Most people approach SEO with a preconception – or prejudice – about what their best keywords are. They are normally either wholly or partly wrong. This is good for you because you are armed with this book. There are five key mistakes to avoid when selecting keywords:
1. Many of my customers first approach me with the sole objective of ranking number one on Google for the name of their business. Please don’t misunderstand me, I am not saying that this isn’t important. If someone you met at a party or in the street could remember your business name and wanted to use Google to find your site, you should certainly ensure that you appear in the top five. However, your business name is very easy to optimize for and only likely ever to yield traffic from people you have already met or who have heard of your business through a word-of-mouth referral. The real power of a search engine is its ability to deliver quality leads from people who have never heard of your business before. As such, ranking number one for your business name, while it’s an important foundation, is really only of secondary importance in the race to achieve good rankings on the web.
2. Many site owners (particularly in the business-to-business sector) make the mistake of wanting to rank well for very esoteric and supply-side terminology. For example, one client of mine was very happy to be in the top 10 on Google for “specimen trees and shrubs,” because that was the supply-side terminology for his main business (importing wholesale trees and shrubs). However, fewer than 10 people a month worldwide search using that phrase. My client would have been much better off optimizing for “wholesale plants,” which attracts a much more significant volume of searches. In short, his excellent search engine position was useless to him, as it never resulted in any traffic.
3. Many webmasters only want to rank well for single words (rather than chains of words). You may be surprised to hear that (based on research by OneStat.com) 33% of all searches on search engines are for two-word combinations, 26% for three words, and 21% for four or more words. Just 20% of people search on single words. Why does that surprise you, though? Isn’t that what you do when you’re searching? Even if you start with one word, the results you get are generally not specific enough (so you try adding further words to refine your search). It is therefore vital that keyword analysis is firmly based on objective facts about what people actually search on rather than your own subjective guess about what they use.
4. People tend to copy their competitors when choosing the words to use, without researching in detail what people actually search for and how many competing sites already carry these terms. Good SEO is all about finding phrases that pay that are relatively popular with searchers but relatively underused by your competitors.
5. Many webmasters overuse certain keywords on their site (so-called keyword stuffing) and underuse related keywords. Human readers find such pages irritating and Google’s spam filters look for these unnatural patterns and penalize them! Instead, it is much better to make liberal use of synonyms and other words related to your main terms. This process (often involving a thesaurus) is what information professionals call ontological analysis.
The best way to avoid these and other common mistakes is to follow the following maxims:
" Think like your customer and use their language, not yours.
" Put aside your preconceptions of what you wanted to rank for.
" Put aside subjectivity and focus on the facts.
" Consider popularity, competitiveness, and ontology.
In short, you need to make a scientific study of the keywords and keyphrases your customers and competitors actually use, and balance this against what your competitors are doing. I use a three-step approach to keyword analysis (known affectionately as D–A–D): discovery, attractiveness, and deployment.
Keyword discovery, the first step, is the process of finding all the keywords and keyphrases that are most relevant to your website and business proposition.
1. Many of my customers first approach me with the sole objective of ranking number one on Google for the name of their business. Please don’t misunderstand me, I am not saying that this isn’t important. If someone you met at a party or in the street could remember your business name and wanted to use Google to find your site, you should certainly ensure that you appear in the top five. However, your business name is very easy to optimize for and only likely ever to yield traffic from people you have already met or who have heard of your business through a word-of-mouth referral. The real power of a search engine is its ability to deliver quality leads from people who have never heard of your business before. As such, ranking number one for your business name, while it’s an important foundation, is really only of secondary importance in the race to achieve good rankings on the web.
2. Many site owners (particularly in the business-to-business sector) make the mistake of wanting to rank well for very esoteric and supply-side terminology. For example, one client of mine was very happy to be in the top 10 on Google for “specimen trees and shrubs,” because that was the supply-side terminology for his main business (importing wholesale trees and shrubs). However, fewer than 10 people a month worldwide search using that phrase. My client would have been much better off optimizing for “wholesale plants,” which attracts a much more significant volume of searches. In short, his excellent search engine position was useless to him, as it never resulted in any traffic.
3. Many webmasters only want to rank well for single words (rather than chains of words). You may be surprised to hear that (based on research by OneStat.com) 33% of all searches on search engines are for two-word combinations, 26% for three words, and 21% for four or more words. Just 20% of people search on single words. Why does that surprise you, though? Isn’t that what you do when you’re searching? Even if you start with one word, the results you get are generally not specific enough (so you try adding further words to refine your search). It is therefore vital that keyword analysis is firmly based on objective facts about what people actually search on rather than your own subjective guess about what they use.
4. People tend to copy their competitors when choosing the words to use, without researching in detail what people actually search for and how many competing sites already carry these terms. Good SEO is all about finding phrases that pay that are relatively popular with searchers but relatively underused by your competitors.
5. Many webmasters overuse certain keywords on their site (so-called keyword stuffing) and underuse related keywords. Human readers find such pages irritating and Google’s spam filters look for these unnatural patterns and penalize them! Instead, it is much better to make liberal use of synonyms and other words related to your main terms. This process (often involving a thesaurus) is what information professionals call ontological analysis.
The best way to avoid these and other common mistakes is to follow the following maxims:
" Think like your customer and use their language, not yours.
" Put aside your preconceptions of what you wanted to rank for.
" Put aside subjectivity and focus on the facts.
" Consider popularity, competitiveness, and ontology.
In short, you need to make a scientific study of the keywords and keyphrases your customers and competitors actually use, and balance this against what your competitors are doing. I use a three-step approach to keyword analysis (known affectionately as D–A–D): discovery, attractiveness, and deployment.
Keyword discovery, the first step, is the process of finding all the keywords and keyphrases that are most relevant to your website and business proposition.
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