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Search Engine Articles
Do-It-Yourself Search Engine Optimization
PART I: KEYWORD OPTIMIZATION
The first step in a search engine optimization campaign is to
choose your keywords or keyphrases for each of your web pages. Keywords are the
terms that search engine users type in the search box to conduct a query. The
right keywords are those that:
- clearly describe the purpose and content of your site, and,
- allow your site to show up as close to the first results
page as possible.
A good position doesn't depend only on your choice of
keywords. It also depends on how well do you position those keywords in your web
page, and how many quality external pages link to you. However, choosing the
wrong keywords can throw off your entire search engine optimization strategy, so
you need to invest a few hours and make sure you do it right.
Let's start with your homepage. Look at it
carefully and write down the words and phrases that best define your site. Try
to form two or three word phrases, since competition for one-word keyphrases is
fierce, and it is virtually impossible to get a top position for them. That is
why, from now on, we will talk about keyphrases, not keywords.
Once you have developed your list of potential keyphrases you
are ready for the next step: to analyze the demand and supply
for those keyphrases, and choose the best ones (those with good demand and not
enough supply).
We will first check the demand for your
selected keyphrases. For this, we will go to Overture's Search Term
Suggestion Tool:
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
Overture is a popular pay-per-click search engine (as we know,
pay-per-click search engines are the only ones that disclose keyword popularity
for free). You will then type each of the keyphrases you selected, and see how
many people search for those terms. This tool will show you only those searches
conducted in Overture (and only in one month time). However, the relative
popularity of each search term will be very similar in other search engines as
well.
In addition to telling you if your selected keyphrases are
popular, this tool will show you other keyphrases that you may not have thought
about, which may even be more relevant to your site. For example,
if your first keyphrase was "Italian Restaurant", the
Search Term Suggestion Tool will also display other popular search terms, like: "Gourmet
Italian Restaurant", "Northern Italian
Restaurant", "Italian Restaurant Pizzeria",
"Italian Restaurant Miami", etc. You may also
try other keyphrases, for example: "Italian Cuisine",
and come up with more specific keyphrases, like: "Fine Italian
Cuisine", "Italian Cuisine Miami", "Northern
Italian Cuisine", "Italian Cuisine Fine Dining",
"Gourmet Italian Cuisine", etc.
What you have done is to validate and enlarge
your pool of popular, in-demand, potential keyphrases for your web page.
The next step is to check the supply, or, in
other words, to see how much competition there is for your selected keywords.
Naturally, you want to focus on keyphrases where competition is less fierce. For
example, choosing "Italian Restaurant" alone will certainly hurt you.
There are so many of them that your chances of showing up in an advantageous
position within the search results are pretty slim.
Having said that, get your list of keyphrases, go to Google
( http://www.google.com ) and type-in each
of them in the search box. Enter your keyphrases within quotation marks (to
filter-out less relevant results), and see how many results each individual
query produces, making a note of those with a relatively small number of results
(less competition). You will stick with the keyphrase that:
1. Best describes the topic and content of your page.
2. Is a popular search term according to Overture's Search
Term Suggestion Tool.
3. Generates a relatively small number of results after
performing the Google search.
If "Gourmet Italian Restaurant" is the keyphrase that
best meets these three criteria, it will become your primary keyphrase. To get
even better results, you can choose a second keyphrase to make your page more
relevant to an even more specific niche. For example, if your restaurant is in
Miami, you can consider "Miami" a second keyphrase.
Once you have chosen the keyphrases for you homepage, do the
same for the other pages on your site.
You will then take your selected keyphrases and optimize your
pages heavily for them. This involves placing them in strategic locations in the
title, headings and body of each page, as we will see next week in Part
II: Web Page Optimization
You can freely reprint this article. Just
include the following resource box at the end:
Mario Sanchez publishes The Internet Digest ( http://www.theinternetdigest.net
) a website and newsletter that gives you useful advice on web design and
Internet marketing, one free tip at a time
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