get in touch with them and find out!

Your salespeople might also take this opportunity to confess: “Oh yeah, it’s called Closure Management Technology on the website, but when we talk with customers, we always just call it zippers.”

Your Internal Search Engine If your website has a search box on it, it’s time to get sneaky!

You can use its usage information for your SEO campaign. Talk to your webmaster about collecting the following information about site visitors who use your internal search engine:

• What terms do they search for?
• What results are they shown?
• What pages do they choose to click on (if any)?

Keep a running list of top terms your site visitors are searching for; these are likely to be good target keywords for your SEO campaign.

“Related” terms on Search Engines Many search engines offer suggestions for related terms after you perform a search.

For example, Ask has “Narrow Your Search” and “Expand Your Search” columns along the left-hand side of the search results that show a variety of terms related to your search These related terms can be good additional keyword choices.

Friends, Neighbors, and the Unexpected One major problem with keyword choice is that businesses tend to become too caught up in the insider terminology they use to describe themselves.

If your target audience goes beyond industry insiders, be sure to seek out input from unexpected sources.

Your friends and neighbors or even the neighbor’s kid can provide surprisingly helpful ideas.

Competitors’ Websites For the moment, try breaking up keyword writer’s block by browsing your competitors’ sites to see what terms they are using to describe themselves.