The Turnfire Internet Marketing Blog - Learn More, Grow and Compete Online. SEO | Domain Names | Affiliates | Niches
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Everyone throws around the term “SEO,” how to use it there, apply some there – but what’s the benefit in all of this? It’s getting your website to the first page!
Take a moment and think about what happens when you search Google (or whichever your choice search engine might be) and the results are listed for your search.
First, you’ll immediate look at the top result – does it appear to be relevant and useful? Maybe one of the top three results?
At that point searchers might scan the rest of the results, and even dig a bit deeper – but the rest of them refine the search terms and look for a better list of results.
Getting to the First Page with Keywords
Keywords are the first step to many successful SEO campaigns, and when using them properly – you’re site can hit the first page in a matter of weeks. Keywords help the search engines determine relevancy, and understanding how to target the keywords in your niche will give you a major advantage online.
How to Make Keywords Work for You
First, make a list of the top 10 keywords relating to your niche. Use the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to pick keywords that have “exact” search traffic. This guide will tell you everything you need to know about the keyword tool. (link to guide)
Next, take your list of 10 keywords and refine it down to three of four. Write them down and memorize them, because you’ll be needed to reference them. It’s important to target your campaign to keywords with traffic, so make sure you write down and use the “exact” terms you chose from the keyword tool.
Finally, optimize your site based on those keywords! Immediately you can change title tags, descriptions, category or page names and you can even rewrite current content to 
include your 3 or 4 top keywords. Optimizing your own site and content with keywords can quickly boost your search engine positions.
From this point forward use those keywords in all your new content, but don’t spam it – I’m talking about using these keywords about once per paragraph (on average).
Allow anchor text on all your links and images that reference the keywords, and before you know it you’ll be rising in the ranks for your chosen keywords. If you want to track your positions in Google based on keywords – then try using the link on the right side “Google Position Tracking.”
My Site Has Keywords… But It’s Still Not on the First Page!
Some keywords are more competitive than others, just like industries in business. So how can you compete against the big guns? Well, they pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into keyword advertising at times and the truth is you might have a tough time. You’re not done yet though, you’ve still got two options to beat these guys.
Have you heard of the phrase, “If you can’t go through it, then go around it?” Well if you can’t beat them on the top keywords you can go around them, and find the “long tail” tail keywords they haven’t targeted.
Go back to the keyword tool and repeat your search, now look at the top 10 keywords and the total search traffic they receive. Now scroll down and look at the 40 keywords below that you didn’t want to list before. Well, guess what… if you didn’t think to target them then chances are that no one else did either.
Long tail keywords like “marketing domains to end-users” are easier to capture and control than broad keywords like “domains.” So find the long tail keywords that receive searches, and use them to your advantage, because in accumulation they often provide more traffic than trying to compete on the big keywords.
Your other option is to compete, to try and take them head on. If you plan to do this, then you’ll need to be willing to learn as you go and put in a minimum of an hour a day towards marketing and promoting your website.
Aside from optimizing your own web page content for keywords, other factors play a big role in your search engine positions. Let’s talk about linking.
Internal links on your site are the ones that source other pages on your website, and the internal link structure needs to be solid if you plan to compete.
Draw out your site, generate a sitemap and submit it into the Google webmaster tools. Providing a solid and stable website structure is not only important when the search engine spiders crawl your site, but your visitors will appreciate it also.
Next on your list if you want to compete is networking, mainly online social networking. By meeting new people and creating a band of followers on social networks like twitter, digg, and facebook you are also creating a network of links to your site and building awareness.
Successful social networking can provide you with an expert status among your followers and allows you to promote your own content to the masses. Never engage in social networking if you don’t plan to put some time aside for it. It’s important to make meaningful comments, make positive connections, and provide value to your new band of followers through more than just spam.
Social networking can become addictive –so be careful, and yes I’m speaking first hand. I look forward to writing an article on successful social networking in the near future, but for now there is countless articles that will enlighten you on the many niches of these networks.
Social networking is a great way to drive traffic, gain outbound links and boost awareness to any website.
Ok, I’ve Been Networking My Butt Off – And I’m Even Using Keywords, but I’m Still Not Seeing Results!
When building an effective search engine optimization campaign, it’s simply not enough to rely on keyword and links. If you want to get you website to the first page, and if you want to dominate the competition then you need to have quality content.
Give your visitors a reason to come back and don’t make a sloppy first impression. Keywords and links can get you onto that first page, but if you ever want to own your niche or category then you need to have quality content, and you should give every visitor a reason to bookmark or save your site for the future.
So there you go, you want to take your site from nothing to first page in a couple of weeks? Then do these three things:
- Chose 3-4 top keywords and optimize your site with keywords and internal links.
- Capture and control you chosen long-tail keywords, and engage in meaningful social networking.
- Create quality content, offer tool sets, or provide something completely unique.
Before you know it, you’ll be telling all your friends to search your keywords in Google – displaying your site proudly.
Online entrepreneurs and business builders alike – there is a suite of free online tools that’s as powerful as any, and perhaps the most relevant. In fact, if you didn’t at least learn about them – you’d be a fool!
I’m referring to the tools that Google offers, a wide variety of resources for anyone looking to succeed online. Where else could you get such a powerful suite of tools? Only from the most diverse and by far the most used search engine, Google.
The Tools You Need for Successful Online Marketing
This is the first service any webmaster should add to their arsenal. Google Analytics provides tracking and monitoring of website traffic, including a wide array of important data – like sources, referring urls, network locations and even geographic maps.
Tracking and understanding the visitors your website is often the key in tweaking your content to perfection. Learn where they come from, why they are there, and find out what they like and dislike through trial and error. Google Analytics is more than just a way to track visitors – its feedback, and everyone can use some feedback.
I love the keyword tool, it makes my life endlessly easier. Let’s pretend you’re building a new webpage or blog that we’re going to base on “Small Business Marketing.” Imagine knowing the exact number of times that “small business marketing” was searched in Google, as a monthly average – in addition to all of the related keywords. That is the power of Google Analytics.
One main reason for conducting any marketing research is to gain confidence in your marketing decisions. When you’re competing online, this can be one of the most powerful marketing research tools you’ll ever come across. Check out my comprehensive post for more information: Your Guide to Google AdWords Keyword Tool – Defining Your Market Online
If you want to take your website to the next level, and effectively research the optimization of your site – this is a must have. The webmaster tools are really effective at giving feedback on your site, from the view of a Google spider.
Using the webmaster tools allows you to optimize your site for indexing, explore your search queries and link backs, and even submit sitemaps. If you plan to ever achieve a top position on Google, you will find this to be a key step in your journey.
Whether you’re looking for a boost to your visitor base or jump start a new blog, you can target your customers though keywords and demographics using Google AdWords ads. This service is not free, but it’s based on a pay-per click model that will deplete your account balance based on results.
There are complete reference guides on optimizing your AdWords ads to be cost-effective, countless articles and blog posts on the net – all of which you need to take advantage of. Mastering a pay-per click method of advertising is a great way to reach new audiences, boost sales, or market your new clients product-based website.
This service is still in development at the Google Labs, however its current state is nothing short of insightful – providing an in-depth look at keyword and demographic trends in Google. I’m not sure – since I don’t keep a tally – but dozens of my niche ideas have been generated from rising trends, breakthrough keywords and demographic search trend data.
It Doesn’t Stop There - There is Probably a Google Product to Meet Your Need.
These are my favourite Google tools, and you owe it to yourself to check them out. In addition Google provides numerous tools, and they are continually developing innovative products in the labs. Other tools in the Google suite that you can check out are:
- Google Adsense: Put AdWords ads on your site, and you can earn a portion of the revenue generated through the PPC (pay-per-click) model.
-Feedburner: Google’s acquisition of feedburner is a welcomed addition to the suite of tools. Track your audience, the number of bookmarks, times your page was shared, and how many people have subscribed to your RSS feeds.
-Google Insights for Search: With Google Insights for Search, you can compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, and time frames. This particular service is still in the beta phase of development, but look for big things from this one.
-Google Mail(Gmail): While I’ve never used the Google Mail server for my websites, I have worked for companies that have. If you’re looking for a great way to launch company email accounts, this is your answer. It’s free, reliable, and you can easily setup the email to synchronize with your Outlook Express or other email software.
The message is pretty clear, Google is a big search engine. They have lots of data, a massive group of cutting-edge developers and programmers, and they have the ability and the budget to offer powerful resources for free.
Why would they offer these for free? Maybe it’s for brand awareness, maybe it’s to keep visitors or maybe it’s simply to stay ahead of the game – but one thing is for sure, I’m not going to miss out.
Marketing research for internet marketers – keyword research is a powerful tool for online marketing. With a suite of free online tools, Google has provided numerous services to increase the scope and depth of keyword research within their search engines.
So how am I supposed to use these services?
The Google AdWords Keyword Tool(https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal) is one of the most useful tools for keyword research, and Google provides it for free. When you first enter the page you can enter keywords or keyphrases and the Keyword Tool will provide you with search data based on your chosen keywords. I know it sounds a little tricky right now, but I promise by the end of this, you’ll be an expert.
After entering your keywords, which you can separate by hitting enter, or breaking the line – press the “Get Keyword Ideas” button to start the search. You can also choose to “Use Synonyms” which will give you a broader range of keywords in your search, related to your chosen keywords. There are a few ways to filter the search results, you can explore them if you choose but they are not generally needed.
Ok I have a list of words and numbers, but how can I use them?
The first thing you should do when you’re getting started with the Keyword Tool, is to change your search results to only show the keyword and the approximate average search volume columns. You can change these in the “Choose columns to display” drop-down box.
After you have a simple two column chart it makes things a little clearer, where the numbers represent the average monthly search volume (in Google) for the keywords on the left. Note the drop-down box above the results on the right, which currently says “Broad.” Change this to “Exact” and resubmit your search.
Changing the “Match Type” to exact will give you a more accurate snapshot of the keywords you’re interested in. The difference between broad and exact, is that broad will display data that is reflective of anytime your keyword was used. For example if our keyword was “Marketing” and the match type was broad, then it would display results on that keyword for any phrase including Marketing. This could be anything from “domain name marketing” to “marketing my banana flavored gum.”
When you change the match type to exact the data is reflective of the exact keywords, so if it says 450,000 beside the keyword “marketing” then that means 450,000 searches are completed monthly, on average – and for the exact keyword “marketing.”
Alright it’s making sense, so how can I optimize my results to reflect what I really want to know?
That all depends on what your goal was with the keyword research. The main reason for researching keywords is to optimize a website or internet material for search results. Assuming that the overall goal is optimization – keyword research plays two crucial roles in search optimization:
1) When a search spider is crawling your site, keywords are a major source in determining relevancy. As a result when you type your search into Google, most of the sites you find are planning to be there – through use of the common keywords in their website content.
2) When planning for a website or online campaign, domainers (domain dealers/marketers/developers) use keyword strength to select a formidable domain name.
With this new knowledge you should have the ability to understand your markets, what they are searching for – and how many of they there are. Monitoring and performing keyword research is the key to connecting with customers, establishing a strong online presence and optimizing your content for search engines.
Check back this week for an exciting post, “First Page Frenzy – The Steps to Effective SEO,”
on how to optimize your site for the search engines.
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