The art of keywords
If you're operating a small website, it's a real challenge to compete on search with your big company competitors. Perhaps the most common mistake we see is websites trying to target a really broad search phrase (like cars or flowers). The broader a word or phrase, the more competitive it's likely to be, and a site with a few hundred or thousand visitors every month is never going to get into Google's front page for a highly sought-after keyword. So you need to pick keywords and phrases carefully for success.
Plug in SEO will automatically suggest keyword terms for you to focus on, based on various factors including the search volume, but it needs to be "seeded" with some terms to get started with - think of this as pointing us in the right direction. The better your initial search terms, the better Plug in SEO's recommendations will be, at least to start with.
Get narrow
Don't worry too much about all the people you're missing out on who are searching on those broad, competitive terms. Reports vary, but somewhere between 68% and 90% of users click on the first page of results, so you're much better off focusing on narrow terms where you can rank well, than broad terms that are dominated by big players. You will get far more business by appearing on the first page for a term that 100 people search for today, than to rank on page 10 for a search term that 1,000 (or even 10,000) people search for.
If you really want to dig into the detail, you can use the Google keyword tool to understand how many people are searching for different terms - this is called the Search Volume, and it's one of the factors Plug in SEO takes into account when making recommendations.
Niche capabilities and specialities
Pick keywords that highlight what's special about your particular business. Think carefully about what distinguishes you from your competitors.
- How would you describe your company, or its products or services? Add adjectives (fresh, tasty, cheap, wholesome, quick, reliable, spicy) to the nouns (cheese, haggis, car rental, dog food) to make them more specific.
- Do you have products or services that target specific events in the calendar? Halloween, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Mothers' Day....
- How would your customer or the product end-user describe themselves? Student, senior, girls, boys...
- What might people want to learn about your products? History, making of, recipes, size...
- Are there alternative names for your products? Milk drinks, milkshakes, milk shakes. How about protein drinks too?
So for example, if the thing that's special about you is that you make haggis in a whole range of sizes, you might choose keywords like individual haggis, family haggis, giant haggis. And since it's so good for Halloween, and you know your customers tend to be families celebrating together, why not put specifically target family haggis on Halloween (and variants like Halloween family haggis). You'd probably want to design a specific page focussing just on that particular occasion, so that users find information that's directly relevant to exactly what they searched for.
Location and locality
Google's local business search results help small businesses with a physical location
If you serve a particular locality, pick keywords that include the name(s) of the towns and areas you work in. For example, Florist is much harder to rank well on than Guildford Florist or Surrey Florist. The chances are, if your customers are looking for a convenient local business, they'll enter the city, country or state name as part of their search term.
This isn't strictly about keywords, but while we're thinking about the SEO benefits of having a physical location, like a shop, make sure the address is listed on your website, so that you can be picked up for Google's local business search results. Why not also list your business (with links) on sites like Yelp or Foursquare?
Use your keywords in your content
So you've picked some niche keywords that you'll focus on - now what? Targeting a particular keyword is not as simple as typing it into Plug in SEO, sitting back and waiting for visitors! You do actually have to include those keywords on your website. Unfortunately, content doesn't write itself so you (or someone in your team, or an outside contractor) need to put some effort in.
Review your website and look for places where you could use the more specific keyword term in place of a broad term. Where your copy says We sell our haggis at the Easton Farmers' Market, how about We sell our tasty, organic haggis at the Easton Farmers' Market. But don't sacrifice natural, easy to read text - your site still needs to appeal to human visitors.
Keep building up your content, making sure it includes the keywords you picked. Creating frequent content makes a huge difference. Plug in SEO makes suggestions about writing blog posts or creating content containing your keywords.
For more guidance and resources on picking keywords, check out our Paint By Numbers Guide to Choosing Keywords.
Plug in SEO Beta: Now open, but what are we?
Registration for the Plug in SEO Beta trial started on Monday. Not too many bugs later we're inviting you, our blog readers, in too. We like to think we've built a different kind of SEO tool: one that allows you discover keywords, unearth insights using keyword groups (more on that in our next instalment) and then do something about it.
Discover keywords
Real keyword searches that drive traffic to your site arrive in Plug in SEO Keyword Suggestions fed from our real-time Analytics tracking.
Unearth insights using a keyword groups hierarchy
My Keywords is the heart of Plug in SEO. Here you can easily build a keyword hierarchy containing hundreds (or even thousands if you like) of keywords from Keyword Suggestions or entered by you.
Within My Keywords learn what are your best, worst and flat performing individual keywords and, more insightfully, keyword groups. Check individual and aggregate organic rank, visits and conversions to discern where to focus your SEO efforts.
Do something about it
Once you've determined the keywords and keyword groups to target, Business Blog with Link Suggestions enables you to create internal links in your blog post with a single click. When one of your My Keywords is found in the blog text, Link Suggestions will highlight it along with the relevant URL. One click and the keyword anchor text becomes a link. Simple.
We're just getting started
This is our initial beta but already we've built something a bit special that we hope you'll find useful in improving your search engine optimization.
To get instant access to Keyword Suggestions, My Keywords and Business Blog with Link Suggestions, not to mention real-time Analytics, Twitter monitor, Descriptive URIs, Dashboard, an extensive API plus software updates every week simply create an account for the inaugural Plug in SEO Beta.
We'd appreciate your good and bad feedback which you can easily give us using the feedback tab on every page. Subscribe to the Plug in SEO Blog to catch our upcoming post "Be Surprised with Keyword Groups".
Review: Zemanta blog enrichment extension
Create more compelling posts and boost SEO by tagging and links
- Free Firefox extension, IE plugin plus others
- Enterprise edition available ($1,200/month)
- Directly embed relevant copyright-cleared images
- Related link, tag and blog post suggestions
| Functionality | 4/5 | effortless incorporation of suggestions into post |
| Interface | 5/5 | clear and consistent, comfortably sits alongside blog post creation |
| Value | 5/5 | a free productivity aid, doesn't distract from creating quality content |
| Support | 4/5 | open support forum with reactive company reps |
Producing original and engaging blog content is great for SEO, but it takes precious time. Zemanta finds related images, web and blog links, and tags for your post. With the Zemanta Firefox extension (other browsers are available) incorporating these suggestions in your article requires a single click.
Semantic power
Under the bonnet Zemanta uses its semantic API to determine what your text is about and then finds content falling into the same categorizations. What differentiates them from other semantic engines is that they have a powerful API with a useful, real-world application built on top.
The realisation of a completely semantic web may be some way off, but it's Zemanta that's a great example of companies making practical application of semantic technologies. Promising also is their freely available (up to 10,000 calls/day) API.
Compelling content
Google Image Search doesn't cut the mustard for serious bloggers. Once you've spent an hour and found a fantastic image, more often than not you don't have the copyright to post it. Zemanta on the other hand is purpose built- only showing images available under re-use licenses.
Good blog articles aren't dead-ends. Once the reader has engaged with your post they'll often want to go on and find out some more. With the related blog post and link suggestions you can pepper links throughout with a single click.
Thoughtful execution
The technology that powers Zemanta is powerful, but thankfully none of the wiring is exposed when you just want to write your blog. Flowing alongside your post composition pane are the image, link, post and tag suggestions, updating as you compose.
It does take up a good chunk of screen real estate and the option to collapse would be welcome. That said, the Blogger interface is quite spartan and Zemanta isn't an unwelcome intrusion.
Niggles
Semantic similarity is hard and Zemanta makes sense of texts better than most. However, for short articles (1-2 paragraphs) and product or technology specific pieces it does struggle to generate quality suggestions.
It appears to want a main theme which if it can't find then the relevancy suffers dramatically. A search box is provided, but the opportunity to coach or coax Zemanta in the right direction when it goes haywire would be immensely useful.
For a medium to long blog post the image and blog suggestions are numerous. The number of tags and web suggestions stay around ten. Being able to request more is missing.
Better blog posts
Image by Peter Čuhalev via Flickr
Quite simply Zemanta will help you to create better blog posts. Better for your readers and better for SEO. It does this with minimal intrusion and a good understanding of relevancy.
Interview with Matt Malden, Yield Software: Product Launch
Launch of Yield Software
- Automated search engine marketing
- New release incorporating an interface overhaul
- Promotional pricing starting at $129/month
- Aimed at search marketers spending $2,000-$20,000/month on paid search
When I last reviewed Yield Software the product was in beta and a little rough around the edges. Matt Malden, co-founder and CEO of Yield Software took the time to speak with me about the product prior to their live launch today.
Automated Search Marketing
The arena of search marketing, especially automation, is rife with hype and hyperbole. It's refreshing that Matt doesn't resort to the outlandish figures banded about by other products; instead focussing on the marketing productivity features applied to current manual optimization tasks.
Download the podcast to listen to Yield Software in the words of its founder.
Glimpse the Paid and Natural Search Productivity Features
Take a look inside the colourful product.
Review: Advanced Web Ranking keyword position checker
Cross-platform desktop SERP position tracking and reporting
- Windows, Mac and Linux
- From $99 to $599/year
- Desktop and server editions
- History, analysis and reporting
| Functionality | 4/5 | ably performs position tracking and reporting with a regularly updated database |
| Interface | 4/5 | logically organised with several time-saving features |
| Value | 4/5 | good value and scalable for search engine marketing agencies, but you buy your infrastructure |
| Support | 5/5 | very detailed and extensive documentation, active forum and email support |
While the debate rages on about the wisdom of solely focussing on search engine results page (SERP) positions there is no doubt that some form of tracking is part of a competent SEO toolkit. The difficulty is that Google openly frowns on applications that automate the process by scraping SERPs.
In spite of this there are many options both web and desktop based for performing the task. Advanced Web Ranking is of the desktop breed and has exploited many of the benefits brought by binaries.
Organic Rank Tracking
Advanced Web Ranking allows you to have multiple projects containing the websites and keywords being monitored. You can import your keywords, add them manually and get suggestions from Google Suggest and WordTracker. Strangely it doesn't offer the ability to get known keywords for a site from the search engines API- a feature available in both Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing APIs.
Regional versions of Google along with niche search engine definitions are included- an essential for targeting non-US audiences but absent from many online tools.
A Note on Scraping
Search engines frown on and sometimes openly outlaw the use of results scrapers such as Advanced Web Ranking. Google has specifically named Web Position Gold as a package it doesn't approve of. This puts search engine marketers in a difficult position as tracking the position manually, especially of long tail keywords, is impractical and their APIs frequently don't mirror their web results.
Advanced Web Ranking declares itself as 'search engine friendly' in spite of scraping web results. It does this by limiting the request rate and emulating normal human browsing behaviour (both configurable). This reduces the load on search engines and is difficult to block but does still violate terms of service. That said, their behaviour is being tolerated.
Analysis & Reporting
Neatly tucked in its tabs are different ways to slice and dice the collected data. This enables great flexibility to suit the targets of your SEO efforts without resorting to a spreadsheet in most cases.
Reports can be emailed, exported to PDF or several data formats. For search marketing agencies generation and email can be automated- a smart productivity addition.
Desktop-based versus Web-based
Advanced Web Ranking is one of the best-of-breed desktop SERP tracking applications, leveraging the advantages of running locally as opposed to on the web.
There are no restrictions on the number of URLs you can track (think competitor monitoring), unbounded keywords (very long tail) and engines to watch. This can't be said of any web-based tracker on the market. The reporting and analysis functions are more responsive and flexible.
But, you have to pay for and maintain the hardware and bandwidth. Plus it's a pony that can do some good tricks in the keyword monitoring stable, but it doesn't integrate with paid search channels and other components to maximise the value of the data.
Verdict
When choosing a tool to track keyword positions on search engines the real choice is between a desktop or web application. If you opt for the desktop, then Advanced Web Ranking is a well supported, long established, powerful tool that's also reasonably priced. I haven't found a better, well rounded package.
