Keywords: Optimization - Finding Good Keywords & Measuring Keyword Competition
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Keywords & Optimization
Keyword optimization can be intimidating, especially for the novice website owner or beginning internet marketer. Everywhere we look, someone's telling us how to improve our search engine rankings through proper keyword research. We read article after article and become increasingly confused. The good news is, the process can be practical, teachable and well worth the effort. With a little coaching and practice, keyword optimization can become natural and automatic.
So, how do we find those perfect, profitable keywords?
Research is the key to optimizing your pages for search engines.
First, we need a reliable, keyword tool. The free Google Adwords Keyword Tool is perfect to help you get started. Go to the Adwords External Keyword tool and type in your keywords. Make sure to be as specific as possible. For example, if your site's about keyword optimization, make sure to include all the specific data that's important to your site. "Free keyword optimization tools" is better than simply targeting "keywords." Try all the combinations you can think of. Use the thesaurus tool in your word processing program to suggest alternative versions of your keyword combinations.
Now, collect some keyword phrases that you want to optimize your pages for...
After you compile a list of varied keyword ideas,
it's time to check the competition. First, go to Google and try your keywords in
quotes. For example, type "Los Angeles Cuban Restaurants" into the search box.
The number of results tells you how many websites are optimized for that
keyword. It's important not to stop here. Next, it's important to find out how
many sites have your keyword phrase in the title, text and anchor text (links
pointing to their site). You can run the query in one long string in Google. It
will look like this:
intitle:your keyword phrase intext:your keyword
phrase inanchor:your keyword phrase
If the website owner has included all
of these on-page optimization features, you can consider them a viable
competitor for your keyword phrase.
Now, let's take a look at one of the most important optimization qauges.
Yep... you guessed it...Pagerank!
Next,
you will enter the keyword phrase into the Google search box by itself, without
quotes. Take a look at the top ten results. Go to each site and check their
pagerank and incoming links. There are many free pagerank tools available to
help you uncover a site's Google ranking. Simply put, Pagerank is Google's
assessment of the importance of a particular webpage.
The next step is to
take a look at how many links are pointing to their site. You can do this by
putting the url of the web page in quotes. Just highlight the full http address
in the browser window (Ctrl + A) and paste it (Ctrl + V) into the Google search
box with quotes around it. This will tell you how many external (backlinks) are
pointing to the site. Unless you already outrank them with your pagerank, you'll
have to post an article to a higher PR site or outnumber them in incoming links.
Relax, you can do this.
Improving one's pagerank and the number of incoming links can be achieved with effort and commitment.
So, to recap, we're looking for targeted,
specific, keyword phrases with high search volume and low
competition.
And a side note...one of my sites beat out 76 million
competitors for my most important keyword phrase. It's number 3 and 4 on page 1
of Google's search results. It was less than 2 years old at the time. It just
takes a little time and patience. You can do this!
I know all of this
seems difficult and a bit complicated to the beginner. The learning curve can be
high and most of us want to see immediate results.The good news is...there are
faster, helpful tools out there. If you'd like to streamline this process and
automate most of the hard work, here's a great keyword tool.
Are you ready to earn lots of money on the internet?
