Guide to seo

Overture Keyword Selection Tool

Wordtracker Simple Search Utility

In Wordtracker, which provides more detail but has a considerably smaller share of data, terms and phrases are separated by capitalization, plurality and word ordering. In the Overture tool, multiple search phrases are combined. For example, Wordtracker would independently show numbers for "car loans", "Car Loans", "car loan" and "cars Loan", whereas Overture would give a single number that encompasses all of these. The granularity of data can be more useful for analyzing searches that may result in unique results pages (plurals often do and different word orders almost always do), but capitalization is of less consequence as the search engines don't deliver different results based on capitalization.

Remember that Wordtracker and Overture are both useful tools for relative keyword data, but can be highly inaccurate when compared to the actual number of searches performed. In other words, use the tools to select which terms to target, but don't rely on them for predicting the amount of traffic you can achieve. If your goal is estimating traffic numbers, use programs like Google's Adwords and Yahoo! Search Marketing to test the number of impressions a particular term/phrase gets.

Targeting the Right Terms

Targeting the best possible terms is of critical importance. This encompasses more than merely measuring traffic levels and choosing the highest trafficked terms. An intelligent process for keyword selection will measure each of the following:

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  Conversion Rate - the percent of users searching with the term/phrase that convert (click an ad, buy a product, complete a transaction, etc.)
  

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  Predicted Traffic - An estimate of how many users will be searching for the given term/phrase each month
  

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  Value per Customer - An average amount of revenue earned per customer using the term or phrase to search - comparing big-ticket search terms vs. smaller ones.
  

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  Keyword Competition - A rough measurement of the competitive environment and the level of difficulty for the given term/phrase. This is typically measured by metrics that include the number of competitors, the strength of those competitors' links and the financial motivation to be in the sector. SEOmoz's Keyword Difficulty Tool can assist in this process.
  

The Long Tail of Search

The "long tail" is a concept pioneered by Chris Anderson (the editor-in-chief of Wired magazine, who runs the Long Tail blog). From Chris's description:

The theory of the Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of "hits" (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail. As the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less need to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers. In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly-target goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare.

This concept relates exceptionally well to keyword search terms in the major engines. Although the largest traffic numbers are typically for broad terms at the "head" of the keyword curve, great value lies in the thousands of unique, rarely used, niche terms in the "tail." These terms can provide higher conversion rates and more interested and valuable visitors to a site, as these specific terms can relate to exactly the topics, products and services your site provides.

For example:

Sample Keyword Research Chart

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  KW Difficulty - The score from SEOmoz's tool
  

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  Top 3 OV Bids - The bid amount from the top 3 listings in Yahoo!'s PPC results
  

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  Overture Monthly Predicted Traffic - The amount of traffic estimated via Overture for the previous month's data
  

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  Wordtracker Monthly Predicted Traffic - The amount of traffic estimated via Wordtracker (note that you must add up all terms in their database that match and multiply by the number of days in the month - the "exact/precise search" function can help make this easier)
  

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  Relevance Score - The % of searchers using this term/phrase that you feel are likely to be interested in your site's products/services/offerings. Although this is a subjective number, you can use conversion rates or click-through rates from previous campaigns to more accurately estimate this in the future.
  

Critical Components of Optimizing a Site

Each of the following components are critical pieces to a site's ability to be crawled, indexed and ranked by search engine spiders. When properly used in the construction of a website, these features give a site/page the best chance of ranking well for targeted keywords.

Accessibility

An accessible site is one that ensures delivery of its content successfully as often as possible. The functionality of pages, validity of HTML elements, uptime of the site's server and working status of site coding and components all figure into site accessibility. If these features are ignored or faulty, both search engines and users will select other sites to visit.

The biggest problems in accessibility that most sites encounter fit into the following categories. Addressing these issues satisfactorily will avoid problems getting search engines and visitors to and through your site.

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  Broken Links - If an HTML link is broken, the contents of the linked-to page may never be found. In addition, some surmise that search engines negatively degrade rankings on sites & pages with many broken links.
  

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  Valid HTML & CSS - Although arguments exist about the necessity for full validation of HTML and CSS in accordance with W3C guidelines, it is generally agreed that code must meet minimum requirements of functionality and successful display in order to be spidered and cached properly by the search engines.
  

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  Functionality of Forms and Applications - If form submissions, select boxes, javascript or other input-required elements block content from being reached via direct hyperlinks, search engines may never find them. Keep data that you want accessible to search engines on pages that can be directly accessed via a link. In a similar vein, the successful functionality and implementation of any of these pieces is critical to a site's accessibility for visitors. A non-functioning page, form or code element is unlikely to receive much attention from visitors.
  

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  File Size - With the exception of a select few documents that search engine consider to be of exceptional importance, web pages greater than 150K in size are typically not fully cached. This is done to reduce index size, bandwidth and load on the servers, and is important to anyone building pages with exceptionally large amounts of content. If it's important that every word and phrase be spidered and indexed, keeping file size under 150K is highly recommended. As with any online endeavor, smaller file size also means faster download speed for users - a worthy metric in its own right.
  

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  Downtime & Server Speed - The performance of your site's server may have an adverse impact on search rankings and visitors if downtime and slow transfer speeds are common. Invest in high quality hosting to prevent this issue.
  

URLs, title tags and meta tag components are all information that describe your site and page to visitors and search engines. Keeping them relevant, compelling and accurate are key to ranking well. You can also use these areas as launching points for your keywords, and indeed, successful rankings require their use.

The URL of a document should ideally be as descriptive and brief as possible. If, for example, your site's structure has several levels of files and navigation, the URL should reflect this with folders and subfolders. Individual page's URLs should also be descriptive without being overly lengthy, so that a visitor who sees only the URL could have a good idea of what to expect on the page. Several examples follow: