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

In a word, yes. Allow me to clarify by saying that anchor text is the actual word or words you use to link to other web pages (whether your own or external ones).  That means anchor text can only be a text link (so images don’t count); text links are found primarily in the navigation and copy of a web page.  Although image links do not have anchor text, they can have alt tags which, arguably, hold some search engine clout.  But that’s a topic for another time.

How do web users read web sites?

You might ask yourself – what does this have to do with anchor text?  Well, a lot actually.  You’ll see below that users look for links to click on when scanning pages.  This is important to note because adding descriptive, keyword rich links will help your users in their decision to click or not!

Navigation Anchor Text

Navigation and copy anchor text, while both anchor text, must be treated differently.  First of all, many SEOs believe that anchor text in the navigation holds more weight than that in the copy.  Therefore, you want to place your richest keywords there.

That being said, links still need to be user-friendly before search engine friendly and therefore be titled intuitively.  In other words, you want the links in your navigation to make sense – many are standard (like About Us and Contact).  Finally, there is an issue of space – so be sure the links in your navigation are short and sweet – you do not have the ability to even think about keyword stuffing here!

Copy Anchor Text

The fact of the matter is that while you do not want too many links within your copy, a good smattering is nice.  Even more importantly are the keywords you use for the links – they should be natural.  When writing, I tend to write everything first, noting where I want to place links.  Afterward, I’ll go through and choose the best set of words to use as links.  That way, I’m not consciously choosing which words to use for links.  At the same time, if no good words present themselves, I’ll add in good keyword rich anchor text.

Like navigation anchor text, those in the copy must still be titled intuitively.  However, let’s get away from the “click here” or “contact us” links, shall we?  When indexed by search engines, those don’t help anyone!  Take the opportunity to increase your visibility with a link like “Find out how to increase your Search Engine Visibility” or “Contact flyte for a free Search Engine Optimization consultation”.

Please don’t misunderstand me.  Entire sentences should typically NOT be anchor text.  However, the important words should be!

So…how do we know anchor text is important?

Well, for one thing, Google has even been reporting the matter for over a year now in their Webmaster Tools.  Plus, since Google holds their PageRank algorithm in such high esteem, we’ve learned that anchor text that is also important.  When asking for links, it is always good to suggest which keywords and phrases to use.

For help with deciding which anchor text you should use, contact flyte.

Nicki Hicks
Link Master

I’m pretty sure I got into one of the most exciting fields there is. I’m learning a ton of new information every day, and as Rich says, SEO is one of the sexiest topics in e-marketing. Plus, it’s fun for me…that never hurts.

The issue is that I’m a relatively new blogger, so I’ve found it increasingly difficult to come up with new and different ideas to blog about. Sure, I read a ton of SEO and SEM newsletters, forums, and articles everyday; but I need new, fantastic blogpost ideas! Because, let’s face it, who wants to read regurgitated stories – that is, unless they have a new and different twist to them?

Then it hit me…I’m an SEO. I’ll just fire up my Keyword Discovery tool and find some perfect blog titles! So I did just that, and these are some of the “hot” topics I came up with that could pretty easily be turned into titles:

• Organic SEO Services
• Search Engine Marketing Case Study
• SEO Complete Link Building Service
• SEO Basic Tips for New Web Developers
• SEO Tips for Joomla
• Copywriting for SEO

Other fun ideas that seem to rank relatively well (but just sound spammy to me):

• Certified SEO Professional (There’s no “certification,” just so everyone knows.)
• Free SEO Tips and Tricks (I’m pretty certain that if you even *mention* the words free or cheap in any blog/article title, you’ll get [completely irrelevant] traffic in no time.)

Perhaps I’ll work off from this list for a while…

Nicki Hicks
Blog Newbie