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Christian InTech Articles - Link Popularity
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How to find out how well is your website doing?
You have website. You may have built it yourself or may have hired a proffessional to do the job for you. Now that its up on the net, you would like to know how well is it doing and what are the ways to find it out. We will start from the scratch....
How to Improve Search Engine Rankings
You finally got your web site listed in the major search engines, however it is buried amongst millions of others and you still have not seen an increase in traffic to your web site. Why not? You need to improve your search engine rankings. Here...
Promoting Your Business Using Blogs
Copyright 2005 Mal Keenan Internet marketing using blogs has quickly gained a lot of popularity as a wonderful way to promote your business. There are many ways that blogging can help in the promotion of your business. Since blogs are usually...
Should you buy text links?
You can rank number one (Or at least in the top ten) for just about any search phrase by just buying text link ads, even if the web site isn't related to the search phrase in anyway, it can still rank in the top ten of the search results. Some web...
The Benefits of Organic SEO (Search Engine Optimization): What Organic SEO Entails and WHY It Is Preferred by Some
If you're going to sell any type of product or service online, you're eventually going to have to optimize your Web site for the Search Engines, in order to boost traffic and sales. Many years ago, it was quite easy to draw effective traffic, as...
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Choosing Keywords To Attract Buyers
By Doug Williams - December 2005
The wrong keywords bring lookers; the right ones bring willing
buyers. Keywords are how search engines index and classify your
website. Keywords are at the heart of any search engine
optimization (SEO) campaign. Choosing the right keyword phrases
for your website is critical to success. The right keywords will
bring targeted traffic.
All of your other SEO strategies won't help you at all if you
choose the wrong keywords. This is because all these strategies
are built on top of the keywords.
So how do you pick the right keywords? You have to think like
your customer. People search for solutions to what they need.
They look for the product or service that satisfies their need.
They do this more often than looking for the person who supplies
the service.
If a business owner is looking for help with their business,
they search for business consulting rather than a business
consultant. A person will search for carpet cleaning much more
often then carpet cleaners.
If your products or services are local or regional, be sure to
include your state or city within your search phrases. People
will search for area codes and zip codes when looking for local
suppliers.
To create a list for your website's keywords, start with listing
out your company's products and services. Use the language that
your customers would use. A frequent mistake is to use language
from the industry you are in. People who sell booths for
exhibitions refer to them as "pop up displays". Yet their
customers will search for "trade show displays" four times more
often.
Competitors are a great source of intelligence. Go to your
competitor's websites and look at what terms or keyword phrases
they are using. Look at their keywords Meta Tag, and read
through their page text. What specific search terms are being
used?
If you currently have a website, analyze how your visitors are
finding you.. Look at your website statistics and see what
search terms are generating traffic. Most hosting companies
provide you the ability to analyze your website's log files. We
recommend using a log file analyzer such as AwStats, Webalizer
or Urchin. The new Google Analytics are another great tool.
There are a number of good keyword research tools available to
help in selecting the right phrases. An excellent one is
Wordtracker (www.wordtracker.com). Wordtracker has allows you to
search a Thesaurus that will list keywords that you may not have
considered. They show daily search volume and the number of
competing web pages by search engine. There is a charge for this
service, but it is well worth it.
There are several free tools available such as Overture
(http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion) and
Google Adwords (https://adwords.google.com/select/main).
Buyer vs. researcher: Is you website an informational website?
Then you want to attract researchers. Are you
selling a product
or service? Then you want to attract buyers. Researchers tend to
use general keywords and buyers tend to use very specific
keywords.
The Buying Cycle has three phases. Let's show how this can work
with someone looking for video games:
1.Research: People gather information to learn what is new,
latest trends and what is popular. They are looking to learn and
gather information. They will tend to use general terms such as
" Video Games"
2.Shop: In this phase they are comparing and narrowing their
choices. They are looking at availability, pricing, shipping,
etc. Buyers in this stage reveal their preferences, so more
specific keywords (for example, "Video Games Xbox 360") are
needed to cover all possible search terms.
3.Buy: Visitors have now decided on what they want and are now
looking to purchase. They usually are looking for a specific
product or a model number. The keywords you use to attract
buyers at this stage are very specific; for example they may
search for: "XB360 Call of Duty 2".
Buyers tend to use highly specific phrases as well as singular
rather than plural forms. A person looking for new furniture is
more likely to type in "leather sofa" rather than "leather sofas"
It may be tempting to go after the general high volume keyword,
but this usually isn't a good idea. Many times the websites that
rank well for the general term are not the ones that actually
close the sale. They educate the buyer only to lose the sale to
someone else who chose more specific keywords.
More specific keyword phrases almost always have fewer
competitors and it is much faster to get top rankings.
Once you choose your keywords, place them strategically and
prominently on your web pages. Make sure they are used in a
natural way and make good marketing sense. The language you use
needs to be action oriented to convince your visitors to buy.
How often should these keywords be looked at? We recommend
analyzing your website every 6 months. The markets change,
traffic patterns shift and what works today, may not work
tomorrow.
This article may be reprinted in its entirety for use in
newsletters, websites, article archives and newspapers provided
that this resource box is left intact and all links are left
active. Copyright December 2005
Doug Williams is the founder and president of Doug Williams and
Associates, LLC. DWA (www.dougwilliams.com) is an Internet
marketing and search engine optimization firm. DWA operates a
managed linking service "Don't Worry About Links" at
www.dwalink.com.
About the author:
Since 2002, Doug Williams has focused on Internet marketing and
search engine optimization. Doug has developed a number of
specialized web applications and tools for search engine
optimization. He specializes in ethical SEO that does not spam
the search engines, but rather focuses on building traffic
within the search engine guidelines.
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