For webmasters trying to rank in Google organic results, it can often feel like you are all on your own with little help and guidance. There are the published Google guidelines and of course the great amounts of SEO blogs where writers can share their knowledge and opinions, but other than that companies and website owners are mostly on their own.

It can be a fine line between optimizing your site correctly, and doing something that you thought would be OK but ultimately Google didn’t like and penalized you for.

Fortunately, there is one medium for communication where webmasters can view data on their website, as seen by Google, and receive notifications to any possible issues on their site. This area is Google Webmaster Tools, and if you are reading this and haven’t yet set up and verified your site, I suggest you go and do this immediately. I’ll wait.

With that now set up, you can see lots of data on your website from links to crawling errors and site performance, but what I am most interested in for this blog post is keywords. There are a couple of areas in Webmaster Tools that can help with your keyword research and onsite optimization, both of which can be found under “Your site on the web” on the left hand navigation.

Keywords

The first of these sections is aptly named “keywords” and shows you the keywords that Google thinks are important to your website based on the content of your pages.

The first page of data you are shown isn’t necessarily the most accurate; the first term for Vertical Measures is “market”, but you can click down to greater detail for related terms such as “marketing” which is more relevant to our site.

So how can this report help you? Well using this information you can see the words that are repeated most on your website, and how this correlates with the terms you are targeting with SEO. If your most important keyword is hard to find on your site, then you might wish to think about rewriting your website content to make it more prevalent (without keyword stuffing).

Looking at verticalmeasures.com we can see the following top 10 list of words on the site. Obviously market/marketing is important for our business, as is building/link building and SEO. However, more important from this list is what isn’t listed, for example our content marketing or local search services don’t crack the top 20, so we could rewrite our important pages accordingly.

You can then drill down this information to see which pages are using these keywords the most, and check that these pages are those you are targeting with that keyword, and again rewrite your content accordingly if it isn’t.

This tool could also prove useful for ensuring that you are using other related terms suitably throughout your website. By checking that other related terms, such as synonyms or related products, are also being used various times on your pages you can ensure that you can rank for other searches and long tail queries.

Search Queries

The other area in Webmaster Tools that can help you find and target keywords is the “Search queries” report. On this report you can see the keywords that Google is returning your website for in search results (impressions) and when these searches are actually resulting in visitors to your site (clicks).

This data is worth evaluating in closer detail to see exactly what it is telling you, and how this should be used. Firstly we can see that almost all of the impressions for “Google Images” took place on one day, when we were ranking on the second page, as shown below:

If we use the AdWords tool to try and see the approximate search volume of this keyword, we can see the following data for broad, phrase and exact matches:

Reducing this figures to a single day, this still leaves us on broad match with either 111,666 a day or 50,000 local, or 91,000 queries on phrase and exact or 40,000 local. Either way these figures differ greatly from those in Webmaster Tools, so it is possible that they are in fact more accurate. However, that does not mean that we were necessarily exposed to 60,000 searchers yet received less than 10 visits. If we use SEOBooks approximation that only 10% of searchers look at second page, it is likely that this figure is closer to 6,000 impressions (in reality given the search term itself, I suspect it is far fewer than this).

The bottom line for website owners is that this impression number is likely to be far higher than reality, unless you are ranking in the top three positions, and even then the AdWords Keyword tool is known to be inaccurate.

However, the piece of data that you can verify in Analytics is the clicks you get from various keywords.  Looking at our own data for these keywords these numbers appear to be mostly accurate, with Webmaster Tools reporting 150 clicks and Analytics reporting 144 visits. I was also able to look at the position Webmaster Tools gives for a keyword in the SERPs with a separate ranking tool where the information was again validated, so we know that this too is accurate.

So knowing this information, what can a website owner learn from this report and how can they change their keyword strategy accordingly? Firstly, this report can be useful for highlighting keywords that you are already ranking for without targeting, and you can then focus on these more directly for better rankings.

You can also look at these reports to see those keywords with low click though rates to troubleshoot any potential issues (without trusting the impressions figure too greatly). This information can then help you understand the intent behind certain keywords, what they are looking for, and how you can better attract clicks once you are ranking, for example by tweaking your Page Title and meta description.

Summary

This is just a small amount of the information that is available in Webmaster Tools, and I highly recommend that every business owner use the information Google gives you as much as possible. It is the one area where the Almighty G gives you some kind of feedback, and by combining it with other tools you can find mistakes your website is making, and fix them to achieve improved results.

In addition, following several announcements by Google over the past month regarding Webmaster Tools it in an area that I believe they are focusing on at the moment and expect to grow in functionality and information available – use it wisely.

James Constable

James is a Campaign Manager at Vertical Measures, looking at client’s Internet Marketing from a strategic viewpoint to get them the best possible results for their business needs and budget. His blog posts revolve around strategy, analytics and keyword selection.

Halloween is the time of year when people dress up as ghosts, ghouls, goblins and other malevolent creatures that patrol the streets in search of candy and a good scare or two. In the SEO world, terrors lurk behind every corner of the web on a daily basis, pitfalls that can cause your site to fall in the rankings – or even worse, drop from the SERPs altogether. While the spooky side of Halloween lasts just one night, a penalty from a search engine can affect you for years. Here are the top 10 SEO problems an Internet marketing services company can help you prevent this Halloween:

Cloaking:

Cloaking is a black hat search engine optimization technique in which the content presented to the search engine spider is different from that presented to the user’s browser. This is done by delivering content based on the IP address or the User-Agent HTTP header of the user requesting the page. When a user is identified as a search engine spider, a server-side script delivers a different version of the web page, one that contains content not present on the visible page. The purpose of cloaking is to deceive search engines so they display the page when it would not otherwise be displayed.

Broken Links/404 Errors:

From a search engine spider standpoint, when a broken link is found, that equates to a dead end. If the missing page returns a 404 error, the search engine will identify the page as non-existent and catalog the pages linking to it. If the page linking to the 404 error remains on this list for too long or has too many links to 404 errors, in all likelihood this would have a negative effect on the “Quality Score” of that page.

Keyword Stuffing:

Keyword stuffing is considered to be an unethical search engine optimization technique. Keyword stuffing occurs when a web page is loaded with keywords in the meta tags or the content. The repetition of words in meta tags may explain why many search engines no longer use these tags. Keyword stuffing had been used in the past to obtain maximum search engine ranking and visibility for particular phrases. This method is completely outdated and adds no value to rankings today.

Buying Links:

Paid links can land you in a lot of hot water with the search engines, so be smart about how you handle them. The types of link buys that Google has a distaste for are the links that are exchanged directly for cash. Modify your way of thinking just a little and there are a wide array of easy to obtain, high value links out there for you to get. The key to having a low risk profile is to make the link appear indirect.

Hidden Text:

Hiding text from the visitor is done in many different ways. Common techniques include creating text colored to blend with the background, CSS  “Z” positioning that places text “behind” an image — and therefore out of view of the visitor — and CSS absolute positioning that positions text far from the page center. By 2005, many invisible text techniques were easily detected by major search engines. “Noscript” tags are another way to place hidden content within a page. Although this is a valid optimization method for displaying an alternative representation of scripted content, these tags may be abused, since search engines may index content that is invisible to most visitors.

Frequent Server Downtime:

When a website is offline the impact that it has on your SEO can be bigger than you think. If Google accesses your website while your website is down, Google could classify your site as being untrustworthy. The more often your site is offline, the more Google will think your site is not to be trusted, thus Google will position you lower in the listings.

Link Farms:

A link farm is any group of web sites that all link to every other site in the group. Although some link farms can be created by hand, most are created through automated programs and services. A link farm is a form of spamming the index of a search engine. Search engines recommend that webmasters request relevant links to their sites (conduct a link campaign), but avoid participating in link farms. According to Google, a site that participates in a link farm may have its search rankings penalized. Links from related sites carry more weight than those from irrelevant sites.

Excessive URL Parameters:

In truth, search engines don’t wish to crawl websites with too many parameters in the URL. Search engine software engineers have a considerable amount of search data. They recognize URL patterns that are potentially problematic, and content management systems often generate problematic URLs. Additionally, search engines limit the number of characters they’ll crawl in a URL. This is partially due to known problems in URL structures and partially to Web site usability.

Bad Linking Neighborhood:

Bad link neighborhoods, to search engines, are typically identified by spammy on-page ‘SEO‘ techniques and dubious backlink and interlink profiles. They also refer to the dreaded PPC sites: porn, pills and casinos. You do not want to link to these neighborhoods, because who you link to matters. By linking to them, your site can be grouped along with these less than desirable sites, which can in turn lower your rankings.

Optimizing for Too Many Keywords:

Keyword dilution is a very common SEO mistake. Each page of a website should target 1-3 keyword phrases max, and even less if the keyword phrases are extremely competitive. Targeting too many keywords on a page detracts from the overall topical relevance and reduces the importance of your REALLY important keywords.

Michael Schwartz

Michael Schwartz is an Internet marketing strategist at Vertical Measures as well as an accomplished reporter, blogger and editor. He covers the link building beat.

+Michael Schwartz

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Keywords are a gateway to understanding how a market thinks, acts and buys. They’re also the common language for most SEO and PPC teams, and a clear way of connecting revenues with their work in the eyes of upper management. This all makes keywords a natural place to begin discussing – and designing – a link building campaign.

(Note: To thank early adopters during the launch of their new Link Building Toolset, Ontolo is offering a 25% discount that ends today at 9pm PST on 4/27/2010. They’ve let us know that they will never be offering a discount like this again, and that the pricing is good for all future upgrades, price changes, etc.)

Money Keywords vs. Market Defining Keywords

First, a note on the disctintion between money keywords ($KWs) and market defining keywords (MDKWs). Most SEM teams are familiar with $KWs – those are the terms that they bid on and optimize for because prospects use them when looking for solutions to their pains. However, $KWs are not always as useful when analyzing a market for its link building opportunities. This requires market defining keywords, which are the highest-level terms used to describe a market. So, for an online golf retailer, the money keywords would look like [brand name, model number, driver]. The market defining keyword is, simply, golf and possibly golfing.

1) Identify Your MDFK and $KW SERPs Dominators

SERP dominators are the websites that consistently rank well in the SERPs for your $KWs as well as your MDKWs. Though you may think you know your primary search competitors, you’ll be surprised at the true SERPs dominators when you do a comprehensive analysis. Start with reading our guide to SERP dominator analysis here >> We created a worksheet and occurrence counting tool to help out (there’s also source code available for a tool that automates this process). The SERP dominators in your keyword market space are also excellent places to start pulling competitive backlink data, should you choose to develop a link prospect list that way.

2) MDFKs for Industry Link Opportunity Analysis

What link opportunities exist in your market? Your market defining keywords are an excellent place to start gauging opportunity. You can look for blogs: [MDFK blogs], news sites: ["MDFK news"], guest posting opportunities: [MDFK "guest post"], interviewers/ees: [MDFK intitle:interview], niche directories: ["MDFK Directory"], niche forums and community sites: [MDKW community], and industry associations if you’re in the B2B space: [MDKW association]. Search for each of these in Google and compare the number of relevant hits in the top ten. The query with the most relevant hits could be an area for you to query more deeply and begin developing a specific campaign.

3) MDFKs for Competitive Link Analysis

While surveying your industry for opportunities, keep an eye out for your competitors, as well as any of the SERP dominators you previously identified. Are their hostnames appearing in any of your result sets? Are they mentioned in the news sites you find? Are they the subjects of interviews? Track them carefully and you’ll uncover the PR and content-based link building moves of your competition. Most importantly you’ll get some great ideas on what’s working.

4) Connecting Existing Linkable Assets to Keywords

We wrote recently on link building assets, which are pages and resources on your site – and people within your organization – that are the most linkable to your market. This could be a PDF collection, a jobs listing page, coupons, or even your CEO (for interviews). The important thing is going from assets to the keywords that will help you turn up link opportunities. Start with your list of assets and then brainstorm their keywords. Then combine these keywords with your MDKWs and you should start to turn up some places to submit your assets or request that someone check them out for consideration.

5) MDKWs + Link Building Query Operators

MDKWs are crucial when conducting a thorough dig for ALL the link prospects in your keyword space. You conduct this dig by combining your MDKWs with link building queries, designed to root out opportunities based on their "footprints." We recommend the following tools for this:

SEOBook Link Suggest Tool

Link Search Tool by SoloSEO

The Ontolo Link Building Query Generator

6) Getting Your Money Keywords in Anchor Text with Guest Posts

One way to use your money keywords in linkbuiding is when you’ve decided on a guest post campaign, in which you write articles for publication on relevant sites that accept content submissions. In most cases you’re allowed a snippet of description, along with a link or two. Depending on your relationship with the publisher, you may be able to have more control over the anchor text. In some occasions they may allow you to even add links within the body text, especially if there’s a value-add reason for the links to be there.

7) Getting Money Keywords in Anchor Text with Outreach Requests

When conducting outreach you can request that people link to you with particular link text. However, unless you’re paying them, it’s not highly-likely that people will respond to your requests. It doesn’t hurt to ask, though you’re probably better off focusing on building high-trust editorial links to your site and letting your onsite SEO handle the rest!

About the Author:
Garrett French is the co-founder of Ontolo, Inc., creators of the Ontolo Link Building Toolset which uses your target keywords to find and grade link prospects. The Link Building Toolset reduces link prospecting and qualification time, letting you focus on the most valuable part of link building: relationships.

Guest Blogger

Keyword grouping—organizing your keyword research into small groups of tightly related terms—benefits your search marketing efforts at pretty much every level. Some of those benefits are more obvious than others; for example, keyword groups are essential for cost-effective pay-per-click (PPC) marketing, since close-knit ad groups earn higher Quality Scores.

Keyword grouping saves you time

Keyword grouping leads to more natural-sounding copy

Keyword grouping helps you capture long-tail traffic

About The Author: Elisa Gabbert is the Content Development Manager at WordStream Inc., a provider of advanced SEO tools and pay-per-click software for researching, organizing and grouping large numbers of keywords. WordStream also offers a FREE keyword research tool for conducting advanced keyword research and analysis.

Guest Blogger

Are you using Google Suggest to supplement your keyword research? I was talking to one of our clients the other day about keyword research and which keywords we both felt were best for his site and business.  I would love to mention his site here and drop a link but because we are considered our clients "secret weapon" they typically do not want to reveal their search engine marketing secrets to their competitors.

As we were talking he mentioned something about “this keyword shows up in the drop down menu” whereas “this keyword does not”.  I had no idea what he was talking about so I asked him for clarification.  He was referring to “Google Suggest”.  Google suggest is what you see when you start typing a query in to Google.com.  Google is trying to guess at what they think you want to find and it can give you some great insight in to what potential searchers may be using to find your products, service or information. After doing some research I realized this is not exactly a new concept but certainly one worth visiting.

My clients rationale was when someone starts typing his keyword in to Google what comes up first in the suggest list MUST be a “good” keyword.  Is his rationale right? I think it’s pretty safe to say it is.

After our conversation I went to Google.com and started typing in “link building service” which is one of our primary keywords here at Vertical Measures. By time I got to “link bu” I immediately spotted a new keyword we had not been focusing on.  See illustration below:

Here is Google’s explanation of Google suggest: "As you type, Google Suggest communicates with Google and comes back with the suggestions we show. If you’re signed in to your Google Account and have Web History enabled, suggestions are drawn from searches you’ve done, searches done by users all over the world, sites in our search index, and ads in our advertising network. If you’re not signed in to your Google Account, no history-based suggestions are displayed. Data you send to Google is protected by Google’s privacy policy".

The fine folks over at SEOmoz had a post on their YOUmoz blog about this same concept recently if you want to read their take.  Tony Soric also did a nice piece on it last year you can read here as well.

Here are some quick tips if you want to use Google Suggest for supplementing your keyword research:

1. Open notepad or your favorite text editor
2. Be sure to sign out of your Google account
3. Type one letter at a time and watch carefully! As you type each keystroke can reveal some valuable keywords.
4. The words that show up first in the suggestions with the fewest keystrokes are the most competitive which means they may not necessarily be the best.
5. Watch carefully as some words disappear as you type
6. As you see possible keywords add them to the list in notepad each on a new line
7. Repeat with other variations of your keywords
8. When done use the free Google adwords keyword research tool and check the search volume of the keywords.  The reason I had you create the list in notepad and one per line is because now you can just copy and paste the whole list in at once.  Be sure to click the link that says “filter my results” and check the box that says “Don’t show ideas for new keywords. I only want to see data about the keywords I entered.” Since these keywords did show in Google suggest it’s safe to assume they have search volume but this tool will allow you to quickly see which have the highest. 
9. Sort by either global or local search volume and export
10. Because you may have chosen keywords that are trending now but may not have solid long term search interest you may want to consider checking them in Google Insights before you bet the whole farm on them.

We would love to hear more about your experiences using Google Suggest for keyword research or any other keyword research “secret weapons” you would care to share with us and our visitors below in the comments.

Vertical Measures

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