Simple SEO Tips #1 - Targeting
This is going to be a regular series of SEO tips that anyone can use to improve the ranking of their website. It's designed for those with a little time - and less money - to dedicate to getting more business through search engines.
#1 - Targeting.
There's no point optimising your site, until you know what you want to optimise it for.
Spend an hour looking at the words people search for, in relation to your business:
1) Use Google's AdWords keyword tool at
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
2) Make sure you've selected "English, United Kingdom" and unchecked the "use synonyms" box. Choose the "descriptive keywords or phrases" option and in the box to the right, put in the obvious keywords for your business - eg for a solicitor, "solicitor", "solicitors", "solicitors in [location]"
3) Download each run into excel - both the related and suggested lists.
4) Look through the list, pick out additional keywords & phrases that strike you as relevant - and put them into the keyword box again, so that you're discovering more words related to your business. Again, download the resulting related & suggested lists of keywords.
Additional Tip: make sure you use location variants of your main keywords; single & plural variants; and action verb variants, eg "buy...", "find...", "sell..."
5) Keep going round until you're happy you've got a comprehensive range of keywords & phrases.
6) Copy & paste all your downloaded words into one excel sheet, and use the "de-dupe" funtion to remove duplicates:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel/HA010346261033.aspx
7) Sort the list by volume, and go down the list deleting the ones you think aren't relevant.
8) Go onto Google, and do a search for the terms you're left with - noting the PageRank of pages in the top 10 (this isn't the be-all of ranking, but it does give you an idea of what you're up against). Compare this with the PageRank of your own website (http://toolbar.google.com/ can show PageRank), and get an idea of where you can compete - for example, if you have a PageRank of 3, it's not worth targeting a search where the top 10 results are all PageRank 5+.
9) You're then left with a list, in order of search volume, of the keywords & phrases you've got the chance of ranking for..
Next time, I'll go through the simple optimisation steps that uses this targeting.
#1 - Targeting.
There's no point optimising your site, until you know what you want to optimise it for.
Spend an hour looking at the words people search for, in relation to your business:
1) Use Google's AdWords keyword tool at
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
2) Make sure you've selected "English, United Kingdom" and unchecked the "use synonyms" box. Choose the "descriptive keywords or phrases" option and in the box to the right, put in the obvious keywords for your business - eg for a solicitor, "solicitor", "solicitors", "solicitors in [location]"
4) Look through the list, pick out additional keywords & phrases that strike you as relevant - and put them into the keyword box again, so that you're discovering more words related to your business. Again, download the resulting related & suggested lists of keywords.
Additional Tip: make sure you use location variants of your main keywords; single & plural variants; and action verb variants, eg "buy...", "find...", "sell..."
5) Keep going round until you're happy you've got a comprehensive range of keywords & phrases.
6) Copy & paste all your downloaded words into one excel sheet, and use the "de-dupe" funtion to remove duplicates:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel/HA010346261033.aspx
7) Sort the list by volume, and go down the list deleting the ones you think aren't relevant.
8) Go onto Google, and do a search for the terms you're left with - noting the PageRank of pages in the top 10 (this isn't the be-all of ranking, but it does give you an idea of what you're up against). Compare this with the PageRank of your own website (http://toolbar.google.com/ can show PageRank), and get an idea of where you can compete - for example, if you have a PageRank of 3, it's not worth targeting a search where the top 10 results are all PageRank 5+.
9) You're then left with a list, in order of search volume, of the keywords & phrases you've got the chance of ranking for..
Next time, I'll go through the simple optimisation steps that uses this targeting.
Labels: search-engine-optimisation, SEO-tips, tutorial
posted by WillsonWebDesign at
10:41
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