Posts Tagged ‘keyword phrases’

Are You Targeting Long Keyword Phrases?

Saturday, May 9th, 2009

One of the things that we’ve been reading about quite a bit in search news is the share of the market that each of the search engines have. Google has jumped up over 70% of the market share while Yahoo!, the No. 2 search engine, is in decline. But even more striking news is that the increase in the number of people who search for long keyword phrases is getting bigger.

This article in WebProNews says it increased 7% over the same period last year for keyword phrases five to eight words. For keyword phrases of eight words or longer, the increase was 18%. And two-word searches are going down.

What this means for small business owners who hope to be found in the search engines is that you’ll have greater opportunities and fewer competition the longer your search phrase. SEO is getting a lot more competitive as more and more businesses go online to compete for business. Isn’t it time to figure out where you fall into the search engine rankings based on the long key phrases you want to target?

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How to Create Your Keyword List to Optimize Your Website

Tuesday, February 10th, 2009

Keywords are a very important part of your web design. If used correctly, keywords can help search engines find your site and drive traffic your way. Small business websites need all the help they can get and with a little bit of know-how, you can position your small business site for maximum exposure.

First, you need to develop your keyword list.

How? One easy way is to brainstorm. What is your site about?
List all the key words that describe your business, its services and products. If someone were looking you up in the phone book or on the web and couldn’t remember your exact name, what might they check under?

Other ways to create your keyword list is by utilizing sites such as Keyword Discovery.com or SEObook.com, or Google AdWords.

Ideally, your Internet search will verify many of the keywords you came up with on your own, but it will also give you some new possiblities. You should have about 50 to choose from, and of those 50, you’ll probably focus on 10 to 20 on a regular basis. By keywords, I also mean keyword phrases, such as: water damage, carpet repair, etc.

It’s important to note that the broader the category, the more competition you’ll have. It’s better to be king of a small kingdom than a peasant of a large kingdom. Don’t go too obscure, but narrow the search to what your company does and what people would look for that would lead them to your site.

Once you have your keyword list, it’s important to optimize each page with one or two keyword phrases.

To optimize a page, the TITLE tag is on of the most important components. The best position for a keyword is at the beginning of your tag. Place only one key phrase at the beginning of the tag. Remember to scatter one or two keyword phrases throughout each of your web pages. You’ll find that it comes pretty natural if you took the time to choose the proper keywords.

See? It’s not as difficult as it sounds. Keywords are the best way to draw traffic to your site and let the search engines know what you’re all about. Take the time to incorporate keywords into your website design and in time, you’ll reap the benefits for your small business needs.

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Posted in Blogging for Small Business, Local Internet Marketing, PPC for Small Business, SEO for Small Business, Tools for Small Business, Uncategorized, link building, search engines, website development | 1 Comment »

SEO Tips: Use More Than One Keyword

Saturday, March 22nd, 2008

Using SEO on your business website just makes good sense. It´s something that you really ought to do if you want any measure of success online. But too many online business people are using just one main keyword, which is a huge mistake.

More than one keyword is an important method of bringing in more traffic. While you can, and probably should, use more than one main keyword, I´m going to talk about keyword phrases or long-tail keywords. For example, if you want to rank for the word “flowers” you probably don´t have much of a chance. It´s just too popular of a keyword and there is a lot of competition. However, you might be able to rank well for something like “how to grow flowers” or “centerpiece with flowers”. Obviously the longer phrases will relate to your business.

Now, when you use a longer phrase like “centerpiece with flowers”, you are still in the ranking for “flowers” since every time you use the phrase it will include that word. This is great SEO and you will also rank higher for the keyword phrase. This is great because although you may not get as many visitors, you will still end up with quite a few.

Choosing your keyword phrases is the trick. Don´t just jump on any old phrase, that´s not a good SEO technique! However, if you do some research, you can find phrases that both have low competition and good search numbers. You want a minimum of 200 people searching each keyword phrase and a maximum of 30,000 competition websites. You can see the competition by typing in the keyword phrase in Google, using parenthesis. The search result number that comes up is the number of websites that are optimized for that keyword phrase. Wordtracker is a good place to find out how many people are searching a particular phrase and also to get ideas for new keyword phrases.

SEO is not only about focusing on one particular keyword, if you can rank for more than one, all the better. However, you will have better luck using keyword phrases that all work with your main keyword. Try it and see if you can´t get up in the search engines!

Caroline
Small Business Mavericks
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