You’ve got to make sure that you’ve organized your content and that you’ve used important keywords in all the right places.
Site structure
You need to be methodical in your approach and understand the purpose of each page.
The home page is the most important page for people doing general research before making a purchase decision. You should optimize your home page for around three important keywords.
If you were selling office furniture, for example, you might optimize your home page for the keywords office furniture.
Search on Google and you’ll see that the top result for the keyword office furniture is www.officefurniture.com
Figure 2.1: A search on Google.com for office furniture gives www.officefurniture.com as the top organic result
Your home page is likely to attract the highest number of inbound links and you will want to pass the power of these links – we call this link juice – along to your most important pages.
You do this by adding keyword rich links to the home page. These internal links to your category pages are designed for people doing more specific research, for example, office and computer desks or home office furniture.
Figure 2.2: Links to some category pages on www.officefurniture.com are highlighted on the left-hand side of the page
Everything on the category page should relate to the single topic you’ve chosen. Every category should be optimized for around three keywords.
The category pages should link to specific product pages, for example, portable computer desks. Again using keyword rich links is important. People seeking product pages will be further along the buying process and will be looking for something specific. A product page should be optimized for two keywords.
Figure 2.3: On each category page, you should find links to product pages
So do a review of your main pages and make sure you’ve got a structure that follows the logic of the generic to the specific – as in office furniture to home office furniture to portable computer desks.
Figure 2.4: Every page on your website should target different keywords
Organize your pages
The next step is to organize your pages, and Wordtracker’s Keywords tool can help.
Our help video, “Managing Lists and Projects” shows you how.
Next, let’s look at optimizing specific pages. Here are the steps to follow:
(i) Decide on the specific subject you’re going to write about and the reason why you’re going to write it (for example, ‘to help people understand’ or ‘to close a sale’.)
(ii) Pick a primary and a secondary keyword phrase around which you’ll optimize your content. For the home page and for category pages, you can add a third phrase.
(iii) Write the title tag to include at least your primary keyword phrase. Also include your second and third phrases if possible. However, limit the title to around 70 characters so you might just have to use two out of your three chosen phrases. When a potential customer visits a page, they may read the title tag, as it will appear in their browser window.
As an example, the title tag for www.officefurniture.com is “Office Furniture and Office Chairs - OfficeFurniture.com.”
Figure 2.5: Your title tag will appear in your users’ browser window
(iv) Write the description meta tag including all three of the keyword phrases. This should be meaningful and written in good English with a limit of around 200 characters. The description can often double as the summary or first paragraph of your copy. But, be aware that search engines may use your meta tag description on their results pages, so make sure the text includes keywords AND sells your services. You may want to include a ‘call to action’ to encourage potential customers to visit your site.
At the time of writing the meta tag for www.officefurniture.com is “Office Furniture, office chairs, desks and cabinets with free delivery. Browse our huge selection at OfficeFurniture.com.”
Figure 2.6: Your meta tag text will appear in Google’s search results
(v) Now work out the structure of your copy, and write keyword rich subheadings that help you organize your material.
(vi) Now write the copy itself. Don’t worry about keyword density – if you’ve followed these steps your page will be well optimized. It is much better at this stage to write persuasively for people, not search engines.
For more information about how to optimize a page, we recommend:
Optimizing your existing content is the first step in getting a real business return from your investment in keyword research. In truth, though, SEO is a never-ending process.
SEO recap
As we’ve outlined, SEO starts with:
• Keyword research, then
• you should plan your site structure and site navigation,
• plan, create and optimize site content,
• run link building campaigns to generate inbound links to your site, and finally
• monitor progress and generate ideas for more keyword research.
• you should plan your site structure and site navigation,
• plan, create and optimize site content,
• run link building campaigns to generate inbound links to your site, and finally
• monitor progress and generate ideas for more keyword research.
Figure 2.7: The SEO process
Now that you know how keyword research fits into the SEO process, we’ll look at more uses of keyword research that can give you a real competitive advantage.
Post from: wordtracker.com