So how important is SEO? SEO is very important. There is a lot to know about SEO, but first we need to understand Keywords. Keywords are the key to SEO. SEO is not all about keywords though,
64% of all traffic goes to the page ranked number one. So why does 36% of the traffic ignore the top ranked page? It's because the number one page is not relevant. Not relevant to the searcher at that time.
Bookmark these three pages:
http://adwords.google.com
http://www.google.ca/trends/
http://www.google.com/
These sites are all free. You may need to sign up for an AdWords account. That is free too. These three sites will be the most important tools in your keyword arsenal.
While in the AdWords area, look for Keyword Tool.
Back in my blog about Niche I had you select a topic; enter that as your search term in the Keyword Tool. In a separate tab or window, do the same for the trends tool as well. Again, in another widow or tab, do the same for Google Search.
The Keywords Tool is going to tell us what keywords we should be using.
The trends tool helps us identify the cyclical nature of a keyword and how it is trending. For instance, if you enter "Pumpkin" you would see that it peaks twice a year, Halloween and Thanksgiving. This is great for keywords that are not so obvious. Using this tool we can see when the market is most interested in our niche.
Google Search tells us how many results are found for our keyword, how those results rank, and descriptions of those sites so that we can also determine their relevance to our niche. We are using Google Search as a tool here so we don't need to click on any results.
I use trends for something a little different than what you might expect. The trends list allows you to comma separate words and it will give a comparative result. So I often test synonyms to figure out which is trending more. For example, if I was writing about photography, and I wanted to know which word should I use "Photo" or "Photograph" the trends page would tell me that I should use "Photo" because searchers that use Google are 400 times more likely to search for "photo" than "photograph".
It does not hurt to be 400 times more relevant.
On the other hand, the Google Keywords Tool is great for getting alternative suggestions for keywords.
The difference between Keywords and Keyword Phrases
Keyword
A Keyword is, well -- a word. It is a single word much like "Photography", "Photo", and "Photograph". Every single word on a web page is a keyword of some type. Even common words are not an exception for example "the","of","at" and the like. Primary keywords are Nouns and Verbs. Secondary keywords are Adjectives and adverbs, the rest are minor keywords. It will depend on the search engine.
Try an experiment, go to Google and search for the word "the". I got 25,270,000,000 results. Do the same for "of", "and" and "at", guess what. I get exactly the same number 25,270,000,000 results. Hmmmm.
Okay, the sites returned for each keyword was different. What was the difference? The first thing that I noticed was there were no ad results! The second was the top sites were very active (high traffic) sites. This gives us a little insight into SEO and Google. When in doubt, Google will rank the sites that already have high traffic as top sites. If you are starting out, there is no way you can compete with that. Not with SEO and keywords anyway.
I should note that on one of my results the number one spot did not even have the keyword the result. The keyword was embedded in the URL and the site had extremely high traffic!
Google will give results based on your location, so your results may differ from mine. By the way, that is also another clue into SEO -- Location.
Keyword Phrase
A keyword phrase is more than one word - grammatically speaking it does not need to be a phrase. Examples include "wedding photography", "digital photography", "photography digital", "Homemade digital pin hole camera complete with shoulder strap and tripod" -- I think you get the idea.
What is important about keyword phrases is that they have two types of results. Each word can match individually or the full phrase can match.
I should point out that the "Match types" in the Keyword Tool are specific to AdWord ads. If you want to figure out a good keyword, first use Broad, then narrow it down with "Phrase". Use the Trends tool to determine the trend of each word.
So now that we know what keywords are, how do we use them? That will be the topic of my next post.
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