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Do Keywords Really Matter?

Do Keywords Really Matter? 4 Easy Ways to Make Sure Your Keywords Are Working For You

Keywords the magic bullet to your findability on Google? Probably not. But there are some ways you can make sure you’re giving your keywords the best chance of contributing to your web traffic – and hopefully, your conversion of visitors to customers.

The following four steps will help you get the maximum reach out of an often misunderstood component of SEO.

1.) Don’t put the cart before the horse – Write content around your keywords.

Spending time up front researching and identifying your site’s keywords can pay big dividends. Ideally, content for your site should be written with a select list of keywords in mind. A common mistake in web design is borrowing copy from existing marketing materials for use on the company website. Keywords are then lifted from the copy or invented out of thin air, often having little to do with the actual page copy.

One basic rule is that if the page copy doesn’t reference the keyword, don’t bother listing it. Much like understating your weight on your driver license… you’re only fooling yourself. In the case of search engines, if the keyword isn’t relevant to the page copy, you’re site isn’t benefiting from it.

2.) Be realistic - Identify the “right” keywords

The “right” keywords are those that are relevant to your services or product offerings and are not so general that you have no chance of ranking. For example, if you own a small travel agency that sells cruises, you probably don't want to simply choose “cruise” as one of your keywords.

Counter-intuitive? Maybe. But just think for a moment of all those cruise companies larger than yours (read-in bigger marketing budgets). Guess what they’re doing? Spending a lot of time and money on making sure they're on the first page for the search term “cruise.”

So instead of simply using “cruises,” maybe you list your specialty or location in a string of words that incorporates cruise. Maybe “South Florida Caribbean cruises” or “Mexican Riviera cruises San Diego.”

Keywords that use three to four word phrases are called long-tail keywords. And if you can find the right combination of keywords to list as a long-tail, you have a much better chance of ranking higher for those terms.

But if you don’t have your keywords yet and you’re not sure how to construct the long-tails, what do you do?

First, if you already have a website, go to your analytics package.

You do have an analytics package, don’t you? Google Analytics, Urchin, etc. If analytics are new to you, proceed directly to this page; Google Analytics.

Free, easy and plenty of tutorials for all levels of web experience, Google Analytics will bring you up to speed quickly and generate the code you need to get analyzing in no time.

The point of analytics is to understand how people are currently finding your site - what searches the average visitor is using to get to your website. This information is crucial to your keyword research and the importance of an analytics package cannot be overstated.

Now, if the above is old hat, good. Let’s continue.

Take a look at the keywords that are attracting visitors to you current site. Jot down the top 15 – 30 words and phrases.

Second, make your own list of 20 or 30 keywords you think your prospective customers would search to find a business like yours. Once again, if you have existing web copy, and presumably it is an accurate representation of what your company sells, make sure the keywords you choose can be easily added to the content. You might even be able to find keyword phrases right in the existing page copy. If so, great! As long as they’re relevant and not so general you won't be able to rank..

Once you’ve put together your list of analytics keywords and those you personally think describe your business, it’s time to test. Once again, Google provides a good, and free, solution. Google AdWords Keyword Tool will help you identify how often people are searching on your keywords. This should give you a pretty good idea about niche versus general keywords and how competitive the terms are in your space.

There are obviously many other Keyword tools you can use. Most are fee-based and depending on the amount of keyword research you plan on doing, might not be a bad investment. Although this article focuses on Google, Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery are examples of popular fee-based tools.

Whichever keyword tool you choose, paring down your keyword list is the next step. Ideally, try to pull the top 20 keywords out of the list. This obviously depends on the amount of content you have on your site, but for the sake of this example, let’s assume the travel agent has 10 – 15 pages of site content. 20 keywords with some logical variations is a good place to start.

Ratios vary depending on business specifics, but 70/30 is usually a good split of niche to general keywords. So keep this in mind as you edit your list. From the keyword research you’ve done, you should have an idea of which words are more competitive, and therefore harder to rank high on, than others.

To illustrate, we'll revisit our example of the small travel agent. Let’s assume one of the keyword phrases that describes the business offerings is “Mexican Riviera cruises San Diego” (the preposition “from” is not particularly important in this case). If the existing web copy includes a sentence like;

ABC travel agency is an expert in booking the best cruises to exotic ports, all from our convenient office location in downtown San Diego.

To give it a keyword phrase spin and make it more search engine friendly, let’s change it to;

ABC travel agency is a travel expert in booking the best Mexican Riviera cruises from San Diego, Norwegian line Alaska inner-passage cruises, extended voyage Caribbean cruises and many more.

See what we did? The sentence above, although probably not the picture of sound literary principle, lists a number of keywords and keyword phrases that, without researching, I’d bet will give this small travel agency a better chance at higher organic rankings than simply the catch-all term “cruise.” (For the purposes of this example it is assumed that this travel agent actually provides these services and has a reasonable level of aptitude in doing so.)

The bold parts of the sentence below are those phrases I would use for keyword content (depending on the topic of your web page).

ABC travel agency is a travel expert in booking the best Mexican Riviera cruises from San Diego, Norwegian line Alaska inner-passage cruises, extended voyage Caribbean cruises and many more.

You’ll notice ABC travel agency is not bold. Believe it or not, your brand name is probably not fertile ground for page keywords (exceptions being large national or multi-nationals like Coke, Microsoft,... you get the idea).

But don’t worry. Your company name is definitely going to be listed in your page title.

3.) Location, location, location – Keyword placement matters

So let’s say you’ve selected, researched and pared down your keywords and you’re ready to update your site. Which words go where?

The number one rule about keyword location is that TITLES MATTER MOST. Yes, we’re talking about web page titles, or for those in the HTML know, those words that find themselves inside the <title>REALLY IMPORTANT KEYWORDS</title> tags in the head section. Page titles appear in the upper left hand corner of your browser.

If you don’t use any other tip from this article, at least do yourself the favor of using keywords in your page titles. This alone can be the difference between being indexed and therefore findable, or wallowing in virtual online obscurity.

There is some debate about whether or not word order makes a difference when creating a page title. Some maintain that the first two or three words are the most important. Therefore, intelligible titles be damned, you should simply list your strongest keywords.

Others argue that the order of the keywords in the tile is not all that important and as long as the keywords appear in the title, you’ll be OK.

This issue comes up with corporate clients that would rather have their company name appear first, with trailing keywords relevant for the specific web page.

The travel agent may want to create a page title for their cruise page that reads:

ABC Travel Agency – Mexican Riviera cruises, Alaska cruises, Caribbean cruises

This isn’t really a problem, and assuming the keywords are relevant to the page, looks pretty good.

Although I tend to think that order does play a role, so a better title might be:

Cruises to the Mexican Rivera, Alaska inner-passage, and extended voyage Caribbean cruises – ABC Travel Agency

There should be a balance between keyword loaded titles and intelligible page titles. Remember that Google is going to pull your title for its organic search result listings. So a title that makes sense from the reader’s perspective is something to shoot for, while remembering to have as many keywords in the title as possible.

The other two areas in which you should be using your keywords are the page headers and body.

Headers follow roughly the same rules as titles. Insert as many keywords into the page headers as possible as long as they are relevant to the page copy and do not make for unintelligible headers.

In the body you should develop copy that supports the two or three keywords you’ve chosen for that page. Don’t be afraid to write to the keywords and keyword phrases. Once again, just keep in mind relevancy and the overall readability of the copy. It doesn’t necessarily need to be print ready copy, but it should always be easy for the reader to understand.

The other thing to keep in mind regarding body copy is less is more. Keyword density plays a role in how Google indexes your pages. Keyword density is the ratio, measured as a percentage, of keywords or phrases to total words on a web page. Obviously, higher percentages are better within reason. In terms of how long your web copy should be, for keyword purposes, keep it short while listing all the information that is relevant to the topic.

Now that you’ve put your keywords to work, you’re job is done, right? Kick back and watch the conversion-ready traffic flow. Not quite.

4.) Don’t “Set it and forget it” – unlike the Showtime Rotisserie, you’re going to have to monitor your keywords

I said these tips are easy, not automatic and self-sustaining forever. You do have to monitor your keywords. The good news is that there are many applications out there that can help you do just that. Just search Google and you’ll find a number of ranking tools – some free, some not.

Whichever tool you choose, the important part is that you get used to taking a look at your rankings on a regular basis. Then make a record of your progress so you can revisit to understand what is working over time.

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Keywords aren’t a magic bullet to high rankings. As is typically the case with web design, content is king. Of course, you can have the greatest content in the world, but people need to be able to find it.

So in summary, keep those keywords specific to your content, located in the right places and most importantly, relevant to what it is you do.

If you'd like to use this article for your site, ezine or newsletter, contact me at info@cplamann.com or give me a call at (949) 309-2956.