Using The Keyword Planner & 1 Cool Trick To Check Keyword Competition

You're a business owner. You want more customers. 

You know that there are customers searching online for your products and services. 

And you know you need to get in front of them. One way or another. 

Of course, you could pay search engines like Yahoo or Google to get 
in front of your customers IMMEDIATELY. 

Or you can hire a SEO company to help you to dominate the search engines so that you can show up for search results on search engines like Google and Yahoo for free..(eventually anyway......)

Maybe you're the type that likes doing things yourself. (Although you really should hire good SEO company instead of doing it yourself though......)

BUT YOU DON"T KNOW HOW TO OPTIMIZE YOUR WEBSITE FOR THE SEARCH ENGINES.

In that case,I've got a few tips that can save you a lot of time (and headaches)and get you started on the right path.

You understand that your customers are probably searching for your products & services online using keywords.

Great!

Now if only you can figure out what your customers are typing into Google's or Yahoo's search bar to look for your products and services.

So you think of a few keywords and just for good measure you get your favorite pen out- and begin writing down all the words and search phrases that  come to mind. 

Satisfied that you've covered all the bases, you think: "If only I could rank on Google or Yahoo for these keywords- I'd have hordes of traffic flooding my website everyday!" 

Wrong!

Simply coming up with a bunch of keywords using the powers of your mind will not cut it.  (And even if you had tons of traffic coming to your website it still would not mean that you'd have stocks flying off your shelves making you gobs of money everyday. But that's a different story for another day....so stay with me!)

Which is why you will need to do..............

Keyword Research

Let's talk about how to find keywords that count.

That gets traffic. And that's really, the most important element to it all.

This is where keyword research comes in.

You see, most people and business owners ignore this part. And get this part wrong.

What you think about the keywords people are using to search for your products and services isn't important.

It's whether that keyword gets any traffic or not is the element that is most CRITICAL to your business and your SEO efforts.

What's the point of ranking well in the SERPS (search engine ranking positions) if your keyword has little or no traffic?

1. Start by signing into your Adwords account and using the keyword planner.

2. You can find the keyword planner by clicking on TOOLS (See pic below)

3. Then select Keyword Planner.

4. There were 3 types of searches available when you used the keyword planner previously.

Google would let you search traffic volume for keywords based on match type formatting: 

• Broad Match  -ice cream
• Phrase Match- "ice cream"
• Exact Match- [ice cream] 

Today, you will only get historical data only for exact match type. If you want to get an estimate of the traffic that you can expect from all match type, you'll need to save and add them all into your plan and compare the traffic estimates to get an idea . See this article from Google Adwords. 

 

 

Next, select the match type format and then click download plan.

And that's it. Now you'll have an idea about the traffic estimates, competition, suggested bids, average CPC and others.

The next thing you want to do is to make sure that you follow these basic SEO rules so that search engines understand what your website's content.

This is an extremely important aspect of SEO, and- really, the foundation of all your SEO efforts.

Here's a guide that you may want to read about ON PAGE OPTIMIZATION from Google.

1 Cool Secret To Check Keyword Competition

Most people measure competition for a keyword by simply typing in that keyword into Google's suggest tool and then decide what their competition is like by simply observing the number of RESULTS that are displayed on the page by Google.

Here's a neat (and probably more accurate way of checking out what your competition is like) for any keywords that you intend to target.

Simply type in :

allintitle (one word, followed by a colon, your keyword and quotation marks ) like so:

allintitle:"keyword example"

Suddenly, the results shown take a HUGE drop and goes from 999.000,000 to just 98,600 websites (and videos) competing for the title Google SEO.

A keyword that has less than 10,000 searches  is easier to rank and vice versa. Typically, anything above 60,000 mark will be more challenging and harder to rank.

And that's it for today's quick SEO tip!

Find out more about how SEO can help your business by visiting us at Netbuilder.com.my

Here's to your success!

P/S - leave a comment, I'd love to hear what you think!

Thanks!

Are WordPress Sites Any Good For SEO?

In the video above, Matt Cutts (web spam head honcho of Google)talks about WordPress and SEO.

Everybody knows WordPress is the most widely used CMS platform in the world- and all this means is that you get a lot of options when you use WordPress as your website or blog.

But what do you mean by options?

Well, because of the sheer number of WordPress users, there are opportunities for enterprising folks and businesses to sell their products to these users via their WordPress dashboard- which may include promoting some type of basic WordPress themes and selling upgrades and as well as plugins that help with specific tasks for your website.

Use WordPress! It's great!

Search engines like WordPress websites.

It's well coded and clean. Exactly what the robots like in a website.

If you're business, you want to have a blog.

Here's a IMPORTANT tip if you're a complete stranger to SEO.

 

Always have a title on your website other than just your brand or company name.

Do some research using the Google Keyword Planner , (you'll need to sign up for an Adwords account first) and click on the TOOLS tab at the top.

Your research should include finding:

keywords in your niche, products or services
keywords that GETS TRAFFIC.

Include the word or search phrase related to your products and services that gets traffic in your title.

Make sure that you have a META DESCRIPTION TAG to describe your services and products on each page of your website which of course includes your homepage.

Include your keywords in your meta description. (it's just a fancy word for adding a 152 word description on your pages- make sure these are descriptions that are related to the specific content of these pages)

A blog is useful not only as a platform for you to talk about your products and engage your customers and website users but- it's great for SEO (search engine optimization- which simply means increasing your visibility online so that customers can find you online much more easily.....

There's only so much you may be able to write about a new or even existing product on your website- you'll need a blog for that.

And search engines loves content. Good ones.

Do you need more customers and clients?

We invite you to get in touch with us if you want more information about using digital marketing technology to get more customers online...

More than more people are using the internet to search for local businesses, products and services.

Don't get left behind.

To your success,

Internal Link Structure & Architecture Of Your Website

Did you just start a business online?

So you've just started a new online business venture and the proud owner of a spanking brand new website!

That was the easy part.

Now the fun begins.

Now, it's all about marketing-

And this includes getting and sending the right type of traffic to your website, creating sales funnels, tracking and analyzing your traffic and website just to name a few.

Traffic as they say, is the lifeblood of your website and ultimately your business.

There are 2 ways to drive traffic to your website and business.

Actually there are 3.

1st way- free (in exchange for time, so it's not really free per se)

2nd way- paid (you get traffic now, no need to wait)

3rd- offline marketing- flyers, brochures, banners, radio and your traditional ways of advertising offline. 

Let's talk about free traffic and specifically, optimizing your website to potentially receive free traffic from the search engines. This is called search engine optimization or SEO.

SEO simply means following a set of rules to make sure that your website receives the best possible treatment from search engines such as Google and Yahoo so that they'll show your website in their search results when people are searching with words related to your products and services.

There are 2 factors involved in the SEO aspect of your website.

Your website's on page optimization and the off page aspect of SEO.

On page SEO is basically adhering and again,- sticking to a set of "technical" rules so that the search engines understand what your website is all about and shows it in the best light to people who are searching a particular word  or phrase for your products or services.

One popular topic about on page optimization is the internal site link structure & architecture of your website.

There's been a lot of talk about internal site link structure lately and how it works to keep or pass page rank to  important pages on your website.

Linking is a way of connecting your websites' pages to each other in a strategic manner and a navigational method to optimize the flow of the ranking potential within your website.

More than just a "technical" means of optimizing your website for ranking potential, it should be first and foremost looked at as a way to enrich your website user's experience-  as well as making it easy for search engine robots to effectively crawl all pages of your website.

Internal linking is a way to you to pass one page's authority to another to objectively increase the ranking potential of that page in particular.

Sound confusing?

Don't worry.

Here's all you need to know to effectively use internal linking to boost the potential of your website's ranking potential.

1. Your users should be able to access all of your pages in just 3 clicks of the mouse.

2. Make sure all of your pages are accessible to each other, so that when a search engine robot arrives to your website from an external link, it's able to access all of the pages on your website.

3. Keeping your site's depth of level to only 3 is a good start. Allow access to your 2nd level pages by means of a navigational bar only.

4. Link pages that help people discover other relevant pages on your website.

5. Add rel no follow tags to comments or websites that you do not want to pass page rank to. 

6. Draw out a map and plan of your linking structure and send "link juice" to important pages or top level pages of your website.

7. If you have a blog (always a good idea to have a blog on your domain),  create posts and link them back to relevant pages (content) of your website.

Here's more information from Google about  internal link structuring and architecture to help enhance website user experience and boost SEO efforts for your website.

If you'd like SEO advice for your business, or have questions about search engine optimization, please visit our website and talk to one of our warm and friendly consultants.

Here's to your success!

Google Destroys Guest Blogging- Make Sure Your SEO Company Knows What They're Doing

Yes, yes and yes. Guest blogging is a big no no so don't do it. Google is at it again, and this time they're waging war on guest blogging sites.

And that war is sending massive surges of panic to the SEO community and SEO companies alike, giving life to another mass link removal hysteria of epic proportions.

As it is, Google isn't only penalizing just the guest blogging website itself- but the links that appear on that website as well. Guest blogging sites allow authors or contributors to insert their signature at the end or in the content / article itself-

which has a link that points back to their website as a way to increase a website's back link profile (and as a credit for their work) and ultimately, their search engine ranking positions... (an important aspect of Google's algorithm for deciding how it ranks a website for any given search result by calculating the number of relevant back links pointing back to that website...)

Apparently, Google is only targeting low quality guest blogging websites and not the reputable ones- or the ones that it considers to be authority websites anyway.

 But therein lies the problem- unless we're talking about real authority sites like iReport.cnn, it's anyone's guess which website is "reputable" and which isn't, and no one gets to decide that except for Google.  

So what do you do to stay safe?

The best way to stay safe and avoid losing all of your traffic sources (if you completely disappear from the face of Google) is of course- not to solely rely on Google as the only way to get leads and traffic to your website.

Create diverse marketing channels that include using social sharing networks and sites such as Facebook, Pinterest and others as a way to drive traffic to your websites.

 Also, learn how to build online comprehensive marketing funnels so that you can get the best out of the traffic that visits your website from your marketing efforts.

And it also helps to know a little bit more about your SEO agency or SEO company before you engage their services.

You want to ask them about their SEO strategy for your business and if the only strategy they have to offer you is a simple plan to spam the internet with links back to your website- then it's a good idea to forget about them.

Don't know what to look out?

Here's what a BAD SEO game plan (and spam link building practices) that will get your website in trouble might look like:

1000 comments
100 forum profiles
1000 articles
100 social bookmarks...etc..etc..

The truth is, you can get the above SEO game plan for just under 200 RM... if you know where to look.

Other things to look out when you're choosing your SEO company.

You want to work with agencies that have been in business at least for several years and a portfolio of happy and satisfied clients.