Archive for the ‘keywords’ category
Focus
I wanted to take a few minutes today and discuss something that is CRITICAL to success in the world of search engine optimization: FOCUS.
Focus is a requirement for success in anything in life, and search marketing is certainly no different. If you want your website to rank highly in Google or any other search engine, you have to decide what keywords you want the site to rank for. You must avoid the temptation to take some wishy washy, half-ass approach where your sort-of optimized for this keyword, sort-of optimized for that keyword, etc. You must decide on specific keywords (with those decisions being based on proper keyword research) and then map those keywords to different pages of your site. Forget about trying to get your homepage to rank for all your keywords. Pick two keywords for the major pages of your site and optimize each one of those pages individually and specifically for those keywords.
This is kind-of like the concept of picking a niche to target in your business (a very good idea). If you present yourself as a generalist in your field, there are likely way too many potential prospects to do a decent job of marketing to, and you are going to face price difficulties. Generalists cannot charge the same premium as specialists. You should pick a specific market and go after it hard. The same is true with your search engine optimization. Pick a set of keywords that matches the criteria explained below and there will be much more congruity between your keywords and your website.
Keyword Criteria
1. It is highly relevant to your business.
2. It generates some traffic.
3. It is in a reasonable competitive situation.
In addition, any keyword for which you are currently in the top 50 is a good candidate, unless the competition is so competitive that it will take a very long time to reach the front page.
Another thing to remember is that the links you create in your link building campaign should contain your target keywords or close variations and that they should link to the specific pages of your site that are optimized for those keywords. Again…focus.
If you need help focusing your search engine optimization campaign, please call Work Media today at 888-299-4837 or email info@workmedia.net.
Watch Your Capital Letters
Here is something most people reading this probably don’t know because it doesn’t make a lick of sense: Google treats duplicate keywords as separate if they have different capitalization. For example:
PPC
ppc
These two words would be considered different keywords even if they were both in the same ad group. So you might say…what’s the big deal? Here’s the problem. It has been our experience that there are times when Google seems to greatly favor keywords that are all lower case. It would not be unusual for the first keyword above to have a quality score of 5 while the lower case version had a quality score of 10.
Given that you don’t really know which keyword will trigger your ad, it is best to always use the version which might give you an advantage in ad positioning. So even if you decide to experiment to see what happens with capitalized versions, always test the lower case version as well.
Another problem with having keywords in your ad groups that are the same except for capitalization is that it aids in making your account more unwieldy and difficult to manage. Accounts that are fine-tuned to the best (and smallest) set of keywords are much easier to manage, so we suggest only using lower case keywords, but have each in your account as both exact and broad match.
This is just one example of how something that seems very insignificant can have an impact on your overall paid search account performance. It is important to pay attention to the details.
Got questions about search engine marketing? Feel free to contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.
A Lesson in Keywords: How Many Keywords Do You Need?
There is a client we have worked with for a long time who has a Google AdWords campaign that has not performed as well for parts of this year as it has in the past. In general, 2009 was somewhat of a difficult year due to increased competition for paid search traffic and poor economic conditions. In other words, there have been more advertisers chasing fewer customers. And this particular client definitely experienced the effects of that.
After trying many different strategies (account keyword expansion, keyword contraction, higher ad positioning, ad split-testing, etc.) we’ve finally stripped the account down to the barebones.
We’re now only bidding on four keywords. I’m really not a big fan of bidding on so few keywords. It’s the whole “eggs in one basket” thing. But in this case, looking backward, I can see that if we had concentrated our client’s budget on that very small set of keywords, our performance over the last year would have been substantially better. We bid on many, many more than just four keywords. Throughout the year, we bid on fewer and fewer. And finally, this month, we’re down to the final four contestants.
Should we go down to a single keyword? In theory, if you place all of your budget on the number one performing keyword, then all else equal, you will maximize the performance of your paid search account, up to the point where you run out of traffic. So there’s one problem with this strategy. It is best employed in a limited budget situation.
If you have $10 thousand to spend, but bidding on a single or very few keywords only soaks up $1 thousand of your budget, there are likely many more opportunities you could be exploiting by spreading your budget around. But if you only have $1 thousand to start with, then spending the entire $1 thousand on a single keyword makes sense if it provides the best return on your investment.
Another problem is that keyword performance does tend to fluctuate. If you’re all in on a single keyword, then if conditions change and that keyword’s performance declines, your overall account performance will decline right along with it. So in our case, I don’t see us dropping to a single keyword. We will stick with the four keyword basket, but you better believe if we start to see a trend of declining performance, we will open up some other keywords.
I guess the core lesson here is the importance of allocating your budget so that more of your budget is consumed by keywords that provide the best return for your advertising dollars. The only way to do that is by carefully examining your historical keyword performance. One caveat is that keyword performance can be affected by where your ads are positioned, so your analysis will be most accurate if your ad positioning is relatively steady across keywords.
Paid search management sometimes requires some imagination, and it definitely requires a watchful eye. Work Media have a lot of experience doing this stuff, and we’re pretty dang good at it. We would welcome the opportunity to work with you on your search engine marketing. Contact us at 888-299-4837 or email info@workmedia.net.
Google Shakeup: Just Stick to the Basics
Google has been doing some things lately with its index that have caused quite a bit of shuffling of rankings. However, what we are finding is that, in general, in a few days things get restored to something like what they were before. So if you have high rankings that have suddenly disappeared, chances are pretty good you will get them back in a few days. The main thing is: stay calm!
We have been checking a lot of our clients’ rankings in the beta version of the new Google algorithm which is to be released in the near future. We are actually seeing improvements for many of our rankings with the new release. This validates our theory that, if you stick to the basics and work it, you will be fine.
So…what does that mean exactly?
First off, make sure the copy of your web site (including page titles and headers) is optimized for specific keywords, and not all on the same page. Spread your keywords out!
Make sure you have a keyword-rich internal linking structure. For example, if you are a law firm and your number one keyword is “Huntsville injury lawyer,” then you should have lots of links throughout your site pointing back to your home page that incorporate that keyword.
Next, make sure you systematically build up a heavy catalog of external links to your site. And spread it out. If you do reciprocal linking, that is fine, but that should not be your only linking strategy. Submit articles to article directories. Add your site to general directories. Look for lots of places for your links, and add new links regularly.
Also, we have seen some evidence that Google may now be giving preference to sites that have been updated recently. So if you don’t do a blog, set one up! Stream or publish it to your blog and update it regularly. Pepper your blog with keywords, links to your own content, as well as useful content from other web sites.
In other words…if you want to maintain or improve your search engine rankings, stick to the basics! It would also be an excellent idea to mix in some social media marketing, but that is another discussion.
Don’t Be Fooled by this Old SEO Trick
Here is a trick of the SEO trade:
To demonstrate your skill in SEO by achieving a very high search engine ranking for a very low competition keyword.
Look, if your site ranks well for a keyword that noone ever uses, have you really accomplished anything? No! My partner relays an interesting story about an SEO “expert” coming in and demonstrating how she could take a particular keyword and very quickly get it ranked number one on Google. Fantastic! Only…the web page she optimized was the ONLY result brought back by Google for that keyword. In other words, there was not a single other web page competing against her page for that keyword.
It is easy to be number one when you have ZERO competition!
So don’t be fooled by this trick. SEO is not easy. It’s not quick. And it’s not cheap. If you want your web site to rank for keywords with no competition and no traffic, you don’t need an SEO firm. You can easily make that happen yourself. But if you want to rank highly for competitive keywords that may actually drive targeted traffic to your web site, then you need to be prepared for war.
The Three Critical Criteria for Judging SEO Keywords
The first step in any Internet marketing campaign is picking the right keywords. Many businesses and law firms make the mistake of choosing keywords to target based on their opinion of what keywords potential customers would use to search for them, rather than basing that decision on research. Don’t do that.
The other big mistake I see some companies make is picking a huge basket of keywords for which to promote their web site. Don’t do that, either. Think small in number and highly specific.
So just what do you do? Let research guide your decisions, and pick keywords that meet three specific criteria.
Here are the three major criteria to consider for any potential keyword:
1. Degree of relevance. You want a strong sense of congruity between a keyword and a particular web page. It doesn’t have to be relevant to your home page, but it needs to be relevant to SOME page on your web site.
For example, a good keyword for the home page of a Ford auto dealership in Memphis might be “Memphis Ford dealer.” A good keyword for a page about Ford Mustangs on this same dealer’s site might be “Memphis Ford Mustang dealer.” These are completely hypothetical examples.
2. Search engine traffic. The more search traffic there is for a particular keyword, the more potential traffic the keyword could drive to your web site.
3. Competition. The fewer competing web sites there are for a keyword, the more attractive that keyword is for the subject web site.
So the three major criteria for any keyword you are considering targeting is relevance, traffic and competition. The relevance criterion is judgment-based. It is common sense. For the traffic criterion, the best tool to use to generate that data is the external Adwords research tool, located at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal. For the competition criterion, I suggest basing it on Google “allintitle:” searches, because this will return the number of web pages that are closest to being specifically optimized for that keyword.
Compile a list of potential keywords using Google’s external keyword, eliminate the less relevant ones, then rank them by the number of searches Google claims for each one. Then look for ones that are in a favorable competitive situation. Your highlighted keywords at this point are your best bet for generating targeted organic search engine traffic in a reasonable amount of time. Your chance of ranking for those keywords, and thus generating visits to your web site, is excellent.
Call Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net if you need some assistance orchestrating an organized SEO campaign for your business web site.
A More Accurate Way to Estimate Keyword Traffic
The very best source of keyword data for your search engine optimization campaign may be your own paid search campaign. We use keyword research tools such as NicheBot.com a lot, especially early in the life of an SEO campaign. The problem is the data generated by such tools is only an estimate, and sometimes those estimates are highly inaccurate.
If you want concrete proof about the potential traffic for various keywords, take a look at the search queries people are using that have triggered your ads. In Google, you can run a search query performance which will show you most of the actual search terms that were used when your ads were displayed. One column of data in the report is impression share. If you run a report for a month, then divide the number of queries for any particular keyword by the impression share for that month, you will have a pretty accurate total for the number of times that keyword was used in that month. If you then divide that by 30, you will have an estimate for the number of times that search term is used on a daily basis.
The formulas are as follows:
Monthly Searches = Number of Impressions / Impression Share
Daily Searches = (Number of Impressions / Impression Share) / 30
You can then plug these search queries into NicheBot or another tool to get an idea of how many directly competing sites there are for the keyword. Or you can type the search query into Google surrounded by quotes to get an estimate of the competition.
The final data set created by doing this will give you a more accurate picture of actual search traffic and competition than simply relying on the information provided by keyword research tools. You can’t go wrong with hard data.
If you need some help conducting keyword research for your search engine optimization or pay per click marketing campaigns, please call Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.
Beware of False Promises
If you are thinking of working with a search engine optimization company and they tell you they can have your site ranked on the first page of Google within a week…you need to step back and ask yourself what you are really getting. Yes, it is probably possible to have a site highly ranked in Google within one week…
…for a keyword that no one is using!
Here’s the deal. It does not matter if your site is number one on Google, if that number one ranking is for a keyword that no one is using to search for your type of business. The point of a search engine marketing campaign is not to achieve rankings…it’s to drive traffic. That is the reason we really don’t have any kind of package deals right now where we promise X number of rankings for Y keywords. Every web site is different. Every situation is different.
We may end up marketing our services via such packages before it’s over with (if that’s what we have to do to stay in business), but we definitely prefer to take it on a case-by-case basis. It may be the case that for your web site, for your industry, you only need to be ranked for one keyword to generate a ton of traffic. If that is true, then we focus our efforts on that one keyword. Or there may be five different keyword that, collectively, would drive a ton of the traffic you need. In that case, we will focus on those five keywords.
So don’t be fooled by the claims of some SEO firms. Sure…they can probably have you ranked on the first page of Google within a week…but they won’t put any money in your bank account.
Please contact Work Media is you need any help with your search engine optimization or pay per click management. We won’t make any grand promises, but we will give it to you straight. And we will work our butts off to get you ranked for the keywords that will actually result in customers for your business.
Designing a Pay per Click Management System
In the course of working on our latest book, I have put a lot of thought into the concept of a trading-style system for managing a paid search campaign. There is definitely a correlation between investing in securities and investing in paid search. Every keyword you bid on is sort-of like a stock: you are bidding a certain amount in anticipation of turning a profit on it.
Possibly the investing concept (also a gambling concept) that is the most relevant to pay per click is money management. You want to allocate your budget to the keywords that will maximize your profit and minimize losses. Unfortunately, unlike with securities, you have no historical data to use to test your beliefs except your own. And it costs money to generate your own data.
There’s no way around it. If you want to successful in paid search, you have to be willing to pay the price to generate enough data to know what changes you need to make to your account.
Another big difference between trading securities and managing a paid search account is that there are other variables other than just the keyword (the “security”) and the price paid for it. With paid search, you have more “touchy feely” things to deal with – namely, your ad copy and landing page copy/design. You can have your account set up just right and your bids set perfectly, yet still not be successful because of your ads and landing pages. There is a complex relationship between the keyword, bid, ad, and landing page. A weakness in any of the elements can greatly diminish the effectiveness of a pay per click campaign.
But again, it all just comes down to generating data, and the way to do that is to test, test, test. With our new book, we hope to give readers a reasonably simple system to use to properly allocate their budget. The rest is just good ol’ split-testing and constant revision.
If you need help with PPC management NOW and can’t wait for our book to come out. feel free to call us at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.
Keyword Relative Value: a Simplified Way of Measuring Search Engine Visibility
This week we published an article on our web site discussing a concept we have developed called Keyword Relative Value. The article can be accessed via the link below:
http://workmedia.net/articles/Keyword-Relative-Value.asp
To quote from the article:
We developed a formula intended to attach a numerical value to a web site’s search engine ranking for a specific keyword. The resulting number, called the Keyword Relative Value (or “KRV”), places a value on a keyword for a particular web site based on two parameters: the amount of expected traffic for the keyword and a site’s ranking in a particular search engine for the keyword.
Here is the KRV formula:
KRV = ROUND(T*(SQRT((1/R)^3)),2)
where T = the expected traffic for a keyword and R = a web site’s ranking for the keyword in a particular search engine.
The above formula derives the value for one particular keyword. A much more instructive exercise is to calculate the KRV’s for a group of keywords. We call this the Aggregate Keyword Relative Value (“AKRV”). The formula for AKRV is as follows:
AKRV = X(ROUND(T*(SQRT((1/R)^3)),2))
where X is the number of keywords that have search engine rankings.
The point of these formulas is to boil your web site’s search engine visibility for a common set of keywords down to a single number. You can then track this number over time and compare it to your competitors to gauge your visibility against your competitors. We believe this concept is a powerful new tool to give web site owners a stronger sense of how well they rank in the search engines, in an easy-to-understand format: a single number.
To learn more about KRV, please read the article linked above.
If you could use some help improving and understanding your search engine visibility, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.