Free Keyword Research Tools

If you search my site for the terms “keywords” or “search engines” you’ll quickly find a common theme. When it comes to keywords, guessing or surmising isn’t good enough. You need to do the research and due diligence to target your market and what they are using to find your products/services/business, etc. Keywords (more accurately keyword phrases) research should be part of your site development from the start and is an ongoing, never ending effort as you grow your site and add new content.

Many online business create a list of terms off the top of their head. The terms they “think” site users will use to find their Web site. What would surprise these very same site owners is that their target market may be using an entirely different set of keywords when searching for their products or services. You then add tags, typos and misspellings into the mix and one would be surprised at the number of keyword phrases that are actually being used in searches that you never even considered in your SEO efforts.

If you are not actively thinking about SEO, how can you expect to get found? How can you begin to add content to your site that will proactively target your market? You can’t and you won’t. Getting found in search engines doesn’t happen by osmosis and every site owner needs to do this due diligence in order to ensure findability. Ignoring or disregarding SEO efforts is simply lost opportunity.

Today I found a post that does a very nice and concise summary listing of the free keyword research tools out there that you can use to help determine what keywords/phrases to use for your program. Why not check out Free Keyword Research Tools – The Ultimate Guide and put these tools to work in your SEO efforts?

Keywords Smewords

Don’t get me wrong — keywords are at the heart of any Web site’s marketing strategy. And, keywords (actually keyword phrases) should be discussed during the development process — not afterward. Keywords are fundamental to your SEO (search engine optimization) efforts but only when researched and integrated properly.

Now with that said, surprisingly I find that many are under an incorrect perception when it comes to how keywords come into play and their rankings. Many are still surmise that one-word keywords (car, boat, property, homes) are what they need to “add to their site.” Specifically to the over-rated “Meta Keyword tag” which the search engines minimally rely on (if at all) in lieu of actual content on your site. And that all they need to do is “add them to their site” and they’ll be found on top on Google.

The reality is that one-word keywords are very difficult to get ranked for. So, that’s why you need to investigate the most relevant 2-3 word keywords that you want to concentrate on specific to you. For example, if you are a Realtor in Memphis, TN, instead of “homes for sale”, you would instead concentrate on phrases that are more descriptive of what you do — specifically. Such as: memphis tenessee homes for sale, memphis real estate, memphis tennessee realtors.

Do a search for “homes for sale” on Google and you’ll get 80,800,000 returns and the sponsored ads are filled to the brim with folks all bidding to get found. One realistically should not plan on pulling in the top 10 for such a generic phrase. However if you get more focused and search for “memphis tenessee homes for sale” Google pulls 406,000 returns — big difference!

Yes, there may be searchers that look for “homes for sale” that do not know to narrow their search geographically to get the best results. But we can’t compensate for that as successfully as we can by concentrating on the most used phrases searchers use to find what you do — specifically. Then we have to carefully and diligently ensure those important researched phrases are represented properly throughout your Web site’s content.

How do you determine what keyword phrases to concentrate on? Check out my article on Bullseye Marketing to get started. The article includes tips, my worksheet and services to help you determine what terms searchers are actually using to find folks like you.

Then once you gather your list, look how you can add those phrases to new and established content. Only concentrate on one or two phrases for each page and you’ll find over time that your rankings for what searchers are actually looking for — for what you do specifically — will improve. And, you might be surprised to find that those who find you based on more focused and less targeted phrases actually turn out to be more qualified leads.

Working on your keywords should be viewed as a long term, consistent effort to realize any tangible goals. Set an appointment with yourself one every month to go over all the data available to you, including your Web site statistics. Then, add new content accordingly as you discover additional phrases to use to your advantage.

You know what they say — knowledge is power; but only if you use it — and that applies ten fold to SEO.

With Search Engines Less is More!

I have discussions on the topic of keyword phrases every day. And, if I have just one dollar for every time I had to make a strong point that with search engine rankings less is more — yours truly would be on an island with a satellite dish posting to my various Blogs!

Relevancy is defined as “the relation of something to the matter at hand.” Now, how relevant you are is what those little search engine algorithms will decide based on the content, code and other factors related to your site and on a page by page basis. So let’s make it easy for them! Instead of trying to cram the top 10, 20 or 30 things you are about into every page — think less is more!

Using Realtors and Real Estate Web sites which I have worked on for over a decade, it is not uncommon for real estate clients to want to stuff every possible city and/or county they cover into their sites when we discuss SEO and SEO strategies. I’ve always advised the less is more approach and to only concentrate on your top 3 phrases for your top page and then we can cover city, by city and county by county on internal pages that are only about that one city or county. Less is more! Let your pages be about only one thing so they can be most relevant for that one thing.

If you insist on the stuffing approach, any real estate web site that is all about one city, or one county will always rank higher than the site about 10, 20 or 30 cities. It is common sense that other sites will be more relevant for that one city or county being searched for than another site trying to cover all the bases with 10, 20 or 30 city listed on every page. More dilutes your relevancy. Get it?

Imagine my delight to read a post today about Forgotten Fundamentals of SEO – One Page Per Keyword. This article mirrors the recommendations I’ve provided before their were even the acronyms SEO or SEM being tossed around! (See my related articles noted below this post for more on this very important topic.)

Less is more makes sense. The more you are about, the less you are about any one thing! Keep that in mind when creating your list of targeted phrases. You can also check out my Bullseye Marketing article and free worksheet to get you off to a running start!