What is Keyword Research?

Keyword Research can be defined as choosing the words, which describe your product or service as, seen from the viewpoint of your target market is the most important step in the optimization process.

Keyword Research is the process of defining the right mix of keywords, which are most likely to be used by potential customers at search engines and directories.

This Keyword research consists of a variety of inputs, both qualitative and quantitative, both creative and analytical.

Keyword Research plays a Crucial Role in assuring that your prospective customers will find you when they are looking for your specific products and services.

Following are Most Useful Tools for Keyword Analysis:

Wordtracker

Overture

Google Adwords

Digital Point

Ranks.nl

Advantages of Keyword Research

• Drive traffic to your site by using the words people use when they're searching
• Write great website copy by incorporating terms that people immediately identify with
• Plan profitable pay-per-click campaigns by building up a broad range of keyword phrases that will capture your market
• Develop great content ideas that directly address your customers' needs
• Understand your customers' behavior and concerns by analyzing the words that they use
• Measure the size of a potential online market by the number of searches conducted, and
• Develop new revenue streams by using popular keywords to inspire new product and service ideas.

Tips for Effective Keyword Research

(A) Start with a goal in mind

As with all marketing efforts you should have a goal for what you are trying to achieve. Whether it is to increase sales, gain newsletter subscribers, or get new prospect leads, this goal will help to set priorities keyword phrase selection and impact the overall success of your Search Engine Optimization efforts. Take the time to discuss and establish goals and priorities at the start.

(B) Think like a Prospective Customer

When it comes to search sites, it is the prospective customer who initiates the dialog (query) so it is important that you select keyword phrases that reflect what a prospective customer will enter in at the search site. Users often enter phrases are the legal or proper terms for a product or service, and sometimes the phrases they enter may be totally outside industry jargon. In either case, be sure to select keywords that are naturally intuitive to the customer.

(C) Brainstorm

Brainstorming is a great way to start generating a list of possible keyword phrases. The brainstorming group should include those with direct customer access (sales reps, customer support representatives, product/content experts, and marketing - don't forget to review your own log files for additional data). Try to generate as many words as possible and then narrow your list quantitatively using industry tools and qualitatively using your industry knowledge. When you brainstorm, remember to step out of yourself and into the mindset of the prospective customer.

(D) Check your Content for Keywords

If the Keywords you optimize for are not used within the copy of your site, you will not be able to get rankings for those terms. Once you have established a list of keywords, review your site. Be prepared to add new content to your site that can be optimized to support the new mix of Keywords.

(E) Goal is Conversions not Traffic

The goal of Search Engine Optimization, and your keyword research, is not to just get traffic, but to get valuable, 'qualified' traffic that can lead to actual conversions. You will find the different keyword phrases have a large difference in conversion rates and value for your site. Don't forget that increased revenues will be the ultimate measure of your success.

(F) Avoid short, common phrases

Short phrases (1 or 2 words) that are also common phrases can be too general and are not the best to optimize for. Common phrases can lead to a large portion of the traffic that is searching on similar terms but not looking for your product or service. The amount of time and effort needed to gain valuable rankings and traffic for those phrases will also be much greater than the time required for more targeted keyword phrases. Targeted keyword phrases may generate slightly less overall traffic, but with targeted keywords you will achieve 'qualified' traffic - leading to increased revenues.

(G) Keyword Research is an ongoing process

Keyword research is a continuous process. Whatever you do, don't stop. As your SEO program progresses, examine what words perform best, enhance your keyword list based on what you learn, go back and review old keyword ideas against current data and usage trends, and continue to review your site content for synergy with your keyword list. Ongoing keyword/Keyword research will uncover new keyword phrases, while keeping you abreast of your competition, and shifts in the search site industry.

Basic Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) is relentless process which believes in maximizing a website through the medium of extensive blend of tasks that enables improvement of a website presence on the search engines. Robots or spiders are used by such engines are known as software that brings about information which enables backing of analysis at the main search index or in the central database that houses and acts as repository of all the information’s gathered from various sources. Presently, the information is segregated and the search engine taps this information for helping the user find whatever is desired. These engines constantly involve themselves for changing the way of collection of information as to how it is conserved. This is important for staying up-to-date as well as keeping abreast with changes as well as techniques.

Keyword Research: This step is stepping stone in the Search engine optimization (SEO) process and should be rated as a step above others. These have to be followed up by finding the keywords or key phrases which involve after they have been chosen. When these become too competitive you should analyze whether it is worth or not worth maximizing. You should involve yourself in the selection of unique keywords or phrases which are easy to be achieved.

Domain Name Optimization: Once you have identified your main keyword or phrases the next step will emerge which will enable decision of what should be the main name. For optimization of your domain name something short has to be found out targeted as well as positioned for your market needs and sufficient enough for proper explanation of your site.

On-page optimization: Another important step of maximizing your website is maximizing the web pages that the users and spiders inspect. The idea should be to use the best keyword phrase interspersed in your content for enabling maximization as naturally as it is done.

• Title Meta Tag – Title, Description, Keywords, Etc...
• Keywords Density
• Prominence
• Proxymancy
• Internet Linking
• Robots.Txt
• Local Listing
• Website Submit In Search Engines
• Webmaster Tool
• Sitemap.XML
• Sitemap Page
• Website Optimization
• SEO Friendly Website Design
• RSS

On-page factors affecting search engine rankings include:

• Title tags
• Image optimization
• Site maps
• Domain name
• HTML design vs. other coding such as Java and Flash
• URLs

Off-Page Optimization: It is a barricade of success. The search engines want to examine how famous your website is with specific reference to the online world. This strategy involves link popularity as well as exchanges where you can get a proper link up to your website from another site. If you add keyword phrases which are linking the key.

• Directory Submission
• Article Submission
• Press Release News Syndication
• Social Bookmarking
• Social Media Marketing Which Includes Promotion On Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Digg, Delicious Etc.
• Blog Creation, Weekly Postings and Blog Promotion
• Content Editing & Rewriting
• Link Exchange
• Image Optimization
• Local and Regional Search Engine Indexing
• Video Marketing
• Comment Posting
• RSS Feed
• Forums Posting

Off-page factors affecting search engine ranking include:

• Incoming links from high page rank sites
• Anchor text links pointing to your site
• The page ranks of websites linking to your site
• The authority of websites linking to your site

Monitoring Search Engine Rankings: Important skills in Search engine optimization (SEO) is the measurement of results of application of SEO techniques as aforementioned.

Webs target: It helps you with your Search engine optimization (SEO) needs because after knowing the process as well as keeping up on the SEO industry changes as well as updates.

Other Activities: Natural Search Engine Optimization is the process of implementing cutting-edge best practices that cope up with the frequently-changing rules established by the leading search engines. These best practices assist a website in demonstrating relevance to the search engines for a pre-determined group of keywords. It's is a process that aligns a website's code and content with strategic keyword phrase targeting, ultimately assisting a search engine algorithm in understanding a website's theme and keyword. SEO can be simple for some websites, while others may require intense keyword density, content, navigation and internal linking changes.

• Google Sitemap Creation & Submission on Google.
• Yahoo Sitemap Creation & Submission on Yahoo.
• Competitor Analysis & Monitoring
• Webmaster Account Setup and Management
• Google Analytics (Statistics) Setup and Management
• PPC Basics

Factors to analyze a website for search engine optimization

• Age of website
• Total pages count within the website.
• Template layout.
• Navigation structure.
• HTML format (XHTML, CSS, etc.)
• On-page content.
• On-page scripting.
• META-data.
• Analyzing keyword density.
• Link Popularity.
• Quality of other websites linking to the website.

Best Practices for Pay per Click Management

• Goal Setting and Tracking
• Keyword Analysis
• Campaign and Network Strategy
• Bidding Strategy
• Ad Creative
• SEO Integration
• Reporting, observations and recommendations

Page Tagging

Concerns about the accuracy of logfile analysis in the presence of caching, and the desire to be able to perform web analytics as an outsourced service, led to the second data collection method, page tagging.

In the mid 1990s, Web counters were commonly seen — these were images included in a web page that showed the number of times the image had been requested, which was an estimate of the number of visits to that page. In the late 1990s this concept evolved to include a small invisible image instead of a visible one, and, by using JavaScript, to pass along with the image request certain information about the page and the visitor. This information can then be processed by a web analytics company, and extensive statistics generated. This can be done remotely, by the web analytics company.

The web analytics service also manages the process of assigning a cookie to the user, which can uniquely identify them during their visit and in subsequent visits.

Advantages of page tagging :

The main advantages of page tagging over logfile analysis are as follows.

a. The JavaScript is automatically run every time the page is loaded. Thus there are fewer worries about caching.

b. It is easier to add additional information to the JavaScript, which can then be collected by the remote server. For example, information about the visitors' screen sizes, or the price of the goods they purchased, can be added in this way. With logfile analysis, information not normally collected by the web server can only be recorded by modifying the URL.

c. The page tagging service manages the process of assigning cookies to visitors; with logfile analysis, the server has to be configured to do this.

d. Page tagging is available to companies who do not run their own web servers.

Logfile Analysis

Web servers have always recorded all their transactions in a logfile. It was soon realized that these logfiles could be read by a program to provide data on the popularity of the website.

In the early 1990s, web site statistics consisted primarily of counting the number of client requests made to the web server. This was a reasonable method initially, since each web site often consisted of a single HTML file. However, with the introduction of images in HTML, and web sites that spanned multiple HTML files, this count became less useful.

Two units of measure were introduced in the mid 1990s to gauge more accurately the amount of human activity on web servers. These were page views and visits (or sessions). A page view was defined as a request made to the web server for a page, as opposed to a graphic, while a visit was defined as a sequence of requests from a uniquely identified client that expired after a certain amount of inactivity, usually 30 minutes. The page views and visits are still commonly displayed metrics, but are now considered rather unsophisticated measurements.

The emergence of search engine spiders and robots in the late 1990s, along with web proxies and dynamically assigned IP addresses for large companies and ISPs, made it more difficult to identify unique human visitors to a website. Log analyzers responded by tracking visits by cookies, and by ignoring requests from known spiders.

The extensive use of web caches also presented a problem for logfile analysis. If a person revisits a page, the second request will often be retrieved from the browser's cache, and so no request will be received by the web server. This means that the person's path through the site is lost. Caching can be defeated by configuring the web server, but this can result in degraded performance for the visitor to the website.

Advantages of logfile analysis:

The main advantages of logfile analysis over page tagging are as follows.

a. The web server normally already produces logfiles, so the raw data is already available. To collect data via page tagging requires changes to the website.

b. The web server reliably records every transaction it makes. Page tagging relies on the visitors' browsers co-operating, which a certain proportion may not do.

c. The data is on the company's own servers, and is in a standard, rather than a proprietary, format. This makes it easy for a company to switch programs later, use several different programs, and analyze historical data with a new program. Page tagging solutions involve vendor lock-in.

d. Logfiles contain information on visits from search engine spiders. Although these should not be reported as part of the human activity, it is important data for performing search engine optimization.

e. Logfiles contain information on failed requests; page tagging only records an event if the page is successfully viewed.