More SEO Part II: Keywords

by John R. SedivycloseAuthor: John R. Sedivy Name: John R. Sedivy
Email: john@capecodbranding.com
Site: http://www.capecodbranding.com
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Continuing the SEO series I will address the importance of keywords, our process for selecting keywords, and an example analysis of the CCBbuzz keywords used for this article. The material for this series is based upon Chapter 2 of “Search Engine Optimization For Dummies.” Refer to my article “More SEO Part I: Indexing” for an overview of the important concept of having your website indexed by the websites and directories.

Keyword Selection Process
Prior to discovering this process I had more or less just picked keywords out of nowhere. I had heard some advice as to not use “cutesy” and “clever” types of keywords, but to be as descriptive as possible, which I tried to follow. However, my process was not based on any hard data. The following is actually a cool way to take the guesswork out of selecting keywords for your blog, or even individual articles:

1. Visit the Google AdWords Keyword Tool website.
2. Enter the “one keyword or phrase per line” as prompted and verify the “Use synonyms” box is checked.  Enter the security word, and click “Get keyword ideas” all as shown below in Figure 1:

Figure 1. Google AdWords Keyword Tool

3. View the keyword results as shown below in Figure 2:

Figure 2. Keyword Results

For this example I had entered the word “keyword” which I planned to use for this article. Many results were provided, actually many more which I have displayed, for the sake of saving space for this article I condensed the list. For this discussion I have highlighted the keywords of interest.

There are two immediate benefits that one may derive from this tool. First, it provides you with the most searched for term that you may consider using. For our example of “keywords” the results show that “keywords” has 1,000,000 local search volume and “keyword” has 1,500,000 which reinforces my choice. If I did not guess right on the first attempt, this is where the second benefit comes into play. The keyword tool also provides you with similar keywords, should your selected word not have a high enough search volume.

So what exactly is high enough? Not sure really, I believe it is subjective. I strive to use words that have over 1 million in search volume, although this isn’t always possible. My recommendation is that you determine your own desired search volume and stick with it as much as possible. You should always strive for consistency with your blog and/or article content and this should win out even over keyword search volume. Quality over quantity.

Location, Location, Location
In addition to keyword search volume, location is also worth consideration as the location of keywords matters to search engine spiders that crawl your site. Here are five simple tips:

1. Use important keywords near the top of your page
2. Place keywords in your headings – for example headings for this article are the title and the sub-headings
3. Place keywords in bulleted lists
4. Bold & italics keywords
5. Use keywords multiple times whenever possible

One misconception that was debunked by the author of “Search Engine Optimization For Dummies” was that of “click here.” I have seen this used by many blogs and websites and have even done it myself on occasion believing it the right thing to do to increase traffic, however this is not the case. “Click here” may drive more users to click on a given link, however it is not ideal for search engine optimization. The author, Peter Kent, states that you should be descriptive when referencing another article, this assists search engines in indexing and categorizing your material.

Here is an example of what is meant using one of my past articles.

1. Non-optimized approach – Click “here” to read an article on bots and spiders.
2. Optimized approach – To learn more about search engine bots and spiders refer to my article “SEO Part II: Bots, Spiders, & a Big Fat Lie.”

Note that in the second approach that there is more of a description, with the article title actually being written out.

In addition to using these simple tips, I recommend that you do a keyword search on all the keywords that you plan on using. I have noticed that simple changes have a large impact on the search volume of your keywords. Give it a try!

To Be Continued…
This series will conclude with a discussion on the importance of title and description tags.

Keyword selection and location can have a large impact on search engine traffic!

-John R. Sedivy of Cape Cod Branding

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