The Maine SEO Blog

In its simplest terms, keyword research is done to find out what people are searching for in your industry.  In addition, a keyword analysis may do one of two things:

1. Verify that your customers use the same language you do, and are already searching for the terms you’ve optimized for; or
2. Identify keyword opportunities you are missing out on (and in certain cases, to the point of making you rethink the industry jargon you use with clients on an everyday basis).

Finding Keywords

There’s a whole process SEOs use to find out what people are ‘Googling’, and every SEO is going to give their client something different in terms of a keyword analysis.  The results we get at flyte can vary anywhere from 300 – 10,000 quality, applicable keywords.  Finding these keywords is half the battle; the other half is implementing them.

Give each web page a focus

I think the best place to start putting a keyword analysis to work is by understanding that each page should have a purpose; and thereby a focused, unique set of targeted keywords.  Top tier pages have a more generalized group, and as you get deeper into the site – to secondary and tertiary pages – the keywords should get more and more specific.  Each page on your website is a different possibility to rank at search engines.

Page titles should include your richest keywords (being careful, of course, not to stuff) – describing the page effectively and including your geographic location (if you differentiate with it).

Body copy is the main destination for your keywords.  I generally suggest a specific keyword phrase is not used more than 3-4 times for content of about 250 words in length.  This is where copywriting becomes an artform: balancing incorporating target keywords and writing naturally.

What if what people are searching for doesn’t align with my target customers?

To expand on the second point from above (identifying new keyword opportunities): I will often include keywords in analyses for clients that may not necessarily align with their business model, but do relate well to their industry.

For example, I may find people may be searching for “cheap vacuums” (this is purely an assumption), when a client only sells high-end vacuums.  So what do I suggest?  They use it to their advantage; by writing a blog post or article: “Buying a Cheap Vacuum Will Save You Money Now, But Buying a [Our Company] Vacuum Will Save in the Long Term” or “5 Reasons Not To Buy A Cheap Vacuum” for a little less “sales-y” approach. For almost every case, there’s an opportunity to incorporate hot keywords in a way that will apply to your audience.

Remember who you’re writing for

It’s not all about keywords.  That may seem counter intuitive to my craft, but it’s crucial to remember that you’re writing for people first and foremost, not search engines.  So, never stuff your keywords anywhere (in the code or otherwise), or to try any other black hat methods.

Optimizing for keywords is much more an artform than a science: it takes remembering all of these things (plus some) and a fair amount of experimentation.  But in the end, it’s about writing natural, enticing copy for your target audience.

Nicki Hicks
Keyword Analyses for Dummies

Lately, I’ve been writing a lot about Google – attempting to keep up with their never-ending additions to the search world.  Most recently, they’ve launched SearchWiki (as a default setting to their SERP) and a new search-based keyword tool.

SearchWiki

Rich posted a great article yesterday on the flyte blog about SearchWiki.  To summarize, if you’re logged into your Google account, you can literally change your results page – either by removing results entirely or pushing them to the first position(s).  You can also write comments about a result, and see what other people have written.

Currently, SearchWiki does not affect search results; but with millions of people “voting” on websites, I think it’s only a matter of time before Google adds it to their algorithm.  Only problem being…it is incredibly easy to spam.

Search-based keyword tool

This new tool is reminiscent of Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool.  The comparison is not unlike the similarity between Google Trends and Google Insights.  The data comes from generally the same place, with a few differences in presentation.

The new keyword tool uses your website or blog as a base to search for keywords, in addition to the ones you tell it to search for.  Like the AdWords tool, you see the same categories, plus the suggested bid price for AdWords.  You can save and export your keywords with both tools.

Here are the top ten keywords from Google’s new search-based keyword tool for this blog’s domain, along with the terms “seo” and “search engine optimization”:

You can see the differences in the top ten keywords between the two tools.  The Adwords Keyword Tool pulls this data for the same search query:

All of these tools are great – and can be used in conjunction with one another in order to find the best keyword opportunities.  But, good grief, what will Google come out with next?!?

Nicki Hicks
Does ‘Googlers Anonymous’ already exist?

Let’s get right to it, shall we?

Keywords/Trends

1. Keyword Discovery – for all the keyword research you could ever care to know. It does require a subscription – this or Word Tracker (which I’ve never tried) are considered the best.
2. Google AdWords Keyword Tool – supplement keyword research; also gives better stats as to what people are actually searching for.
3. Webconfs.com Keyword Density Tool - there are a million keyword density tools out there, but I’ve found this one to be the most user friendly.
4. Google Insights/Google Trends – both give good insights as to what’s hot and what’s not.  Insights will also give you upcoming popular search terms.

Link Building

1. Marketleap’s Link Popularity Checker – gives you both Google and Yahoo!’s index of backlinks, plus others.

Plug-ins and Apps

1. SEO for Firefox – see nofollow links; look up PR, backlinks, meta-tags; plus much much more!
2. SeoQuake – many of the same benefits as SEO for Firefox, but you don’t necessarily have to have Firefox.  Plus, when activated, SeoQuake will give you a handy little toolbar with at-a-glance SEO stats.

Analytics (the one and only)

1. Google Analytics – it’s free and gives you everything you need.  Why go for something else??

I use quite a few more, but these are my favorite, and the ones I use the most often.  Do you have any favorites?

Nicki Hicks
I think I need a bigger toolbelt…

This week flyte finished up a Search Engine Optimization project for Newcastle Square Realty, a real estate company in Midcoast Maine.

After researching and identifying what keywords to pursue, we made some changes, targeting those keywords and phrases to increase NSR’s search visibility.  We also did some work on the Newcastle blog, including some basic usability changes – specifically renaming blog categories.  (You’ll find that many SEO strategies increase usability/searchability for both search engines AND web users.)

We made sure that the blog title always comes first in the title before the name of the blog.  A small change, but as I’ve discussed before, changing your titles to descriptive and keyword rich ones is an easy way to increase your search visibility.  Blogs are especially helpful this way – as the blog title becomes the title of the page.

So, looking at Newcastle’s current post, “Fall Comes to The Damariscotta Region” is a much better title than “Fall in Maine”.

If you’re looking to buy or sell property in Coastal Maine, make it a point to check out Newcastle.  Jim Cosgrove is a great guy to work with and sells gorgeous homes and properties all over Damariscotta, Pemaquid, South Bristol, New Harbor, and the surrounding Midcoast area.

If you’re looking to increase your search engine visibility, then make it a point to check out flyte.

Nicki Hicks
Maine SEO