Internet Marketing & Keyword Research Tools

Posts Tagged ‘Search Engine Results’

Professional Keyword Research

Thursday, March 12th, 2009
Keyword research in undoubtedly one of the most important aspects to consider when setting up your own online home business.

If you don’t target your keyword phrases effectively then you will be wasting both time and effort, performing tasks that will never pay off no matter how hard you try.

Here are some points to consider when conducting your keyword research:

1. Consider which tools you are going to use and save them to a one of your favourites folders for easy and frequent access. There are even some tools out there that allow you to download a tool bar with all the tools readily available. There are numerous free tools, many of which are very useful. I personally, use a tool called Keyword Elite to conduct my online keyword research.

2. What keyphrases are you going to target? – If you have very few resources available and are new to online marketing then it is advisable that you target ‘long tail’ keyword phrases. These are keyword phrases with 3-5 words, which make them a lot less competitive and easier to attain top rankings in the search engines.

3. Use a variety of keyword phrases for each campaign – Are you using the keywords in your website content or are they primarily for backlinking text? I would find two or three less competitive keyword phrases for each target market and use these to create backlinks through article submissions. Then, take ten different variations of these keyword phrases and use them in your website content.

4. Target profitable keyword phrases – Obviously the main aim of keyword research is to find profitable keywords. How can we do that? One effective way to target buyers and also find less competitive search terms is to find keyword phrases that contain certain words like, ‘buy’ as in ‘buy keyword research tool’.

5. Find untapped markets – Many of your competitors will be targeting all the same keyword phrases. This is where they fall down. Find obscure phrases that your target are already searching for and go after these by specifically writing articles based on these to achieve better or top search engine rankings. One good way to do this is by scanning your current website visitors and finding the keyword terms that sent them to your site.

Keyword research is only a beginning in building a profitable online business but it is an aspect of your marketing that cannot be overlooked. Effective keyword research is essential to ensure your business becomes a huge success and not a dismal failure.

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How To Find The Right Keywords To Optimize Search Engine Results

Monday, January 19th, 2009
Nelson Tan asked:

Search engines are the vehicles that drive potential customers to your websites. But in order for visitors to reach their destination–your website–you need to provide them with specific and effective signs that will direct them right to your site. You do this by creating carefully chosen keywords.

Think of the right keywords as the “Open Sesame!” of the Internet. Find the exactly right words or phrases, and presto! Hoards of traffic will be pulling up to your front door. But if your keywords are too general or too over-used, the possibility of visitors actually making it all the way to your site–or of seeing any real profits from the visitors that do arrive–decreases dramatically.

Your keywords serve as the foundation of your marketing strategy. If they are not chosen with great precision, no matter how aggressive your marketing campaign may be, the right people may never get the chance to find out about it. So your first step in plotting your strategy is to gather and evaluate keywords and phrases.

You probably think you already know EXACTLY the right words for your search phrases. Unfortunately, if you haven’t followed certain specific steps, you are probably WRONG. It’s hard to be objective when you are right in the center of your business network, which is the reason that you may not be able to choose the most efficient keywords from the inside. You need to be able to think like your customers. And since you are a business owner and not the consumer, your best bet is to go directly to the source.

Instead of plunging in and scribbling down a list of potential search words and phrases yourself, ask for words from as many potential customers as you can. You will most likely find out that your understanding of your business and your customers’ understanding is significantly different.

The consumer is an invaluable resource. You will find the words you accumulate from them are words and phrases you probably never would have considered from deep inside the trenches of your business.

Only after you have gathered as many words and phrases from outside resources should you add your own keyword to the list. Once you have this list in hand, you are ready for the next step: evaluation.

The aim of evaluation is to narrow down your list to a small number of words and phrases that will direct the highest number of quality visitors to your website. By “quality visitors” I mean those consumers who are most likely to make a purchase rather than just cruise around your site and take off for greener pastures. In evaluating the effectiveness of keywords, bear in mind three elements: popularity, specificity, and motivation.

Popularity is the easiest to evaluate because it is an objective quality. The more popular your keyword is, the more likely the chances are that it will be typed into a search engine which will then bring up your URL.

You can now purchase software that will rate the popularity of keywords and phrases by giving words a number rating based on real search engine activity. Software such as WordTracker will even suggest variations of your words and phrases. The higher the number this software assigns to a given keyword, the more traffic you can logically expect to be directed to your site. The only fallacy with this concept is the more popular the keyword is, the greater the search engine position you will need to obtain. If you are down at the bottom of the search results, the consumer will probably never scroll down to find you.

Popularity isn’t enough to declare a keyword a good choice. You must move on to the next criteria, which is specificity. The more specific your keyword is, the greater the likelihood that the consumer who is ready to purchase your goods or services will find you.

Let’s look at a hypothetical example. Imagine that you have obtained popularity rankings for the keyword “automobile companies.” However, you company specializes in bodywork only. The keyword “automobile body shops” would rank lower on the popularity scale than “automobile companies,” but it would nevertheless serve you much better. Instead of getting a slew of people interested in everything from buying a car to changing their oil filters, you will get only those consumers with trashed front ends or crumpled fenders being directed to your site. In other words, consumers ready to buy your services are the ones who will immediately find you. Not only that, but the greater the specificity of your keyword is, the less competition you will face.

The third factor is consumer motivation. Once again, this requires putting yourself inside the mind of the customer rather than the seller to figure out what motivation prompts a person looking for a service or product to type in a particular word or phrase.

Let’s look at another example, such as a consumer who is searching for a job as an IT manager in a new city. If you have to choose between “Seattle job listings” and “Seattle IT recruiters” which do you think will benefit the consumer more? If you were looking for this type of specific job, which keyword would you type in? The second one, of course! Using the second keyword targets people who have decided on their career, have the necessary experience, and are ready to enlist you as their recruiter, rather than someone just out of school who is casually trying to figure out what to do with his or her life in between beer parties.

You want to find people who are ready to act or make a purchase, and this requires subtle tinkering of your keywords until your find the most specific and directly targeted phrases to bring the most motivated traffic to you site.

Once you have chosen your keywords, your work is not done. You must continually evaluate performance across a variety of search engines, bearing in mind that times and trends change, as does popular lingo. You cannot rely on your log traffic analysis alone because it will not tell you how many of your visitors actually made a purchase.

Luckily, some new tools have been invented to help you judge the effectiveness of your keywords in individual search engines. There is now software available that analyzes consumer behavior in relation to consumer traffic. This allows you to discern which keywords are bringing you the most valuable customers.

This is an essential concept: numbers alone do not make a good keyword; profits per visitor do. You need to find keywords that direct consumers to your site who actually buy your product, fill out your forms, or download your product. This is the most important factor in evaluating the efficacy of a keyword or phrase, and should be the sword you wield when discarding and replacing ineffective or inefficient keywords with keywords that bring in better profits.

Ongoing analysis of tested keywords is the formula for search engine success. This may sound like a lot of work–and it is! But the amount of informed effort you put into your keyword campaign is what will ultimately generate your business’ rewards.

GRANT

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Search Engine Optimization Tips and Techniques

Saturday, January 17th, 2009
John DeLellis asked:


Search Engine Optimization is a process which provides improved, preferential positioning in major search engines and directories, including Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Many companies feel that to get onto page one is next to impossible and that search engine optimization is a mystery. Search Engine Optimization is something that everyone talks about but few people really understand. Search engine optimization is just a matter of understanding what search engines look for when they visit your site. Organic or Natural Search Engine OptimizationOrganic or natural search engine optimization is the process of a comprehensive analysis of keywords and phrases and the implementation of ethical programming techniques for optimal natural (non-sponsored) placement in search engine results. The option of adWords is very good to a certain point and in general the Search Engine Optimization is the tool that gives the ROI for a long time for each website.

The world wide web is a highly competitive market. Companies vie for the attention of billions of internet users in the search for better revenue. A lynch pin to the internet marketing war is the search engine.

Search engines are internet venues where billions of people congregate to search for information. The most prominent search engine giants are Google and Yahoo. The kind of traffic these dot-com companies receive per hour is phenomenal.

So naturally, companies would gravitate towards placing their links and sites in an attempt to garner more visits to their web sites.

In order to maximize ranking and placement, companies have used tools such as search engine optimization or SEO. Search engine optimization is the method or process of improving a web site’s ranking in a search engine listing.

Legitimate search engine optimization practices focus on the improvement of a page’s ranking in the search engine list by improving site content, usability and using legitimate methos of promotion through web phenomena such as viral marketing.

Search engines all use complex algorithms in keeping their relevancy in the web and to keep illegal and abusive search engine optimization methods from prospering. However, “black hat” SEO users will always be around so it is expected that search engine giant such as Google and Yahoo will continue to make more complex algorithms to filter the garbage out.

Organic searches are searches conducted by web users in a search engine that is free from solicitations. A study from Jupiter Media stated that 5 out of 6 commercial online purchases came from organic searches versus paid online ads.

This has made SEO much more in demand in creating revenue for companies as SEO is not a paid ad but a method of intrinsically improving content.

Here are a few tips on improving content for a much more improved result in organic searches:

1. Expertise. Follow your strengths. Sites you set up must be on subject you consider yourself an expert on. People can smell an amateur a mile away.

2. Plan the site. A good layout for the site can improve usability. This in turn will not unnecessarily aggravate the browser.

3. Research. Check out the competition and see what they have set up. See what works and what does not. If possible try to communicate with users in forums and get feedback on what should or can be improved further.

4. Decide on important keywords. Decide on the most important keywords to use for your sight. Include these keywords in the metatags, copy page, page title, and file names.

5. The Search Engine is your friend. Make friends with your search engine and don’t give it a hard time. Being nice and friendly to it will make its job easier to serve your site up to your target audience.

6. Focus. Focus on the topic at hand and nothing else. The rule is one topic per page.

7. Join the directories. Directories are repositories of knowledge done by human hands while search engine are huge databases collected by mostly machine methods. The relevancy of your page when joining the right directory may shoot through the roof. Of course, make sure you know what you are talking about.

8. Start a linking campaign. A most effective SEO method. This is a must to do. Ask your allies, strategic partners, friends and acquaintances to place your site’s URL link on their sites. With a short description this can draw traffic from other sites and increase exposure. Google especially ranks the importance of its sites by the number of sites linked to it.

9. Repetition is the key to victory. Keep repeating the above tips, supporting and increasing what works and killing what does not as fast as possible until the desired result is achieved.

In the world of search engine optimization, content matters a lot. If a site has amateur or worse falsified information, fewer and fewer browsers will want to visit it. They will even spread bad news faster than good news so expect a garbage site to be ignored even in a week’s time.

A company mostly relies on its official web site to build a reliable customer base, to interact and get feedback from customers, and to use the site for advertising purposes.

With search engine optimization, some techniques are employed so that a web site will be listed on top of the list of results when a user types in a keyword by going to Google, Yahoo, MSN, or other search engines.

Emerging on top of a search list would lead more business your way that is why search engine optimization or SEO tactics are employed.

Some companies employ the services of establishments or individuals who deal with search engine optimization.

This would involve the development of a more informative and user-friendly web site. It may also include pay-per-click or adwords services, such as the one offered by Google.

Another thing that can yield positive results at a lower cost, as compared to an adword campaign, is optimizing a web site for organic search.

This would mainly require keyword density which would result to more traffic going to your web site.

In effect, you will have an added clientele and this should lead more business your way.

If you would like to have a hands-on experience with search engine optimization and you would not like to get a third-party SEO service provider, there are some techniques which are easy to learn so that you can do it yourself. Take a look at the following:

1. Take a lot of time with developing your web site’s content.

For most web sites, content is the key. When writing the content of your web pages, insert vital keywords which relate to the products and services that your company offers.

Make it brief and concise, yet informative.

You might see that Internet users do not actually read a web site’s content word-for-word.

They just skim through the text and concentrate on the articles that they need and the data which they find interesting. A 600-word article may be too boring or too long for a user to read.

Keep your facts up-to-date so that users will visit your web site more often. Do not forget toinclude a lot of helpful links, articles and guides that users can forward to another user and add to your customer base.

2. Make the overall design user friendly.

In most cases, the rule the simpler, the better applies. Do not design your web site in an overly-complicated way that users will find it too “frightening” to browse through.

Adapt the design to your target market. If your target audience is of a younger age, make sure that the colors and designs are funky, youthful and attention-grabbing.

For a more mature audience, you can use subdued colors and have a more elegant theme and overall web site design.

3. Vary the keyword for each individual web page.

Think of every possible keywords or phrases that will apply to your products and services.

Each user is different and may not necessarily use the keyword that you expect them to type in the search bar. Search engines offer tools which will guide you through finding the correct keywords for search engine optimization.

4. Make sure that your hyper links are visible, accessible and informative.

Providing users with hyperlinks or HTML links which are useful and easy to find is yet another way to optimize your web site.

5. Learn how to lead traffic to your site.

Seek the advise of experts on this field if you do not know how to lead traffic to your site. Develop a plan and learn how to use the necessary tools pull traffic your way.

Gather all the statistical data that you can use to keep your web site on top of the search engines’ list.

Vary your web site’s contents and keywords to adapt to the current trend. If there is a particular word or phrase that you have not used when searching for keywords, use it instead to lead more traffic your way.

Be flexible enough to change the web site’s contents and fulfill the ever-changing needs of the online users.

All in all, you would have your work cut out for you if you want to employ do-it-yourself search engine optimization techniques.



EMERSON

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Comprehensive Keyword Elite Review

Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008
If you’re looking for a Keyword Elite review, then you don’t have to look any further because this article will lay down a short but comprehensive review for you. People that are into Google Adwords might have heard about the service of Keyword Elite. What it purportedly promise to do that holds interest to people like you is that it can analyze your key words to be used in your web contents. You know how important it is to be successful in this part of your online business.

This Keyword Elite review approaches the 5 quick and easy options of the product: a) keyword list creation, b) pay per click analysis, c) keyword selection, d) keyword competition analysis, and e) Adword competition spying. You need all these five services if you want to be ranked in search engines plus more.

First off is the creation of the keyword list. You might be asking how Keyword Elite stands out among the rest in the business of keyword creation. This product combines the features of the other tools available such as the Google suggestion tool and many more. You don’t have to use each product individually because with Keyword Elite, it’s like using them all together in one application. You can develop from a 100 to 10,000 keywords within few minutes.

The second service is the pay per click analysis. From the list provided above, you can then analyze few of the generated keywords you have an eye on. You take the keywords and put in this Keyword Elite service and run it. You’ll be provided with results as to how these keywords performed in the Adword business.

You can then proceed to the third service which is the keyword selection. You just have to put your keyword or key phrase in from you niche subject, run the service and you can have your chosen list created in no time at all.

The fourth service that is checked in this Keyword Elite review is the keyword competition analysis. If you put your chosen keyword in and run the analysis, the Keyword Elite service will check your keyword against its existing competitors. You’ll see the top 10 sites that use similar keywords as the one you chose.

The last in this Keyword Elite review is the Adword competition spying service. You can put in your competitors’ URLs and the keywords and the Keyword Elite will give you their ad details and whether they are advertised in Google or not.

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Search Engine Optimization Service

Monday, July 21st, 2008
Mark Genovese asked:


A professional search engine optimization service helps you achieve high position in search engine results pages and help you get targeted visitors. Search engine optimization (SEO) has undergone several changes in the last 7-12 years, with changes in search engine algorithms.

While opting for search engine optimization service, you can pick an expert SEO professional knowledgeable about the ins and outs of SEO promotion. Search engine optimization service intends to get the website listed in search engine results pages for targeted keywords.

Search engine optimization service starts with keyword analysis. More than 200 keywords and phrases are identified and different pages of the website are optimized for different keywords, based on number of searches, competition and profitability. Within an industry some keywords are highly competent and several keywords are overlooked. These overlooked keywords (long tail keywords) can have high potential of targeted traffic and profits.

While you pick a search engine optimization service, make sure the firm is knowledgeable about the working of search engines and has the expertise is keyword research and optimizing websites for targeted keywords. It is important that the SEO Company has enough knowledge and expertise.

Search engine optimization service is an ongoing process, with continuous keyword research, traffic analysis and creating search engine friendly content in your website. The design of your website plays a significantly important role in search engine optimization. Faster loading, always available, simple design websites fair better. Cluttered design, absence of hierarchical arrangement of page elements, poor site navigation, absence of text links, shallow content, URLs with session ids, affect the performance of a website in search engines.

While hiring someone for professional search engine optimization services, make sure the SEO Company is knowledgeable about the best practices in search engine optimization and actually help your website achieve high position in search engine listings.

If search engines had not become this powerful, online business would not gain this popularity. Search engines help internet users quickly find what they are searching for. When consulting a search engine optimization service, you look for help in telling the search engines that your site is what internet users are searching for. Cluttered by billions of websites, it is harder than ever for webmasters to make their website get listed in search engines.

Search engines now consider relevancy factor before listing the search results. There are several techniques now adopted by SEO companies to tell search engines that a specific website is the most relevant one. While hiring an SEO company for search engine optimization service, the firm will optimize both offsite and onsite factors that lead to higher position in search listings.

It is essential that you avoid search engine optimization service that use questionable SEO practices. There is nothing dreary than to get your website banned by search engines like Google. The result will be a total dry up of traffic to your website.



RUFUS

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Ethical Seo: 5 Things to Look for in a Search Engine Optimization Company

Monday, June 23rd, 2008
Kimberly A Judd asked:


What?s the point of building an ethical company, then turning around and using unethical techniques to get business? Unfortunately, that?s not a choice many companies have when they?re deceived by search engine optimization services that use unethical SEO practices to trick all types of search engines into driving traffic to their clients? websites. Avoid this potentially disastrous pitfall by knowing the 5 things to look for in an SEO company, as illustrated by real-world examples from Cybermark International ? an ethical search engine optimization company with hundreds of clients all over the world whose loyalty proves its effectiveness.

1) SEO Expertise. All the ins and outs of effectively optimized webpages aren?t something you can learn in a week, a month or even a year. In fact, that?s probably why some SEO companies resort to unethical practices. The intricacies are simply too numerous and complex for most people to fully grasp and incorporate into ethical, effective search engine optimization packages without years of firsthand experience ? with what works and what doesn?t.

Cybermark International has been in the SEO business since 1994, just two years after the Internet was made available to the general public. Kimberly Judd-Pennie, the founder of Cybermark, has spent every day since developing the art and science of search engine optimization. Hers are ethical, innovative techniques that typically increase online sales at least 20 percent at the onset, with impressive exponential growth to follow, as evidenced by the many loyal clients who have entrusted their SEO to Cybermark for years.

2) Promises They Can Keep. No one can guarantee you a number one ranking on Google, and anything promised to the contrary simply is not true. In fact, the only thing an SEO company can promise you are the application of techniques that have been proven to significantly improve your ranking in search engine results.

Some SEO companies promise ?partner only? advantages, implying that they have some sort of special relationship with all types of search engines that can guarantee you better rankings. That is most certainly not the case, as no search engine treats any one SEO company differently than the next. In fact, what they?re probably talking about is ?paid inclusion,? in which your search engine submission fee is included in the search engine optimization package.

3) Honest, Clearly Defined Strategies. If an SEO company cannot clearly explain to you what they?re doing, and why, then there?s probably something to hide. Unfortunately, you have much more to lose from this deception than the level of trust between you. Some techniques ? known as ?black hat SEO? ? involve deception of the search engines in such a way that it results in being banned from their listings altogether!

Kimberly Judd-Pennie is all too familiar with the devastating impact of black hat SEO on websites, as some of her clients have experienced themselves before discovering Cybermark. One of Kimberly?s long-standing clients first came to her after an SEO company?s tactics got the company banned from all types of search engines. They had used a technique called ?sneaky Java Script redirect.? Instead of a human being writing readable, relevant content, a software program generates the practically unreadable, keyword-stuffed text. Only, it?s for Googlebot?s ?eyes? only. As soon as the website program detects movement of a mouse (i.e., the presence of a real person), a different version of the text appears on screen. Fortunately, within just a few weeks of being with Cybermark, this company was added back into the search engines and achieving better rankings than ever before.

4) Long-Term Outlook. Search engine optimization cannot be achieved overnight. On the contrary, it can take several months for ethical search engine optimization techniques to generate the kind of dramatic results every website owner wants to see. Some techniques for optimized webpages only work well when applied slowly over a long period of time ? like ?backlinking? or ?inbound linking,? which means building up a network of links from other websites pointing to your own. This is beneficial because the more links that point to you ? from quality, content-rich, high-ranking sites ? the more likely that search engines are to see your website as an authority on its topic, and list you accordingly.

Though search engine optimization most certainly can, and should, improve your results within a few weeks time, it in no way represents the entirety of what you should expect from a quality SEO company. So if they don?t have a plan for optimizing your website over the long haul, it?s not the plan for you.

5) Free Consultation. Why pay for a consultation, or evaluation of your website, from a company who has yet to prove themselves to you? A free consultation for optimized webpages gives you the advantage of assessing an SEO company?s level of professionalism and expertise without investing anything more than your time.

Considering the critical importance of choosing an ethical search engine optimization company, Cybermark International offers a Free Website Evaluation. Though it?s most certainly an opportunity for them to share with you the search engine optimization packages best-suited to your website, it?s also a chance for you to get to know Kimberly and her team ? SEO experts who prove that effective SEO can be ethical too.



CHARLES

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