Website Design & SEO Blog | Tips for Online Success

It’s no secret that the first step of any SEO or PPC campaign is keyword research. Similar to the Adwords tool, Google’s new Search-based Keyword Tool works equally well for SEO as for pay-per-click.

Just like Superman it’s faster than a speeding bullet and more powerful than a locomotive. In fact the only thing it can’t do that Superman can is leap tall buildings.

Tried it out for our Directory One’s main website marketing site, and, if nothing else, it’s really fast. In less than two seconds after entering the URL and a small sampling of key phrases, it returned 800 more related key phrases – and that was without being logged into our Adwords account.

Similar to the Adwords tool, my first task was to eliminate the non-relevant key phrases. For example, I couldn’t really see a need for keeping seo spider, seo Japan, or seo chester. In fact, I don’t even know what seo chester is. And those were just some of the ones on the first page I deleted.

The easiest way to edit your keyword list is simply check the ones you want to keep and click the Save to draft button. These key phrases can then be found by clicking the My draft keywords tab in the green row at the top of the page. Unfortunately for me, however, I got the following error message when I clicked the Save to draft button: An error occurred while processing your request. Try again later. So, of course, I did, and it worked fine.

Probably the Search-based Keyword Tool’s best feature, other than the fact that it’s 100% free, is that if you sign into your Adwords account, it will generate new keywords related to your site that are not already in your account.

In addition you’ll find the tool’s filters both powerful and helpful. You can show partial matches to keywords already in your account, set a range of monthly searches and/or suggested Adwords bids, say for example, from x to y. You can choose between low, medium or high competition, and even see keywords matching only a specific page of your site.

Final Thought

Even though this was only my first time using the tool, it was easy to see exactly how it will help come up with long tail key phrases that have reasonable numbers of monthly searches but low competition.

The post Google’s New Search-based Keyword Tool appeared first on Search Engine Marketing & Optimization Blog.

Internet Copywriter

What is the ultimate purpose of the internet? (Wow-I know that’s a loaded question that could take forever to answer!) For some, the internet is a source of information. For others, it’s a place to interact with friends, play games and enjoy the range of available entertainment. For many of us who work with SEO, however, we have one true purpose for ourselves and our clients: to make money. We want to sell as many of our products and services as we can, and this is done by attracting customers–not just visitors–to our sites.

But, how can we attract those ready-to-buy customers to our site, when there are so many other sites floating around out there? How can we make our businesses stand out and make it to the top of the search engine results page when there are such giants as About.com and Yahoo to content with? The answer is to make use of long tail keywords.

I first head the term “long tail keyword” a few months ago; and although I got the gist of what that term meant, I was still confused about exactly how to write content using them. Did it mean that I had to put the entire string of terms together, without any words in between? Did I have to use the long tail keyword in its entirety every time? Some quick conversations with SEO pros, along with some sample searches, led me to these conclusions:

• Long tail keywords are one of the most effective ways to draw unique visitors to your site
• You may break up these strings of words with minor prepositions without causing any major differences to your page’s searchability
• It is best to use long tail keywords in conjunction with shorter keywords on the same page
  

Long tail keywords are 3 to 4 word keyword phrases that are very specific to what you are selling. For example, rather than a t-shirt company writing content that targets “t-shirts”, they may choose to target the long tail keyword phrase “funny political t-shirts”. It seems like targeting such a specific keyword would reduce your number of site visitors and reduce your page views, doesn’t it? Well, this may be true, but there are three very good reasons to use long tail keywords anyway:

1. It makes writing SEO Content much easier. Any content writer is more easily able to write a page of content on “used hybrid cars gas mileage” than they are “used cars”. A more focused keyword content makes for sharper, more focused writing.



2. It makes it easier to target customers who are actually ready to buy. An internet searcher who is looking for “home security systems company houston” is much more likely to be to the point of actually buying a product than a searcher who simply types in “house alarms”. You may be reaching a smaller pool of searchers, but you are reaching those customers who are ready to close the sale.
3. It makes it more likely to reach the front page of search engine results. Using long tail keywords means that you will have fewer competitors trying to reach the front page of the search results, because fewer pages have targeted that string of keywords. Big-name sites usually dominate the search result pages of simple, broad searches; but smaller sites that have created properly targeted content stand a good chance of reaching their ideal customers.

The post Long Tail Keywords: The Internet Salesman’s Best Friend appeared first on Search Engine Marketing & Optimization Blog.