SEO (Services) Basics – Good Keyword Research

Posted on August 25, 2008 by DB

Keyword research, the most fundamental and one of the most important if not the most important task in any SEO campaign. You get this step wrong and you will end up wasting time, energy and money in going after the wrong niche or demographic. Even if you get the niche right and your keyword research wrong, you will end up with one of the two scenarios described below.

Zero to minimal traffic – Very little to nil organic traffic because there is nobody searching for that keyword/key phrase that you spent a ton optimizing your website for.
Zero conversions – No conversions because you have optimized your website for a keyword / phrase that is not a buying keyword.

You will not believe how many webmasters and even seasoned SEO Consultants and firms get this part wrong. If you are a doing it yourself kind of person, I would urge you to outsource this part of your campaign to a SEO firm or SEO Consultant that knows what they/he/she are doing. Many if not most of the SEO Companies offer keyword research as part of their SEO Service portfolio but finding the right firm is another story in itself best left described in a follow on post.

I have seen many SEO firms that push relatively easy to rank keywords onto clients simply because it makes their job easy. A popular tactic is to offer Guaranteed SEO Services and as part of the keyword list pick 10 real easy long tail keywords out of say a total of 15. The Guaranteed Service is deemed successful if the SEO firm ranks the website on the search engine result pages for 60% of the total keyword list. You can see where I’m going with this. A client that is not educated enough about keywords blindly trusts the SEO firm and will even be convinced because they will see some high competition keywords in the target list. Sadly the keyword list is also padded with enough long tail keywords of little value to easily meet the requirement of the guaranteed service.

Don’t get me wrong, I am all for long tail keywords. Infact long tails often end up as buying keywords than your typical one or two word key phrase. This is where a little keyword research is necessary. This is why I believe that getting the right data on a list of keywords upfront that are targeted to your business or niche is one of the most important aspects of search engine optimization.

Remember keyword competition is not always an indicator of conversion. Let us walk through an example. Assume you are an SEO like me . As an SEO what is the first keyword that comes to mind to try and rank your website for? Yep, that’s right. It’s “SEO” The holy grail for all SEO Companies. Let’s look at the competition. At the time of writing this there are approximately 278,000,000 results in the Google index for the keyword SEO as you can see from the image below.

SEO
Again folks, 278 million pages competing for positions on the index for the keyword SEO. Probably one of the toughest keywords out there to rank for on page 1. Forget page 1, getting to the top 50 is quite an achievement. Why is it tough? Because every SEO out there would love to rank for “SEO” irrespective of what he/she/they claim. Let’s take a quick look at the number of searches that they keyword SEO has for an average month. There are approximately a 90,000 searches for the exact keyword SEO every month. Here is a screenshot from Google’s very own keyword traffic estimator.

SEO Searches

90,000 searches is quite a lot for exact searches. If you set it to broad match it is close to a million searches every month but I’m digressing. Let’s only look at exact searches for now. If you are a Search Engine Optimization Company or Consultant, do you believe targeting a 90,000 potential searches every month makes sense? Yes, it would. But what about conversions. As an SEO firm you are looking to get more clients. What percentage of the 90,000 searches are people looking for a SEO Company? Not a lot. Most of them are tire kickers, newbie consultants looking at who is ranked high, people looking to learn SEO etc etc the list goes on and on.

So why the competition? If SEO is too generic why the stiff competition? Well, ranking for SEO is all about building credibility and to a lessor extent get the bragging rights. An SEO Consultant or SEO firm that ranks for SEO can legitimately claim that they indeed are good at what they do which is rank for one of the toughest keywords out there. After all someone that can rank in the top 50 for SEO can potentially rank for pretty much anything out there.

Moving on, if I were to solely focus on conversions, then a better key phrase to target would be “SEO Services“. Why? Because the phrase is such that a potential searcher is looking for a SEO Company or Consultant that offers seo services and if he likes what he sees, he might just sign up.

Let’s look at the number of results or potential competition. At the time of writing this, there are about 3,700,000 results for the key phrase SEO Services. Does this mean that ranking for SEO Services is easy simply because you have only 3 million odd results when compared to the 278 million for SEO. Nothing could be further from the truth. Here is a little tip and I plan to write a post about this sometime. If you see or have someone quote you a price for search engine optimization solely based on the number of results on Google without even knowing and researching the keyword and potential competition then you are dealing with a complete newbie or are being setup for an elaborate scam. Hang up the phone or run the other way if this ever happens to you. Trust me on this one.

I digress far too often, back to the key phrase SEO Services. Let’s now take a look at the average number of searches for the SEO Services key phrase every month. Again its a quick check on the Adwords keyword tool and the number that I see there is 18,100 on an average every month. Have a look at the screenshot below.

SEO Services Searches

This is a far lessor number than the 90,000 for SEO but a far better number as far as potential conversions for my business. There are 18,000 odd searches for SEO Services each month by people looking for services from SEO Consulatnts or SEO firms and these are people that will go ahead and buy. It is a buying keyword. For this very reason, there is a lot of competition. Every Search Engine Optimization company will target this key phrase. The SERP’s show far less indexed pages or results because it is not too generic as the SEO keyword.

Now you can go deep further. Instead of targeting a high competition, high traffic, low conversion keyword such as SEO or targeting a high competition, relatively decent traffic, high conversion keyword such as SEO Services, you can start by targeting a low competition, low traffic but high conversion keyword such as say “Dallas SEO Services” or any other city name followed with SEO Services. Geo targeting helps you get your share of potential clients relatively easily compared to the generic Google.com

Low traffic but targeted usually converts well and should definitely looked at. But avoid long tails that are not targeted atleast when you are drawing up your keyword list for your SEO firm to optimize. This is easier said than done. A typical client simply does not understand keywords and conversion well enough to decipher this. If you are in this position, then I would suggest the following.

Before you sign up for Search Engine optimization, get a second and even a third opinion on the keyword list. Try to find reputable ones, yes search for SEO or SEO Services and pick one that meets your requirement from the first 50. Remember you are looking for a second opinion. Your cost usually should not be more than $500 for this particular SEO Service. You might find tons of people than do it for $100 or less but I doubt you would find them in the top 50. Again guys, the top 50 is just a means to filter the number of SEO firms out there. There are quite a few good Search Engine Optimization firms and consultants that don’t figure in the top 300.

Keyword research is one of the few SEO Services that I do on a stand alone basis. My typical charge for a one time keyword list generation is usually around $350.

Now that you’ve got your keywords identified, compare lists from a minimum of two SEO vendors with the list provided by the SEO firm you’ve shortlisted. If you see good number of convergence then you should be ok. If not, suggest some from the alternate list that you’ve procured. You can pretty much take it from there.

I hope this little example showed you the importance of good keyword research and if you are looking for a Dallas SEO Company, you know where to look

SEO Services. Do You Really Need It?

Posted on June 25, 2008 by DB

It often is surprising to see many companies and businesses fail to even consider and subsequently plan for Search Engine Optimization. They fail to see the potential upside that a business gets when you can rank highly on a high traffic search engine such as Google.

The world of SEO, SEO Services and SEO Consultants are now pretty main stream but somehow invariably the time when you start to think of using such services are often when your website is completely built and many potential advantages are lost in the process. Let me give an example, web 2.0 is synonymous with cool and creative names that startups come up with for their websites. Part of this is due to the fact the all dictionary names even with the combination of one or two words are pretty much taken. This has led to a flurry of misspellings and even Swahili words (just to illustrate an example) used as the domain name.

While this is understandable, this is by no means the only option. Depending on the business or service you are offering, it is vital that you also look at pre owned domain names as an option for your website name. Now I don’t mean buying a domain name from a domaineer though that is one option but usually will turn out to be an expensive option, I was more suggesting looking at domain names that expire almost every day. Now you might not get the perfect brandable domain name or the most coolest sounding one but one thing you will get is a definite advantage in your search engine ranking. Infact I turn away some customers that come to me asking me to get them onto the first page with a brand new domain in a highly competitive niche.

If there is one thing that I would compromise with then this one is it. Using an aged domain name will get you out the blocks faster and is more search engine friendly especially if you are in a highly competitive niche. Now there are ways to go about rebuilding an expired domain so that you get the maximum benefit out of it.

Back to the topic of whether or not you need SEO services for your business. One of the main issues that I see everyday is that clients are all for SEO at some point but get disillusioned pretty soon with the lack of results. I believe there are a few reasons for that.

The main reason I see is that many companies and consultants advertise offering SEO Services but all they do is submit to search engines and directories.
As SEO is becoming more and more mainstream, many companies offering SEO Services are taking a commoditized approach to SEO. While this is more profitable and easier to manage, clients usually make the mistake of using few of the services that are offered and often see little or no change in search engine ranking. There is no point in taking a piecemeal approach to website optimization. Either you do the full monty or you plan do it over time. Anything else is wasting money and you have another one on the SEO hate list.
One of the biggest issues is trying to rank for a keyword or phrase that either does not convert or does not bring in the right target audience. This is a common problem that many clients face and while they cannot complain about the SEO firm they do not see a return on investment on the money spent on search engine optimization.

These are some of the frustrations that many clients go through and soon enough start to wonder if SEO is all the important as it is cranked up to be. Hey did I not try it? Did it get me far? So what if I get more hits and page views now that I’m on the front page. I do not see any improvement in sales or the bottom line.

While there are many many reasons to push the case for planning and investing in SEO, the above are not reasons to avoid it. If you have been in the same boat and the above is a familiar story then it is most likely you were at fault as as the SEO consultant or company. It is important to understand that SEO is a commitment from both sides and you have to be prepared to invest and be patient as results take time especially in a competitive niche.

So the next time you talk to your SEO firm ask about what exactly you are signing up for. What are the services that comes as part of the SEO package and how are they geared to help you in your quest for search engine ranking. My suggestion would be to find someone that gives you the entire gamut of SEO services under one umbrella even if the cost is somewhat higher. Hey if you are in Texas and looking for SEO Services from a Dallas SEO Consultant then you know who to call. A little tip, you know how you can save cost? Bring in your SEO consultant into the picture from the very beginning. This will save you costly man hours spent on redesign and on page optimization amongst other things.

By the way there is another SEO contest going on and yours truly has decided to participate. Hey no harm in building your reputation is there. So if you guys are interested in keeping track you can follow the Busby SEO Challenge and this is my opening page about the Busby SEO Challenge.

Let me end this by saying that I strongly believe that a good SEO consultant or firm can take your business to the next level. The key is to find the right person or firm and equally important from a cost perspective is to engage with an SEO Consultant right at the very beginning. So Yes, you do really need SEO Services. No longer are search optimization services a luxury. It has become more of a necessity now and remember your competitor might already be ahead of the curve and are well on their way in rolling out their SEO Strategy.

SEO 101 All You Wanted To Know About Incoming Links

Posted on May 7, 2008 by DB

Its been a while I posted on my SEO Services and Optimization blog. I figured today would be a good time to talk about incoming links, their effect on search engine rankings and how and what one should keep in mind when one goes about looking for incoming links. The end goal here is to rank highly for a keyword or phrase and as a consequence get your website right up to the first page on the search engine rankings.

As far as search engine rankings are concerned, let me make it clear at the outset that incoming links is what really matters. As long as you have sufficient number of high quality keyword/keyterm targeted incoming links to your website, you will be able to outrank anybody for that particular keyword or term. If I could summarize this post in one sentence then I would say your key takeaway from reading this is to understand that incoming links is fundamental to your site rankings. Put your efforts and time (money as well) to get as many links and deep links (both targeted and otherwise) to your website as possible.

Anybody telling you any different is talking through their hat or trying to sell you that expensive SEO On Page optimization service. Basically what this means is that even if you have a website that is completely developed using let’s say “Flash” or is the next Javascript showcase you don’t have to despair. Depending on the niche you can very well rank number one provided you have enough number of links pointing back to your website.

I briefly mentioned in my previous post on the characteristics of the perfect link. While a perfect link is most sought after, it should be done in moderation. After all you want your incoming links to be as natural as possible. This means that you should strive to get all types of links back to you, yes even the crappy ones. The following are some points to keep in mind when you are out there buying requesting for incoming links.

Get links from contextually relevant domains.
Get links from not so relevant domains.
Do not get link that only point to your main page. A healthy mix of deep links is very important.
Get a healthy mix of links that have your keyword / term as the anchor text.
Vary the anchor text phrase. Try to include your main keyword but vary the text to be different.
Get a lot of links that don’t have your keyword but have a variety of unrelated keywords as the anchor text such as the domain name, your name and even keywords like “click here”, “here”, “site” and “this”.
Links that are part of the content will have more juice. Try and get these.
Site wide links also help a lot. Remember we are building links and natural links. Not every link can be part of the content. So go ahead and try to get a few site wide links. The best natural way would be to build a widget or sponsor a theme.
Try to get links from different sources. Do not concentrate on one particular source. Work them all. Directories, forums, blog comments, blog roll, social networking all help to build a healthy mix.

A word of caution, buying links is frowned upon by Google and they will negate any link juice from links that are obviously paid for. So far I haven’t heard of any website being banned for buying links. On the other hand selling links is a dangerous practise and must be avoided at all cost. Buying links is a tricky exercise and if done right Google cannot prove otherwise and cannot penalize you. This is the main reason why Google has thus far abstained from slapping those sites that have bought links with a penalty like they did some time back to all those websites selling links.

As a good SEO consultant I must tell you to avoid buying links or at the very least avoid the obvious buying link tactics. Remember folks when you get to that coveted first page of Google, it’s not just potential searchers that will see you there. Your competition will be all over your website trying to decipher how you managed the feat. Infact, you can bet your last dollar that your competition will be analyzing your web pages and incoming links with a microscope. If you have gone about link building in an amateur manner then the quickest way to get your ranking yanked is for your competition to report your website to Google for buying links.

There is so much you can learn from your competition. Let me digress a bit, I’ve been referring to an interesting SEO contest that has been going on for a while now and quite a few websites and blogs are trying their best to reach the top. Everyday I see one website or the other moving up, down or getting sandboxed completely. This contest gives one the perfect opportunity to analyze and better understand how Google and its algorithm works. Since quite a few websites are in contention, each are following different strategies and this gives you a good insight on what is working and what is not working with Google. I’ve been keenly following the rankings and making notes whenever I see a particular site doing well and moving up the rankings. I try and analyze the cause and note that down for my benefit. If you are a budding SEO I would suggest you do the same. The two websites that I initially picked have seemingly dropped out of contention with the bloggers not persisting enough particularly when all the hard work was done, the sites were sandboxed for a while and were making a comeback in the rankings when the respective owners decided to give up. A real pity. One of my current favorites is sandboxed at the moment for the term Asia’h Epperson but so far has done everything I would do from an On Page Optimization perspective. Infact I do not even know if this website is a real fan site or is someone trying to win the contest.

I think I’ve digressed enough. Back to incoming links and link building campaigns. You need to be aware of the consequences of a poorly managed link building campaign especially if you are building a lasting online business. Link building is an art and best left to people who understand it. Dig a little and you will find many many forums littered with people selling links on crappy blogs and link farms. While these at first glance seem really cheap and tempting, you should carefully judge what you are getting into. Simple question to ask yourself is if your links will pass a manual review. Link building is a time consuming affair. You have to do it right and should last the test of time and manual reviews. This is where a good SEO Services firm brings a lot to the table. (Yes I’m shamelessly plugging for myself). I hope you realize that anybody can get links. Simply head over to Digital point and you can easily get a few thousand incoming links for less than $100. Running the perfect link campaign is a different ball game altogether and hopefully you realize that.

Does this mean that you don’t need to care about On Page Optimization? No you do, especially if you are in a highly competitive niche. Why? If you are in a highly competitive niche then the chances are your competitor is spending an equal or more amount of time, effort and money in trying to match and even beat you in the number of incoming links. This is where optimizing your website will help.

On Page optimization is a topic that I plan to talk about another day. So don’t forget to bookmark this blog and come back for more SEO tips.

Dig Up The Dirt On Your Competitor

Posted on April 20, 2008 by DB

This post is geared more to the novice that is starting out in SEO and not for the seasoned veteran. I figured I would start by addressing some of the basic tasks in the day and life of an SEO.

If you are beginning to learn or getting interested in search engine optimization, chances are you are trying to beat your competitors ranking and in the process take over his spot. Whatever is your motive, in the SEO world analyzing your competitors back links is something you will find yourself doing quite a lot. While there are more sophisticated and automated tools available that greatly reduce the amount of manual work and will most definitely have to be part of your SEO arsenal, lets for now look at how you would research a competitor back links without using a paid tool.

First and foremost is the keyword. Understanding keywords is a whole chapter in itself and best left for another day. For the sake of this post I’m assuming that you know your targeted keyword. Let’s go one better and look at the contest that I talked about in my previous post. Here we know that the keyword is Asia’h Epperson. The goal of the contest is to rank as high as you can for the term “Asia’h Epperson”. While there are many that are trying their hand in the contest, in my previous post I highlighted the two sites that I believe are doing the best. Let’s do a little research by looking at one the top two in contention.

First thing you will need is SEOQuake. Yes I know we said no tools in the beginning but this one is free and sure saves some time. Download it from here and set it up on your browser. I’ve tested it on my Firefox and it works just great. Once you’ve done that our next stop is to go to Yahoo’s SiteExplorer.

Type in your competitor’s website url and hit “Explore URL”. Yahoo comes back with 2 sets of results. The first of results is all the pages from the website itself that Yahoo has in its index and the second is all the incoming links to the website in question. Look at the screenshot below that I’ve taken of one of the contenders for the Asia’h Epperson SEO contest to show things more clearly. After all, a picture speaks a thousand words.

Site Explorer Results

Look at the first rounded rectangle highlighted in red. This gives me the total number of pages that Yahoo has indexed. By default it groups all the sub domains and gives you the total number. If you want to eliminate all the sub domains then simply click on the “Only this domain” link in the second higlighted rectangle.

So what does this tell me? 19 pages is really not bad for a website that started sometime in March. It tells me that the author is quite active which is always good from an SEO perspective. The bots love fresh content and the more you add content to your website the more they will visit you.

Lets proceed to look at the second part of the results. Right next to the first rounded rectangle you have a link that says ” Inlinks (5264)”. What does this mean? Yahoo is telling you that it has found 5264 incoming links to the website. Again by default Yahoo counts incoming links to the complete website including subdomains and internal links from the website itself. To see more details click on the inlinks link. I’ve once again attached a screenshot to make things more clear.

Site Explorer Inlinks Results

On clicking the “inlinks” link, Yahoo will display all the incoming links to the website. This is great because now you can see exactly where your competitor is getting his or her links from. If you have SEOQuake installed you will also get to see additional information that will tell you in a glance how strong the incoming links are. The red colored rounded rectangle bars in the above screenshot show you the output from SEOQuake. This is where SEOQuake is a timesaver. You can sort the entire results by PageRank or any other metric that SEOQuake allows you and all the results are sorted accordingly. I’ve sorted the results by PageRank and can see the highest PR on the link is PR6. I can now categorize these and then explore further to see the exact nature of the link.

Before you go about doing this make sure you apply these two filters.

Remove links from the same website.
Set to show incoming links to the entire website.

Filter Inlinks to Not show pages from current domain

Filter Inlinks to show links to entire site

Doing this should help to clear up the results and you can begin your digging in earnest. Sort by PageRank and check each link to find out the exact nature of the link. Now before someone points this out in the comments let me say that Yes, I do know that visible PageRank is not the all and end all. But for a backlink analysis the worst case is some of the pages increase in authority and rank and the best case is the exact opposite.

While it is relatively easy to spot PageRank, spotting authority is a little more difficult. Just think of an authority site as a site that is trusted by Google. Google ranks such sites very high on the SERP’s. (Search Engine Result Pages) You can rank very high for your main keywords (primary niche) and for totally unrelated keywords and phrases as well.

Looking back at the contest, the site that everyone is trying to beat has a solid back link from Griz’s make money for beginners blog. This is probably the biggest factor that is still keeping Griz’s Asia’h Epperson site stuck like glue on second spot in Google.

Let me give you an idea of the kind of authority Griz’s money making site has. Recently Victor Franqui, one of the few bloggers that talks sense when it comes to making money online called out Caroline Middlebrook and questioned her knowledge and experience. ( Be advised the language in the video is a little graphic. Not safe while at work or in front of kids )

Anyway to cut a long story short, in the video Vic promises Caroline Middlebrook that he will overtake Caroline on the SERP’s for the term “Caroline Middlebrook”. Now I’ve got to believe Vic when he says something like that. I’m pretty sure he will follow up and actually do something about it.

Soon after Griz gives Vic the perfect link, the right anchor text and everything. Funnily enough, that post from Griz is now on page 1 in Google for Caroline Middlebrook. One single post from Griz on his make money blog is all it took and Griz wasn’t even trying. Today if you search for Caroline Middlebrook on Google you will find Griz’s site ahead of Vic’s, on the first page, ranked 4th or 5th when I last checked. Again guys, a single post from Griz and he makes the first page on Google. That shows some serious authority.

Boy I’ve really digressed now. Back to the SEO contest and the research we were doing. Once you have the incoming links sorted by PR, look a little deeper at the sites. Find out the following

What is the Anchor Text?
Is the site content related to the keyword in question?
Is it a sitewide link? (Is it on the sidebar or footer that is common throughout the website)
If the link is not sitewide, check if the link is part of the content?
Evaluate the link neighborhood?

Here is a tip guys. The best kind of link that you can possibly get is from a virgin authority site using the right anchor and title text with the link buried as part of the content. The perfect link. Period!!

Now these tasks will cost you time. This is where having something like SEOElite comes in handy. But then SEOElite is a beast that is also best left for another day. Folks I’m going to end this post here. This is way too long already. I will continue in my next post. Do come back and keep reading SEOBlogPro.com for more SEO and related tips.

How High Can You Rank On Google For “Asia’h Epperson”

Posted on April 13, 2008 by DB

This being the first post on the newly redesigned blog I thought it might be a good idea to start by looking at an interesting contest of sorts being played right now in the blogosphere.

Grizzly Bears or more popularly known as Griz recently challenged his blog readers to out rank him for a particular keyword (Asia’h Epperson) on Google. Griz is doing this to gauge how far his readers have come along since he started writing his blog. Griz has been for some time giving out some great tips on making money by targetting organic visitors and understanding SEO is one of the basic skills you need to succeed in landing more and more organic traffic. Griz is one of the better bloggers out there that is as adept at SEO as he is in money making. Hs blog makes for fantastic reading and is quite a contrast to many of the so called A list bloggers.

A little more about the challenge. The challenge or the goal is to rank better than one of Griz’s own website for the keyword Asia’h Epperson. Griz has been consistently ranked number 2 on Google for a long long time. It’s been nearly a month after Griz posted this contest and he still continues to holds that position.

See the attached screenshot below. The result marked in yellow is Griz’s website that everyone is trying to beat.

Asia'h Epperson

So what does the winner get? Apart from of course learning in the process (Griz’s way of shaking them into action) the winner gets $500 from Griz. I must say this is quite generous of Griz and shows genuine interest in helping out his readers. There has been a fair amount of interest in the competition though not on the same level as this one that played out sometime back but then again that was of a different scale altogether with the motives and the participation quite different from this one.

If you are curious of how everyone is doing, I did take a look at the search results in Google today. So far I can see only two real competitors so to speak that have made some good ground. Both have put in quite a lot of work, each of the two have different approaches and are currently on the first page on Google. Google in all probability will keep changing this around until it figures out which one is more relevant.

See the screen shot below. I’ve again marked in yellow the two front runners poised to take over from Griz.

Asia'h Epperson

It remains to be seen if we will indeed see either one of the two or a new one take the second spot and the prize. While this is great fun to watch, it is also a great learning exercise. Let’s look at the two challengers in more detail and by doing so learn more about their approach and a little about SEO itself. So do come back for more insights and SEO tips and don’t forget to subscribe to my feed.