Using Google’s Free Keyword Tool
As the saying goes “information is power”, but that power is useless if you don’t know what to do with it. Such is the case with the Google keyword tool, that provides you with a decent way to help optimise and target traffic from the search engine at your site.
Is it the answer we have all been looking for to our SEO woes? Definitely not, but it is part of the jigsaw for sure. So now you have a tool that effectively provides you with information on traffic for terms, suggestions for alternate terms and ideas, what do you do with it?
Webmaster Tools
If you set up webmaster tools you may already have a good idea of how Google robots actually view the content on your site and the relevance of certain terms. With luck these will be the keyphrases you are actually aiming to target already. You can use these terms though to help divine a path to more traffic.
If you haven’t then it’s not the end of the world, you can specify a URL in the keyword tool from which to analyse content and generate a list of associated keywords and phrases.
Testing Phrases
Out of these terms, do a search. You will see that different combinations of the same 2, 3 and 4 word key phrases can garner very different levels of traffic. To this end you will want to aim towards those keyword combinations that will generate higher levels of traffic.
Phrase Competition
So you have picked a series of keywords, but what’s the competition like on them? You can rest assured that those phrases that garner most hits are the most competitive in the field and therefore it makes more sense to target phrases that draw slightly less traffic. That way you compete less, achieve a better ranking in the search results and draw more traffic, and with a well designed site, end up converting them. Bingo! Once you dominate these terms you can more readily head on upwards to the even headier heights of larger volume keywords and phrases.
Implementing Good Research
Knowing then how to implement the keyphrases properly is the holy grail. Pasting the terms left, right and centre isn’t quite the key, but ensuring combination thereof are contained within the title, meta data, page content (titles, paragraphs), image alt and link title attributes, then you are heading in the right direction.
Of course, sometimes shifting the value of your site from page rank ZERO to PR4 or PR5 isn’t enough. Being on the front page of Google for terms less searched isn’t always optimal. Getting 10% conversion rate on 300 visits a month isn’t the same as 10% on 3000 or even 5%. And when you go to implement your terms, ensure they look linguistically correct and read well. Links that stand out in the search results are more likely to be clicked.
Elsewhere …
Last but not least, optimise more than just your site. Get the terms including in your business name in the Google business directory and where possible ensure links include them. The new terms need to infuse every aspect of your site from the content, to the sites you link to and the site that link back to you.
It might seem like an up-hill struggle to achieve but getting things right will mean that each of the elements of the jigsaw fall into place, even if slowly, but surely.
