SEO Tips: Keyword Distribution

Content writing for SEO is probably one of the most tricky aspects of internal optimisation. There is definitely a skill to adding good copy to a website. The difficulty lies with it having to meet the needs of your target market, it has to read well, it has to portray your business and at the same time it has to make sense to the search engines.

In an ideal world you will have designed your site with your keywords in mind and already have appropriate pages to optimise. Along side your main keywords it has become increasingly important to integrate long-tail keyphrases into your copy (I will expand on long-tail keyphrases at a later date). They tend not to have a high search volume, they are very industry specific, and will usually convert better than the big keywords as they target the buyer at the end of the buying process (the stage when they have researched and know exactly what they want).

Stage two is structuring these throughout your site. Remembering that your content has to be written for your audience but with maximum emphasis on your chosen keyword. Search engines for all they can do they are limited by what you feed them. Below I will outline the best practices for distributing your keywords throughout your site.

1. Heading tags need to be structured chronologically, making the h1 the most important and needs to include your main keyword. Your h2 will be your second most important keyword, and working down the page. Ideally do not try and optimise for more than 3 keywords per page.

2. You should try to include an exact copy of the keyword from the heading within the first paragraph, and at least once more naturally throughout the text.

3. For maximum effect put strong tags around the first reference of your keyword.

4. Integrate variations of your keyword and long-tail keyphrases naturally throughout your copy.

5. If it is possible include them in a list.

6. Finally optimise your page title tag with your main keywords. Google has a limit to the number of characters it will display so bare this in mind.

7. Google has a limit of 70 characters for their page titles, be clever it needs to show the user your site is what they are looking for, at the same time its a prime position for your keywords.

8. Meta description: Again has a limit to the number of characters. You need to grab the attention of anyone reading to ensure they follow it through to your site.

9. Keyword tag thanks to poor SEO practices it does not hold the weight it once did. There is no limit on length, but only include the keywords you are optimising that page for.

10. Make sure that point 7, 8 and 9 is unique throughout every page of your site.

11. Any images throughout your site should be appropriate for you to add a keyword rich description in the alt tag. An alt tag is an alternative description for an image allowing users that are visually impaired to understand the site, so don't abuse them!

Ensure you copy is written in a manor that reflects your business, keep it professional but there is no harm in adding some humor if it is fitting, keep your paragraphs concise and to the point. Finally rope in a few friends and family to read your copy before publishing it, the more critical the better (just as I am about to do now...).

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Third Golden Rule on Keyword Research: Competition

This is the third part of a four-part series on the golden rules on keyword research.

To recap, we learned that relevant keywords and high traffic keywords are important in searching for that ultimate keyword or keyword phrase that holds the key to targeted marketing.

In the first two golden rules, it was just all about the keywords. It is interesting to know, then, that in this third golden rule; you are now looking beyond the keyword and involving a third party in the picture. Yes, nobody but your keyword competition.

Third Golden Rule On Keyword Research Is:

Assessing Your Competition.

Do you know the concept behind the franchised TV program, Survivor?

Pitted together in one island are different people from all sorts of backgrounds trying to outwit, outplay, and outlast one another from the competition, which involves show of strength, perseverance, and endurance.

Initially, everybody is grouped according to tribes and they battle it out against the other groups. But every week, someone gets booted out of the island narrowing down the number of competitors until everybody eventually gets to compete with a fellow tribe member.

Following the Survivor analogy, the third golden rule on keyword research involves trying to Outpage, Outrank, and Outlist your keyword competition in Google and other search engines. Your goal is to hit a page one and be in the top ten spots.

There are two major points to consider in choosing your keyword based on competition: (1) amount of competition and (2) strength of competition.

How Market Samurai Helps

Amount of Competition

Market samurai has an SEO competition checkbox feature that allows you to analyze the keywords that you are competing for. Instead of you scouring the entire gamut of the Internet for these keywords, it does the work for you by gathering data. Results will then show you the total number of webpages that mention the keyword phrase in the same word order as you would write it.

Next is for you to use the competition filter. It sifts the high competition phrases from the more accessible keywords. The recommended competition filter value of 30,000 (meaning that the identified keywords have less than 30,000 competing webpages) is a good start in identifying keywords that have acceptable levels of competition.

Strength of Competition

Market Samurai has the SEO Competition Module. To generate an SEO competition matrix, all you have to do is just click the 'Generate Results' button. After which, Market Samurai conducts a real time analysis of the top ten websites in Google for the keyword phrase that you have chosen to check.

A good thing about this matrix is that it's color-coded to give you a quick view of the keyword competition's strength. You could almost always conclude that if there are more green squares appearing in the matrix, it means that the competition is not strong and the keyword is accessible. If there are more orange squares, it means that there is a higher strength of competition. Red squares mean the strongest level of keyword competition.

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Why Is Keyword Research Important to Organic SEO?

There has been a surge of Internet marketing mavericks and service providers on the web, and the business category, as such, has become one of the busiest of late. However, Organic SEO is not something that every other online marketer can master in a short span of time, and nor is it a strategy that can be used without apt expertise to bring the promised results.

And one of the most basic follies of the amateur search engine optimization agencies is the fact that they often pass up on the easiest of SEO techniques - which become an albatross around their neck down the line. Keyword research is one of the prime examples of the same. A lot of SEO service providers do not pay enough attention to this basic adage - and the results hence fall far from the SERP peaks they had promised to help their clients climb.

This is the basic difference where even the most affordable of SEO packages can get you results, whereas even the most high-priced of SEO packages can be impotent.

Here are some reasons why keyword research is important for an organic SEO campaign to bear fruit -

? Helps Identify Competition - A popular saying in the business circuit is that if you do not know your competition like the back of your hand, you are not going up. Thorough keyword research helps identify direct competition and thus the pros and cons of their organic SEO campaigns as well.

? Get Quality Targeted Traffic Inflow - Quality targeted traffic is only achievable when you have got the right niche consumer base's attention. And this is only possible when you are visible on the SERPs for the right keywords - to the right people!

? Better, Faster Results - SERP rankings as well as other search engine optimization goals can be attained in a faster and much more flawless manner when supplemented by proper keyword research. In fact, with the right keywords targeted, you can actually survey the competition and defeat even the staunchest of rivals - albeit with the cheapest of SEO packages in hand.

? Tracking Progress - If you have not bothered with keyword research at all, tracking the progress of your Organic SEO campaign will not only be difficult, it will be downright impossible. In fact, you need to have the right amount of keyword research put in as an effort to help track progress of the search engine optimization campaign. Failing this, not only will the affordable SEO packages' purpose fall apart, there would not be a yardstick to measure where you stand post-SEO online.

So you see, if you are a professional search engine optimization agency, you will have your hands full with problems if you have not kept your keyword research up-to-date and razor sharp from the initiation of the Organic SEO campaign.

Otherwise, the clients might not find the affordable SEO packages you provide, affordable enough - especially from the perspective of results delivered & ROI!

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