Posts Tagged ‘long tail keywords’

Long Tail Keywords Turn into $24M Business

Thursday, August 4th, 2011

Long Tail Keyword $24M Business

I am a huge proponent of focusing on long tail keywords and recommend finding ways to incorporate them into all the content you create. When conducting keyword research, it is so tempting to jot down and go after those phrases with the highest search volume. After all, who wouldn’t want to be #1 for “car insurance” when, according to Google, it gets 6,000,000 searches per month? (more…)

Arnie Kuenn

Arnie Kuenn is the president of Vertical Measures and author of Accelerate! Content Development & Marketing to Grow Your Business Online. Vertical Measures provides search, social and content marketing services, designed to help businesses improve their online presence and obtain more traffic and conversions.
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Posted in Keyword Research | 7 Comments »

Three Ways Keyword Grouping Improves Your Copywriting

Thursday, April 8th, 2010

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.

It’s less obvious, but keyword grouping is also beneficial for organic search engine optimization (SEO)—it can even improve your copywriting! Here are three ways that grouping your keywords can boost the quality of your Web copy and your writing process.

Keyword grouping saves you time

It just doesn’t make sense to write a dedicated, full page of copy for every individual keyword. When they’re working from an ungrouped keyword list, that’s what writers tend to do (or attempt).
 
It’s much more efficient to write a page of copy (be it an article, blog post or other type of landing page) targeted to a group of related keywords. For example, imagine trying to write a separate page targeting each of these keyword searches:
 
Dolce & Gabbana Light Blue review
Light Blue perfume review
Light Blue reviews and ratings
reviews of Dolce & Gabbana Light Blue
 
These are essentially all variations on the same keyword (and there could be dozens more). The best approach to these keywords from a copywriting perspective is a single piece of content that incorporates all four phrases—for example, a blog post that aggregates links to online reviews.
 
The main keyword should be the one with the most traffic volume, while still being relevant. (In this case, probably "Light Blue review," not "Light Blue" or "review" alone.) Use this keyword in as many key fields as possible, such as the title, URL and meta description. Include less popular variants in the body of the text, in subheads and so on.
 
Writing one page instead of four not only saves time, it prevents you from creating pages with duplicate, or largely overlapping, content that will compete with each other in the SERPs.

Keyword grouping leads to more natural-sounding copy

An added benefit of this approach—focusing on a group of related keywords rather than one at a time—is that your copy sounds more natural. We’ve all read an "article" on the Web that sounds like a robot talking, mechanically repeating the same three- or four-word phrase over and over. This is a turn-off to readers and doesn’t really please search engines either, as overdoing it can look like keyword stuffing.
 
When you have a short list of related keywords handy, you can vary the key phrase throughout the copy. This is probably what you’d do if you weren’t thinking about SEO, but rather aiming for style and clarity. You’ll end up with readable copy that makes sense to both humans and spiders.

Keyword grouping helps you capture long-tail traffic

When you’re targeting single keywords, there’s a tendency to focus on the most popular, high-volume terms (generally head and mid-tail terms). And that’s important, but you’re missing out on a ton of traffic if you don’t target long-tail keywords as well.
 
When you organize your keywords into semantically related clusters, you naturally end up with a mix of head, mid- and long-tail terms in each topical segment. By writing content for keyword groups rather than individual keywords, long-tail keywords are less likely to get lost in the shuffle or pushed to the bottom of your list. Using the strategy outlined above, you can write your piece in such a way that you rank for the primary keyword and capture traffic for a number of lower-volume long-tail search queries as well.
 
In short, better keyword organization can make you more productive while improving the quality of your output—and these are far from the only benefits you’ll see from adopting keyword grouping practices.
 
elisa gabbertAbout 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.

 

 

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Posted in Search Engine Optimization | 3 Comments »

The Fastest-Easiest-Cheapest Keyword Research Tool

Friday, March 26th, 2010

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:

google-suggest

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.

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Don’t be Afraid of Spiders: In Fact You Should Lure Them In

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

890284_lan_spiderThere are spiders around our homes and all over the Web, or, shall we say, the Internet. But the creepy crawlers lurking under our kitchen sink are very different creatures from those who traverse through and index websites. The biological specimens are fond of old, dirty clutter that they can hide behind and wait for their victims. The mechanical arachnids seek out fresh new territory that they can explore; they tire easily of the same old prey and will move along quickly when they are hungry for something relevant. These are the spiders you want to host, and you should invite them over frequently.  

It’s getting to be that time of year when we can actually see spring just around the corner; which means it’s also time for spring cleaning. So all the stuff that’s been accumulating around the house will be sorted and some of it will be thrown away; the rest will be carefully stored. Then we will dust, wash, scrub and clean everything until it shines. This is also an excellent process to do to your website. How long has it been since you’ve taken a careful look at all of your pages (not just your home page)? Has your content been the same for a while? Is there really anything on your site that’s interesting and worth talking about? Well, just follow along for a couple of ways to get your site all cleaned up so those search engine spiders will be crawling all over it, and at the same time keep your users happy. 
 
Keyword Research
 
Do you know what words or phrases searchers are typing in the search engines to find the pages on your site? If you don’t, you need to find out, now. And even if you do, it’s always wise to make sure none of your keywords changed. There are various tools available to perform keyword research, such as Wordtracker and Google Adwords. Through these tools you can discover the keywords that your pages should be optimized for. 
 
There is a current trend toward keyword phrases instead of single words. For example: “long sleeved striped shirt” instead of “shirt”. Like catnip for a cat, search engine spiders are attracted to plain text as this is what they can read and understand. Spiders don’t like to be confused, so you can help them out by making sure that your targeted keyword phrase(s) are included in the URL (if possible), page title tag, page heading (h1, h2, h3) tags and page content. When these spiders understand what your page is about, they feel content and welcomed, and will want to visit often. 
 
Link Worthy Content
 
The old Bonnie Raitt song, “Something To Talk About”, could be considered the theme song of the Internet. This is what all website owners hope for, to have link worthy content that users will want to share with others; hopefully by placing a link that goes back to your site. For search engine spiders, links are like the transporter on the U.S.S. Enterprise. The spiders find a link and are teleported to new territory. The more transporters that the crawlers find that have your coordinates, the better. Links to internal pages of your site work in the same way, leading the spiders to the other pages of your site. Make sure to include a few of these internal links in your content on each page.
 
You’ve got your list of keywords or phrases that you’ve researched, right? Now put them to good use. When creating the content for your pages, be sure to include your targeted keyword(s) or phrase(s) in the first paragraph, last paragraph and several times within the text on the page. Keep in mind that every page on your site is a potential “home page” for a searcher. Not every user starts out on your home page then clicks through to the page they’re looking for. Make sure each landing page welcomes users with great content that makes it clear where they are and what they’ve found. 
 
In regards to the content itself, think about what your site offers that is unique, unusual, weird or special and accentuate it. Here are a few content ideas you can use to get a buzz going:
 
·         Top 10 Lists
·         User tips for your products or services
·         Humor related to your industry
·         Case Studies
·         Video
·         Press Releases
·         Contests or Giveaways
·         Research Reports
·         Survey Results
·         Free Tools
·         How-to’s
·         Charts or Graphs
·         A Blog (perfect for new content on a regular basis)
 

Websites need to be in a constant state of evolution. You should check the relevancy of your keywords and freshen up your pages often. While always striving to be spider bait, the ultimate goal for a website is to provide a great user experience. Hopefully you are inspired to begin your website spring cleaning project today.

 

Ardala Evans

Ardala is a Project Manager working with the client Services Team at Vertical Measures. She supervises the completion of the monthly tasks for the clients. She also works directly with clients to provide reporting on their projects and ranking reviews.

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