ch words you want to rank well for. This is called performing a keyword analysis. Keyword analysis involves a bit of research and a good knowledge of your business and the benefits you offer your customers. There are several websites specifically designed to make keyword analysis easier. Two examples are Overtures inventory tool which you can find at httpinventory.overture.comdsearchinventorysuggestion. This tool rankmaniac 2012 is free and very easy to use and understand but it only tells you how many searches have been conducted in the previous month for your keyword and similar keywords. WordTracker which you can find at httpwww.wordtracker.com. WordTracker is a rankmaniac 2012 much more powerful tool but you have to pay to use it you can subscribe for a day for around 10. WordTracker helps you find the most appropriate keyword for your site by telling you what people are really searching for. Heres how it works You type in a word which summarizes what you do and it tells you how many times that word has been searched for in the last month. It also tells you how many other websites are using that word as a keyword i.e. targeting the same customers you are. Based on this information it rates the word. The best keywords are the ones that a lot of people are searching for but which few websites are targeting. WordTracker even suggests and rates alternative related words. TIP When youre using WordTracker bear in mind that its just talking about numbers and numbers rankmaniac 2012 dont always tell the whole story. So dont just jump rankmaniac 2012 in and use the best rated keywords you need to rankmaniac 2012 consider your own situation. It may be the case that youre forced to select a keyword phrase which is not rated particularly highly. There are two situations in which this might happen i. Youre in a niche market with relatively few customers searching for the keyword. In this situation youll probably find it relatively easy to reach the top rankmaniac 2012 of the rankings but you wont generate a huge volume of traffic when you get there. SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 15 Step 3 Choose your keywords 15 ii. A lot of your competitors are targeting your keyword its hotly contested but its the only one you can use. If you target it youll just have to work a bit harder on your backlinks rankmaniac 2012 in order to rank highly. When theres a lot of competition for a keyword rankmaniac 2012 its likely that the traffic payoff is good once you reach top. Single Keyword v Keyword Phrases Generally speaking youre better off targeting phrases not single words. For most businesses theres simply too much competition for single keywords. For instance if youre in computer sales your normally wouldnt choose computers as your keyword. Go rankmaniac 2012 to Google and search for computers and youll see why There are nearly 200 million results and the top rankings are dominated by the multinationals at the time of writing Apple and Dell. Whats more research shows that customers are becoming more searchsavvy theyre searching for more and more specific strings. Theyre learning that by being more specific they find what theyre looking for much faster. So rankmaniac 2012 instead of targeting computers try to think of a more specific keyword phrase. Ask yourself whats unique about your business Perhaps you sell cheap second hand rankmaniac 2012 computers Then why not use cheap second hand computers as your keyword phrase This way youll not only stand a chance in the rankings youll also display in much more targeted searches. In other words a higher percentage of your sites visitors will be people looking to buy cheap second hand computers as opposed to people after brand new computers people researching the history of the rankmaniac 2012 computer and people trying to figure out how they can use a computer to bath their dog. Develop a keyword strategy Also think about developing a keyword strategy. If you start out targeting a very specific keyword phrase as described above make sure it includes the more generic hotly contested single keyword. For example youll notice that the keyword phrase rankmaniac 2012 above rankmaniac 2012 cheap second hand computers includes the single keyword computers. This way youre really targeting both at once. As your sites importance or PageRank and search engine presence increases youll start to rank for the single word as well. In time youll start ranking well for computers even though youre only actively targeting cheap second hand computers. TIP Google PageRank PR is how Google scores a rankmaniac 2012 websites importance. It gives all sites a mark out of 10. By downloading the Google Toolbar from httptoolbar.google.com you can view the PR of any site you visit. Chapter Summary Find out what words your customers are searching for and make them your keywords. SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 16 Step 3 Choose your
keywords 16 Use keyword phrases instead of single keywords but develop a long term keyword strategy which will increase your ranking for hotly contested single keywords even as you target your specific keyword phrase. rankmaniac 2012 SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 17 Step 4 Optimize Your Website for Search Engines 17 Step 4 Optimize Your Website for Search Engines Once youve figured out what words your customers are using at the search engines you need to use those words frequently on your site and in the right places both rankmaniac 2012 within your copy and within your HTML code HTML meta tags. This is a big part rankmaniac 2012 of what is known as optimizing your website for rankmaniac 2012 search engines. There are also some site structure or information architecture and web design considerations discussed below. TIP When you optimize
your website for a particular word youre essentially telling the search engines to include you in the results when people search for rankmaniac 2012 that word. How high up the rankings you appear depends largely on the number of links back to your site there are. For more information on generating backlinks see rankmaniac 2012 Step 5 Generate links back to your site on p.27. Optimizing your web copy The trick to optimizing your copy is using the most important keywords frequently and in the right places
without compromising the readability of your copy. But how do you define frequently And rankmaniac 2012 what are the right places What if you want to target a few different keywords And for that matter what should the wordcount of my pages be Below are a few tips which will help you out. What should the wordcount of my pages be Youll hear a lot about the importance of a lot of content. While I definitely agree that content is king there rankmaniac 2012 is no need to write volumes. You can reach the top of the search engines with a page wordcount of between 1001000. Below 100 is probably too little for the search engines. Above 1000 is definitely too much for your visitors. Certainly dont be intimidated into writing pages and pages of copy for your home page or any other page where short succinct copy is required. SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 18 Step 4 Optimize Your Website for Search Engines 18 How many times should I use a keyword You dont want to fill every page up rankmaniac 2012 with every keyword youre targeting. This simply dilutes your sites relevance and reduces readability. Search engines and visitors alike will object the rankmaniac 2012 search engines will see your site as spam and visitors to your site will find it hard to read if not meaningless. A good rule of thumb is to aim rankmaniac 2012 for a sitewide average keyword density of around 2 measured using LiveKeywordAnalysis httpwww.livekeywordanalysis.com. Density is a measure of frequency in relation to the total wordcount of the page. So if your page has 200 words and your keyword phrase appears 10 times its density is 5. When you actually try to do this youll see that 2 isnt easy to achieve. The easiest way to do it is to be specific. As you write every sentence ask yourself Could I be more specific For example dont just say our computers or our products ask yourself if you can get away with saying our cheap second hand computers. Similarly dont say things like with our help instead say with the help of our cheap second hand computers. Once you get the hang of it youll find there are more than enough rankmaniac 2012 rankmaniac 2012 opportunities to replace a generic term with your keyword phrase. Obviously theres a bit of an art to it. Sometimes it ends up just sounding like youre repeating your keyword phrase over and over again. If this happens you may just need to restructure the sentence or paragraph. Remember your site reflects the quality of your product or service. If your site is hard to read people will infer a lot about your offering Readability is allimportant to visitors. And after all its the visitors who buy your
product or service not the search engines. NOTE You dont need to be paranoid about density. You can have some pages which have a high density and some which have a low density. What if I want to target more than one keyword Its rankmaniac 2012 best to only target one keyword per page. If you try to target more your keywords will be competing against each other diluting each others impact. If you need to target more than one keyword simply create a page for each. For example divide your Second Hand Computers site into separate pages for Macs and PCs and then segment again into Notebooks Desktops etc. This way youll be able to incorporate very specific keyword phrases into your copy e.g. For your Macs page focus on cheap second hand macs. For the PCs page focus on cheap second hand pcs etc. See Link paths on p.22 rankmaniac 2012 for information on using text links between these pages. Where should I use my keywords When assessing what your website is about search engines pay close attention to the words you use in your text links and headings. So make sure your links and headings are