Picking
Keywords for SEO – A Different View
by Halstatt Pires
The first step to developing any search engine
optimization effort is picking keywords. The general consensus is pick
keywords with solid amounts of traffic and a minimum of competition. At
the risk of being laughed off the Internet, here’s a different view.
Going Big…Going VERY Big
Should you do research to identify keywords
receiving lots of traffic? Absolutely. Of this group, should you
identify the keywords with the lowest amount of competition? Again,
yes. After all, who would be foolish enough to try to attack keywords
with a few million competing sites? Well, me for one.
People that go for a keyword phrase like “for sale
by owner” [2 million plus searches a month and KEI of 0.000000000…] are
often dismissed as amateurs with unrealistic expectations. For those of
us that have been in the business for some time, this bias deserves
some reconsideration. The motivation is greed…pure and simple greed.
Seo greed is arises when one achieves top listings
in Google, Yahoo and MSN for a site. Using the example above, assume
the client is a car-listing site and you’ve conquered all the listings
for “car for sale by owner.” Yes, it took 15 months, but the client is
happy and so are you. Or are you?
After a few weeks, you start thinking, “Damn, I
should have gone for the phrase ‘for sale by owner’ and the extra
700,000 searches a month.” You start getting visions of changing the
site, but the anchor text in links and so on is already set. In the
end, you feel dissatisfied because you want more, damn it!
A Different Approach
Okay, I am not advocating you throw competition
analysis out the window. You should absolutely find keywords that have
solid traffic and low competition. If nothing else, you need short-term
carrots to keep you motivated. That being said, you must also plan for
the inherent evil greed in your twisted little seo soul. Don’t even try
to deny it.
Here it comes…
I am advocating you go for keywords with monstrous
amounts of traffic, competition analysis be damned! Yes, I know. What a
fool.
Throwing caution to the wind, I am even going to
argue that…[drum roll]…you consider one-word keywords! I know…
Blasphemy!…Insanity!…Stupid Moron…etc. But think about it. When you’ve
accomplished your goals with low competition keywords, why not have a
go at the biggies? What if you get them…even a few?
Putting it all together, my theory is this.
Identify the low competition keywords, optimize your site and so on.
Just make sure you also throw some “wishful thinking” keywords. If the
optimized site survives for three or four years, you might just be
thankful you did.
I’m off to optimize for the keyword “travel.” Lets
see, Expedia is listed number 1 with a page rank of 8 and 67 thousand
back links on Google.
Ha! Expedia I mock thee!
Halstatt Pires may be contacted at http://www.marketingtitan.com
PPC Advertising – The First
Step In A SEO Marketing Campaign
by Halstatt Pires
Often, sites view seo and PPC marketing as
exclusive marketing techniques. Each marketing method has its
advocates. In reality, both have a place in the Internet marketing
process. If you intend to pursue a major seo effort, a PPC campaign is
a critical early step.
PPC For Testing
Let’s say you have a site offering a service or
product in the travel market. You’ve put together a healthy budget and
decided to go for broke. Yep, you’re optimizing and trading links in an
effort to go after keyword phrases with major traffic and competition.
For instance, you’ve decided to have a go at “Europe travel”, which has
roughly 400,000 searches each month and major competition for high
rankings. You spend two years trading links, adding content and so on.
Miracle of miracles, you pop on to the first page of search results.
You start shopping for your private jet only to realize a very
disturbing thing. You are getting thousands of visits, but few sales.
After running calculations, you find the site is converting at 1 in
10,000.
Houston, we have a problem.
A PPC campaign should be used to test your site
against keyword phrases before you spend the time and money on an seo
campaign. The best platforms to use for your campaign are Google
Adwords and Overture. Yes, click fraud is a problem, but less so on
these platforms.
After opening accounts and laying a credit card
down at the PPC alter, you need to give some thought at to how you will
test your keywords. Here’s a hint. The campaign should be designed to
test the keyword phrases, not maximize sales. This may sound like a
strange statement, but keep in mind the purpose of the campaign. You
are determining whether you have picked appropriate keyword phrases for
the seo campaign. So, how does it all go wrong?
With both Overture and Adwords, you have the
ability to designate the reach of your keyword phrases. Most pick the
“broad match” option, which is terrible for testing. With broad match,
your advertisements are going to appear for your keyword phrase AND
variations of the phrase. Since the ad is appearing on a variety of
keyword phrases, the results can give you a false impression of the
value of the primary keyword phrase.
Going back to our example, we start a Google
Adwords campaign for “Europe travel” and use the default broad match
option. After a month, we are happy to find the ads converting at 1 in
70. Having validated the keyword phrase, we set off on the long seo
campaign. But are we really sure about the validity of the keyword
phrase. Since Google has been known to seriously expand keyword phrases
under the broad match option, how do we know that the true keyword
phrase isn’t “European travel”? We don’t unless we take a few
additional steps.
The first step is to limit the PPC advertisements
by bypassing the broad match option. Instead, you want to limit the
appearance of the ad only to searches for the exact keyword phrase. In
Adwords, this is known as the “exact phrase” match. To designate it,
you simply place brackets “[]” around the keyword phrase. Second, you
need to track traffic originating from the ads. This can be done using
tracking tools on your server or through the tracking options offered
by each PPC platform. Regardless of your choice, the resulting data
will give a much truer picture of the value of the particular keyword
phrases.
Nothing is more aggravating then getting top
rankings, but miserable conversions. The only way to beat this problem
is to test, test, test. Using PPC campaigns at the outset of an
Internet marketing efforts can save you a lot of headaches later on.
Halstatt Pires is with the Internet marketing
firm MarketingTitan.com -
a San Diego Internet marketing and advertising company in San Diego.
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Halstatt Pires may be contacted at http://www.marketingtitan.com
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