The Ins and Outs of Successful Keyword Research

admin | December 10th, 2009 - 4:34 pm

To succeed online you must focus on effective keyword research. By choosing the right keywords you can succeed at the SEO game. I have personally worked with hundreds of clients seeking number one rankings but who have given adequate focus on keyword research. This is incredibly important when your site is competing against well ranked sites that have been in the top ranking for some time.

The first step is finding a keyword that isn’t all that competitive. Once you do, the next step is to make sure that the keyword you have selected gets enough traffic. Don’t overlook this important aspect of keyword research. I worked with a company that was proud of their number one rankings. When I did some research to discover the type of traffic they could expect, I found less than one hundred searches each month on the keyword they selected. Even with top rankings, they would never see the traffic they expected.

Assuming that you have been able to find a keyword phrase that doesn’t have a great deal of competition and generates enough traffic, it’s time to look at your competition. You are competing against other web sites who currently rank in the top few positions for your chosen keyword. Research each of these top ranked sites to determine their Google page rank, age, and the number of sites linking to them. The more inbound links they have the more difficult they will be to outrank.

Once you’ve conducted your keyword research and decided which keyword phrase you are going to optimize for, it’s time to focus on optimizing your web pages. This can be done by focusing on on-page optimization techniques and off-page optimization techniques. Start with a well formatted web site that includes keyword phrases in meta tags, page titles, and so on. Then turn your attention to off page optimization which includes building links and getting your site listed in major directories and social media profiles. Add additional link building techniques like bookmarking to enhance the quality of your web pages and web sites.

Your plan should include daily, weekly and monthly tasks that can attract links from authority websites consistently over time. Your goal should not be to generate thousands of inbound links quickly because Google will penalize your website. Rather, focus on steady link building. If you want to enhance your organic search engine ranking, begin with keyword research. By selecting the right keywords, you’ll be able to optimize your website faster than your competitors. After choosing the right keywords, focus on integrating your chosen keywords into your web site. Then you’re ready for link building and other off page optimization tactics that significantly improve rankings.

What is Split Testing ?

admin | December 9th, 2009 - 5:07 am

Simple language differences and tiny changes in presentation can be the difference between an extremely effective marketing campaign that nets you millions and a complete and utter failure.The Internet marketing world is a world of subtlety.

It is very difficult to predict, what change is to be brought in to have a more effective marketing strategy. Many people have suggested the idea of split testing.

It is one of the few research tools that an Internet marketer has at their disposal that actually guarantees more conversions ” rather than simply implying that more conversions are supposed to occur. Split testing is a sales tactic that tests two different sales pages, keywords, PPC copy and other online sales tools using an equal number of impressions/views to see which one converts more effectively.

Here is an example: Imagine that you are buying advertisements through Google adwords in hopes that you will be able to maximize your hits per day. Start two ads at equal rates and put small differences in them. Add something subtle to one such as “money back guarantee” and leave the other one as it is.

You let your ad campaign run for a few days. See which ad is the first to 40 or 50 clicks and that ad is very likely your most successful PPC ad. With split testing, you would then take that result and say to yourself Okay, well, money back guarantee got me the most clicks ” should I put that phrase in the beginning of the ad or at the end of the ad? Then you run the split testing again, with that small change.

When you have completed this, you will have your highest preforming ad. This technique can also be used for sales copy, newsletters or anything that will increase your conversations. Some people rotate their sales pages using software and see which one gets the most sales. Through this they will eventually find the perfect sales copy. It will have a high enough conversion rate to almost guarantee success in internet marketing.

Since emarketing is still developing, a lot of what we know to do relies more on anecdotes rather than any type of science. Random tests convey that science. If you use huge samples sizes it ascertains that the promotional ways you are using so that you can maximize on sales is the most valuable and successful method that there is. This method should therefore give you confidence that after all the promotions you are guaranteed of the best exchange rate there is.

Because of this, it is those marketers that are willing to use Split testing that tend to have the most success in the field. In many ways, the best marketers never stop split testing, as they continue to look for the pinnacle of ad copy in an ever changing online world. Split testing is one of the few effective research tools that you can use on your own work.

Start split testing today.

How Many Keywords Should You Target on a Web Page?

Nicholas Halmond | November 10th, 2009 - 2:26 pm

Most people know that one of the keys to utilizing SEO and ranking your website in the search engines is the use of keywords. Still, there are many factors you must consider when using keywords if you want to see success. One of the elements that some people get focused is how many keywords they should target on one webpage.

One of the overlooked factors that people don’t give much attention to is how many keywords you should target on a single web page. The truth is that many people want to do too much when they work with SEO. It’s easy to get ahead of yourself and try to cram tons of keywords on one page, assuming that the more you use the better. However, that’s not really the way that it works.

There was a time over a decade or more ago when the use of keywords was first gaining importance where the more you used, the more you ranked for. At this time nobody really knew anything about SEO and how it really worked, and the search engines themselves were still developing their formulas for how to produce high quality rankings.

However, this kind of strategy is no longer effective, and most people try to go after too many keywords on a single page of their website. If you have a huge list of keywords, it’s not smart to try to rank for each of them on every page of your site. You’re only thinning out your association with each individual keyword and wasting your time and effort. Additionally, your content will up looking spammy to both visitors and search engines that see all of those keywords on one page.

However, in actuality the opposite is true. More is less when it comes to SEO and the number of keywords you are trying to target. By targeting too many on a single web page, you aren’t doing anything but thinning out your focus. You’ll also likely be including so many keywords that your content will come across as spam to both the search engines and your visitors.

Now that you know that less is more, what’s the answer for how many keywords should be on a single page for maximum SEO success? There is no guaranteed answer that is going to ensure you a perfect mix, however targeting 2 or 3 keywords on a single web page is usually the best idea. For pages with less content you’ll want to reduce that to 1-2 keywords, and for pages with a great deal of content you can target a few more.

When you break up your site and individual pages like this you will be able to target a complete list of keywords effectively. Each page will have a few keywords that they can rank for and you’ll avoid using anything excessively. It’s the best way to use keywords across your entire site and it will produce great results for you in the search engines.

Of course, use your good judgment when you determine how many keywords you want to target on each individual web page. Think about factors such as what the page deals with and how much content it has. But remember, when in doubt a smart guideline is not to target more than 2 or 3 different keywords per each page of your site.