Wrestling with what keywords to target for when doing your research?

One of the most important ingredients in keyword research is understanding the language your target market speaks. Keyword research is the way to open the door so that the proper connections can be made via search.

Some quick suggestions or tips on starting your keyword research.

Adding scales the keywords you are targeting, looking at search volume, relevancy issue and the competition.

1. Can you compete?

2. Will they convert when they come to your site?

Utilizing your PPC tests to see where visitors are coming from to see if they will take action before using resources for research / optimize for targeting those keywords.

Some alternative ways to help with Keyword Research

Utilize some of your resources you have at your fingertips:  “Ask Your Customer ”

• The Contact Us Form can be a great tool to see what customers are asking or telling you.
• Listen to your customers needs and optimize around what they want.
• Talk to customer service, people at the front desk and ask what are the customer’s calling in about.

Since Microsoft replaced MSN live with “Bing”   http://www.bing.com/ (live.com is even redirecting to Bing) It has been meet with much debate.

Bing is the re branded and rebuilt search engine formerly code-named Kumo, designed to replace Live Search.

I have been giving it a test drive here for a bit …“Bing It”

I searched for ” Guitars ” (love of guitars and playing guitar led me to that)

Bing’s natural results are divided according to the links that appear in the left-column.

Searching for “guitars”, you can see the nice row of images displayed atop the results, makes for nice clean presentation.

I see the search history and related searches, but at the top it has links for Images,  and local….Wow..Local. I assume that would be for local shopping. I found that to be pretty impressive.

I proceeded to to search for ” Gibson Guitars’

Searching the term “Gibson Guitars”, shows 1st result as Gibson the company and what I thought was also convenient was the Subcategorization located under the description of the result.

Across to the right above the sponsored results (just like google sponsored results), Bing creates a small list of items related to and similar to Gibson guitars.In the list is Fender, Guitar Center, Musician’s Friend. I find that totally awesome and a great feature to a searcher who is not sure of the exact brand or make they need.

On to the next search which is a great presentation in a search results page

I “Binged It” (haha) Derek Jeter and this is where it gets very impressive. The results and the arrangement of the results are organized very well and can lead you to other places of interest very easily.

• As you can see from the results it outlines the recent games and his stats = pretty cool
• His Wikipedia
• On the left panel navigation is the stats, biography, posters, clubs, videos, images, related searches. This is a great organization of being able to extend your searching by bringing it out into the for front.
• and the best for last…..there is this orange ball that follows you down the page on the right side (as seen in the example above) When you hover or put your mouse on a post the orange ball moves to the right side of the post. Here is where it gets even better… If you move your mouse over the ball it gives you a summary or snapshot of the page kinda like the Ask.com results preview

If you believe the results of a new survey, Google’s defeat may not be far off. One News Page talked to more than 1,000 people, and 55 percent of them supposedly said that they could see themselves replacing Google with Bing as their main search engine. When people refer to search or the concept of searching they “Google It” now… we have a new word..“Bing It”

StatCounter analyzed search engine market share two weeks before and after the formal launch of Bing. The firm says that for the US market:

- Google decreased from 78.68% to 77.94% (-0.74%).

- Yahoo decreased from 11.46% to 10.76% (-0.7%)

- Microsoft (Bing, MSN Search and Live Search) increased from 7.4% to 9% (+1.6%)

“It is too early to say what the long term result will be but this is a creditable performance by Bing,” says StatCounter CEO Aodhan Cullen. “It remains to be seen what happens to Bing after user curiosity and the reported $100m advertising budget runs out.”

Microsoft’s share of search results pages in the U.S. increased from 9.1% to 11.1%.

When you want to shop for an item, both services have very strong “shopping” tabs that organize results well. Google gives you seller ratings, which Bing doesn’t. But Bing offers a cashback program, which is hard to beat.

Bing:  Definitley is “Rockin”

There has been a lot of discussion about how important it is to have keywords in a domain. Although Google seems to want to downplay this factor, I think it is very important for at least one reason . .

Providing the 1st step… KEYWORD RELEVANCY.  So by having keywords in your URL will give you a great head start in the SERPs

Examples of some sites with keyword relevancy in the domain.

• http://www.coupondepot.com/ (ranks for free local coupons, free coupons, print coupons)
• http://www.bettersex.com/   ( better sex, better sex toys, better sex videos, sex videos)
• http://www.wakefieldplantation.com/ (wakefield plantation, wakefield hoa)
  

In relation to backlinks which we all can agree are very important..many sites if not instructed or provided backlink text will automatically link to your site via the domain name which will be the anchor text. The anchor text are the keywords you will attempt to rank for! So instead of “click here” as your anchor text

Having a branded name in your domain which is also keyword dense can provide a great way to rank for a high converting term. If you intend to launch a project, there is no harm in just registering the domain name and saving it to prepare the site for launch.

In summary….

 Try to pick and choose a domain with a keyword in it you intend to rank for.

Trouble getting rank or having some trouble ranking well in search for certain keyword phrases or certain keywords?

it might be time to have a look at the “anchor text links” on your site and pointing to your site. You might want to update them and change the anchors a bit.

What is anchor text?

The anchor text, link label or link titleis the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink. The words contained in the Anchor text can determine the ranking that the page will receive by search engines. Anchor text usually gives the user relevant descriptive or contextual information about the content of the link’s destination

 Anchor Text is very important.

Anchor text is considered the 2nd highest SEO factor..  However, many webmasters who want to rank better on the search engines don’t know what anchor text is.  Fortunately, anchor text is an easy concept to understand.   Simply put, anchor text is the text in a link. 

Here’s a bad example of anchor text use: For seo tips and info Click Here 

Click here is the most widely used anchor text on the web. as you can clearly see….Click here explains nothing about what exists on the next page and offers no support.

Here is a proper example of anchor text: Seo tips and info about anchor text   

The anchor text explains what is on the next page and supports the page it is pointing to.

 When it comes to organic search engine rankings in Google, one of the many factors that they consider is the “link text” or “anchor text” that is pointing to a web page. Google has, for many years now, looked at what other people say about you, or, more specifically, what other web sites say about your web page. So, when you’re trying to “rank well” in the search engines for a particular keyword or keyword phrase, something you can do is to try to get links to your website with certain “anchor text”.

Over the years, we have seen an increase in people trying to buy links with specific anchor text in order to influence the search engine rankings. We’ve also seen a lot of people try Google bombing (also known as googlebombing), where pranksters try to get a certain web page to show up in the search results even though that phrase isn’t mentioned on the web page. Take a look at Google’s googlebombing blog post and you’ll see an example of it. In 2007, Search Engine Land reported that Google effectively “killed miserable failure” by making changes to the Google algorithm. So, since about 2007 or late 2006 (whenever they made the change to their algorithm), it has been important to note that when you are trying to get links to your web page for search engine optimization purposes, you need to “vary the anchor text” that is used. If you want to rank for “search engine optimization“, then you need to use different anchor text links to your website.

Recently, one of of my #1 listings in google was dropped to number 2 by a website news cast google bomb. If you see this happen do not panic as it hopefully is temporary. Usually it will be in the form a news cast or announcement that has just been released on the topic and all sites have picked it up, hence boosting it’s ranking for the moment.

Look at your google webmaster tools

Use your google webmaster tools to see more of your keyword phrases. There are certain keyword phrases you are ranking for that you probably haven;t thought of yet.

Is Twitter a Threat to Google?

According to CNET, Twitter’s new VP of Operations Santosh Jayaram says that Twitter Search, which currently searches only the text of Twitter posts, will soon crawl links included in tweets, and index content from those pages.

Earlier this year twitter began integrating twitter search which has been a great tool for businesses to generate leads when used properly.

The Twitter phenomenon is such that it provides the gateway to instant communication (micro blogging). It’s an insight to what what people are talking about now.

Big changes are coming to Twitter

I am talking about Google territory. Twitter will be adding an algorithm ranking similar to Google and the “pagerank” system.

According to Jayaram used to be the VP of Search Quality at Google, Twitter will take into account the reputation of the person who wrote each tweet and rank search results in part based on that.

How are they going to rank? Twitter search is a whole game. Internet search by using the number of links in tweets as a value statement on the web page.

I looked over what twitter is doing and this can compete with Google. Is this going to replace Google…..probably not as many have tried and none has succeeded (this is the problem MSN live is having).  Twitter users are having a tough time trying to convince users why they should be using Twitter at all. It could pose to be a great takeover target and that is where they finally figure out how to place revenue in there model.

Follow me on twitter: www.twitter.com/michaelmarchetta

Search Engine Optimization Stop Words

Search engines will consider certain words as “Stop words” to help speed up the process and save time during search results. These words will be ignored in the search process of your title and your content. It’s as if they are not even there.

Want to secure a top ranking in search engine results pages (serp’s)?

Are web site meta page titles important?

YES!, YES! and another YES!  Page titles are very important and a critical piece of the puzzle to getting better rankings. Meta title tags alone don’t do a magic in getting better placed in the search pages. These meta title tags sure help you to describe your web pages to a search engine and gain a better place in its results.

Getting noticed by Google, yahoo and other major search engines has become a major focus. I often talk with or see businesses that do not fully understand how important it is to search engine optimize a site. One of the most important elements in my opinion is the Page Title tags Do not under estimate the importance of page titles. The title of each individual page should include terms relevant to the content that is on that page. Every page on your site should have it’s own page title and relate to the to that content on that page. I have noticed search engines relying more on page titles.

Where is my meta page title?

Page titles are located at the top of your html page and coded in the title tag as seen below.

<head><title>SEO Tips and SEO Information - SEO Terms | Michael Marchetta </title></head>

What is the role of  the Meta Page Title?

Most search engines consider this tag as the primary information about the site and also an human visitor sees this information as the first thing on top left corner of the browser. Moreover, when one bookmarks the site, the text in this tag appears in the bookmarks list.

The title is used by the major search engines as the most important piece of information available in order to help them determine the topic of your page, and thus to determine the ranking of your page in their search results. Search engines scan millions of pages in lightning speed and the page title is the first element of the page that is spidered on a website. it also tells search engines what you are telling the visitor your page and content is about. Since the page title is very important, it is also very important to add keywords in a very natural way in the title tag to help google and other search engines understand you better. One way to guarantee lousy rankings is to confuse the search engines so if you are about flowers and your on page content talks about roses and then your title should have roses in it as well.

Also do not use repeating keywords and phrases in your title tag because this may be treated as spamming by search engines and they may affect your ranking. Writing relevant and meaningful title tag is something which may achieve high rankings in search engine result pages (SERP) and result high clickthroughs to your site.

Length of Meta Title Tag: For title tags longer than 65 characters, Internet Explorer will simply crop the tag. Longer titles will be truncated.

Duplicate titles is something I often see on newly developed websites or content management systems that don’t allow proper control of individual pages. I am still amazed at how many websites I see where the url is www.example.com and the Title is Example.com ( the same as the URL). Do whatever you need to do to make your title tags unique. And by unique, I mean, not tied to any other element on the web page such as the header or breadcrumb trail.

All said and done, your titles should:

• Short, 65-70 characters max
• Unique for each page
• Accurately reflects page content
• Contains main keywords
• Avoid spammming

What is canonical url?

I have been hearing more of this term around the web and in forums. In terms of Google, canonicalization is the way we can pick the best url when there are several choices and it usually will refer to the homepages. Canonical means “Standard” or “Authoritative”

Canonicalization is the process of picking the best url when there are several choices, and it usually refers to home pages. For example, most people would consider these the same urls:

• www.example.com
• example.com/
• www.example.com/index.html
• example.com/home.asp

Confused yet? Don’t worry it takes time to understand.  Make sure that you pick the URL you want. One thing that google looks at is the URL is consistent across the entire site. Don’t use some of your urls one way and some the other. Pick the url you prefer to use for your internal links.

For the people who want to make sure that all their webmaster ducks are in a row on this topic, here’s my two-minute advice:
- Pick one way of writing all your urls and use that consistently in your pages and your links.
- If you pick (say) www.example.com as your preferred root page, make sure that you have a permanent (301) redirect from pages such as example.com to www.example.com.  To be extra safe, feel free to use Google’s webmaster console to specify the preferred root page of your domain (www.example.com vs. example.com).

The adoption of the canonical url by Yahoo!, Live & Google allowing webmasters and site owners to eliminate self-created duplicate content in the index is, in my opinion, the biggest change to SEO best practices since the emergence of Sitemaps. The Canonical URL tag attribute is similar in many ways to a 301 redirect from an SEO perspective. In essence, you’re telling the engines that multiple pages should be considered as one (which a 301 does).

Get Verified! With Google’s New Profile Pages

Google Profiles will now be in SERP’s so it is a very good idea to get verified. Creating vanity URL’s has provided Google with a little more play in the Social Network World. Google profiles will be listed at the bottom of search results when applicable.

search for " Me " on google

Getting verified does not influence your rank but it will surely convince people to trust you better.

Have a look at my Google Profile :  http://www.google.com/profiles/michaelmarchetta

Google Blog says

“To give you greater control over what people find when they search for your name, we’ve begun to show Google profile results at the bottom of U.S. name-query search pages. These results offer abbreviated information from user-created Google profiles and a link to the full profiles”

Don’t have a Google profile?

Just search for [me] and follow the instructions at the top of the page to create one. In just a few minutes, you can create a public profile that represents you and that appears when people search for your name on Google. Check out www.google.com/profiles to learn more.

I have noticed recently that there has been a slew of web pages appearing at the top of Google’s search set results. According to an inside source, this is true.

Black hat SEO are techniques and attempts  to manipulate search rankings and that is what we see here. In the past, Black Hat SEO was very popular as search engines were not able to quickly stop it. Now… Google tries to stay 1 step ahead and combat the very tactics that threatens it’s proprietary technology. Ouch!!

I was researching articles and news on Google and found myself frustrated real fast as the top search results were  not  what I asked for and that is exactly what Google does not want to have happen.  I was seeing this more and I even went as far as mentioned this to others to hear their experiences. The google algorithm change will hopefully put a stop to this before people lose trust in the good ole days of Google.

Google fights a major battle in war that is always changing. Google and other search engines such as yahoo, aol etc.. have to provide timely results while also combating spam.

 I would like to See Google go back to adding more weight in it’s Algorithm to on page factors like content on the page, internal linking, proper tags.

The recent term such as “link velocity” which refers to the speed at which new links to a webpage are formed, is also believed to be a culprit with black hatters to manipulate search results by slamming tremendous amounts link spam into a comment and discussion area of social sites. All the spammers had to do was follow the hot topics, drop tons of content in there with there links of spam and presto!!