4 Ways to Beat the Keyword Search Blues and Position Your Website for Success

4 WAYS TO BEAT THE KEYWORD SEARCH BLUES

AND POSITION YOUR WEBSITE FOR SUCCESS

It is very easy to become overwhelmed when writing effective copy for your website that will drive traffic, increase revenues and make the boss happy. 

My 1st bit of advice IS  DON’T GET BOGGED DOWN BY THINKING SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION AND GOOD WEB COPYWRITING ARE TOO COMPLEX!

The worst thing you can do when writing your online copy is to try to fool the search engines.  When they find you, they’ll drop you from their listings.

According to Nick Usborne, a well-respected Web author and columnist, there are four quality guidelines to follow when writing online copy:

1)     Remember who your audience is. Write your web pages for them, not the search engines. Don’t deceive your readers by writing content that will appeal to the search engines, and then write different content for your readers.  This is called cloaking. 

To recap tip #1:  thou shall not cloak!

2.     Don’t utilize tricks intended to improve your search engine rankings.  Always keep in mind how your copywriting is benefitting your readers.  To keep yourself honest, ask yourself if your message is providing value to your audience.  If your answer is a resounding “yes!” then you’ve succeeded in resisting SEO shenanigans. 

To recap tip #2:  thou shall not attempt to improve your SEO rankings in a dishonest manner!

3.      Avoid link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank.  Avoid links to web spammers…this may adversely affect your own ranking.

To recap tip #3:  thou shall not link to “bad neighborhoods” on the web!

4.      Don’t use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc.  Google doesn’t recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.

To recap tip #4:  thou shall not violate a Terms of Service agreement!

Okay!  Now that we’ve talked about how to keep yourself honest when writing your web copy, where do you actually start?

START BY DOING KEYWORD RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS

There are many keyword research tools you can use to gain important insight into the best words and phrases likely to get the most traffic from search engines.  Remember Tip #2:  don’t try to trick the search engines by using keywords that don’t accurately represent you, your product or service.  Keyword research is meant to find the words/phrases people are using when in search for your product/service.

When starting to identify your keywords, make a list of words and phrases that accurately describe your organization.  Then, you’re ready to refine your list.  Input your proposed keywords into a keyword research tool to learn how many users are using those keywords in their searches, how many of those searches converted and more analytical information.

There are many keyword research tools out there.  Here are some I recommend you check out:

Adwords.com:  This tried and true resource is a great place to start your keyword research.  Adwords, part of Google, helps you expand your reach through the Google content network.  Hundreds of thousands websites, news pages and blogs partner with Google to display Adwords ads, which increases the traffic sent to your website.  In addition, Google will use your keywords to match your ads to webpages in their content network that are most relevant to your business. Adwords enables you to review your ad’s performance on a site-by-site basis to see which sites are generating the most clicks, cost and conversion.  This valuable information helps in future Web Marketing planning.

Wordtracker:  Wordtracker charges an annual fee, but it is well worth the investment if you’re serious about utilizing keywords to maximize your website traffic.  This tool helps website owners and search engine marketers identify keywords/phrases most likely to be used in queries.  Subscribers are also able to identify and target new online markets.  Wordtracker also helps you determine how many competing sites are using your keywords and can identify the phrases that have the greatest traffic potential, an excellent tool to use to position your company in the marketplace.  You can also generate thousands of relevant keywords to improve your organic and Pay Per Click search campaigns.

 Trellian Keyword Discovery tool: This tool also charges an annual fee, but offers a great deal of service for the money.  For example, it will show you variations of the phrases you enter as you begin your keyword research.  It will also list the number of times a phrase has been searched for in Keyword Discovery’s data source during the last twelve months. Users can then expand this data in order to gather estimates of the number of other web sites that feature this phrase and the number of times Keyword Discovery predicts that this phrase is searched for daily.  It can tell you the search phrases people use to find products and services, as well as the search terms that drive traffic to your competitors.  A really cool feature of Keyword Discovery that I like is that it creates charts that examine keyword trends and market share by search engine.

AdGooroo.com is an excellent keyword tracking tool that allows you to find competitors’ keywords, identify top ad copy, diagnose campaign problems, track PPC and organic rankings, right trademark infringement and much more.

No matter what keyword research tool you use, remember this:  SEO tools are critical to helping you understand the language your prospective customers are using.  Once you have a handle on that, you can write effective copy more powerful than the competition.  Your copy will connect with each reader in a way that will encourage them to purchase your product and/or service.

Emily Foshee
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