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SEO 101 – Part 9: Everything You Need To Know About Keyword Core Terms

Posted on 24th February 2010 by admin in SEO

attempts, bag, bloggers, clean slate, Core, Don, Keyword, keyword research, l oreal, list, New York, Page, perspective, phrases, process, quetions, relevant terms, research, search engine, site, term, time

by Stoney deGeyter

The following series is pulled from a presentation I gave to a group of beauty bloggers hosted by L’Oreal in New York. Most of the presentation is geared toward how to make a blog more search engine and user-friendly, however I will expand many of the concepts here to include tips and strategies for sites selling products or services across all industries.

Research Takes Time

The process of researching your keywords isn’t something that should be rushed. Each phase of the research process needs to be performed deliberately, ensuring that you take the time to find all relevant terms and discard the irrelevant. Any attempts to rush through the keyword research process will likely lead you down the wrong paths at best and at worst cause you to have to rethink your entire keyword targeting strategy.

Unfortunately the research process isn’t always linear. You can often be working on several phases of the research process at a time depending on what your focus is on at a given moment. There is a lot of overlap and moving backward and forward through the processes but care needs to be taken that you don’t skip over or leave any of the phases out.

Brainstorming Keywords

You can start the keyword research process anywhere, but I like to start with a clean slate. What keywords do you start the research process with? Do some brainstorming.

Brainstorming allows you to get a list of keywords from an unbiased perspective. The brainstorming process doesn’t mean just sitting around and thinking up phrases, though can be a part of it. Good brainstorming starts with asking questions that can then lead to answers. More times than not, those answers will also be your keywords.

First, think of what questions are relevant for you. Don’t try to answer them, you have time for that later, but compile your list of quetions that will help you find the keywords you are looking for.

Once you have a good list of questions do whatever research is needed to find the answers. Those answers give you a base of keywords you can then take to the online research tools to look for related phrases. These related phrases produce a wide-range of variations in how your topic is searched. Some relevant, others not so much.

Find Core Terms First

Undoubtedly in the brainstorming and research process you’ll amass a list of hundreds of phrases. You want to keep the process as simplified as possible so we’ll start by eliminating everything that is not a core term.

A core term is a keyword phrase boiled down to the essentials. It’s specific enough to produce a relevant result but broad enough to cover a wide range of much more targeted phrases. Generally a good core term is two, maybe three words. On rare occasions a core term can be a single word, but only when there is no room for alternate interpretations.

Only use qualifiers on a core term when it is necessary to ensure that the searcher will be led to a relevant page. For example the word “bag” could mean anything from a garbage bag to a sleeping bag to a travel bag. This is a core term that needs a qualifier in order to be relevant to the searcher. If it’s not relevant it’s not a core term.

Each page of your website should have a single core term associated with it. You may find several pages on your site that are a good fit for a single term. That’s fine during this research process but later you’ll want to make sure you select only the most appropriate page for any single core term. The others will have to find their own core terms.

Don’t stop your core term research until you are certain there are no more possible variations that produce measurable traffic. Using the keyword suggestion tools available in most keyword research programs, find all relevant variations on each of your core terms. For example a “travel bag” can also be a “back pack”, “luggage” (a rare case of a one-word core term) and a “duffel bag.” Each of these can be searched to find even more possible core term variants.

In almost every industry I have worked with I have been able to find different ways searchers think of the same product that the site owner hadn’t. Sometimes these variations don’t get searched much while other times they are more popular than the terms that the site owner said were the most important. Knowing these options in advance can make a dramatic difference in the direction you go with your optimization campaign.

Core Term Site Mapping

After you have put together an exhaustive list of core terms and before you start performing deeper research into finding specific phrases, you want to map out where your core terms will be integrated into your site. For some industries it’s as easy as looking at the content and assigning core terms to pages. For others, where there are a lot of core term variations that mean the exact same thing, it can be more difficult.

Assigning core terms to pages must be done very carefully. You need to ensure that the content of each page is either a 100% natural fit or the content can easily be adapted to fit that core term. A good example is “cost segregation” versus “cost segmentation”. Both essentially mean the same thing but both are frequently searched (though one more than the other.) The content of a page about “cost segregation” can easily be adapted for “cost segmentation” without altering the meaning or focus of the page.

If you can’t make a keyword fit without significantly altering the message of a page, then you find another core term, or another page for the core term.

I recommend prioritizing your core terms before assigning pages to them. Figure out which terms get more search volume, are most relevant, bring in targeted audience and which produce the best sales. These are all important factors of determining which core terms are more important than others.

By prioritizing your core terms you can research and optimize those that are most important first before moving on to lower priority terms. The optimization of your high priority terms can take some time so leaving the secondary terms for later is good optimization strategy.

Before you move into the next phase of the keyword research process you have enough information to start optimizing your website. With the core terms and the map of where each core term will be implemented, you can begin to perform a very broad and quick optimization of the website. Going a page at a time, optimize title tags, meta description tags, headings and even a bit of content.

I wouldn’t spend a lot of time on each page as you can go do a more indepth optimization later, once you have more keywords to work with.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

Small Businesses Must Choose Partners Carefully

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Posted on 24th February 2010 by admin in SEO

360s, business, company, company partner, consumers, crappy, everything, extra mile, good reputation, Microsoft, microsoft xbox, Mike Moran, mistake, online, problem, purchase experience, service, several different ways, site, small business, story, story doesn, warranty, Xbox, xbox 360

by Mike Moran

As a small business, you probably pride yourself on being customer friendly. Even though you might work with large companies as your suppliers and partners, you go the extra mile for your customers when something goes wrong. You make your site search friendly. You put the information on it that customers need. And you stand behind what you sell. Except when that big company partner makes it impossible.

Image representing Microsoft as depicted in Cr...

Image via CrunchBase

And that’s the problem. As a small business, you must be extremely careful about the big companies you work with, because sometimes you can’t paper over their big company ways. And when that happens, you get hurt. You can lose business and you can lose your good reputation.

All this was brought to mind from a purchase we made not long ago, buying a refurbished Microsoft Xbox 360 from a small business online. Now, you might say to yourself–there’s your mistake, buying some crappy refurbished model instead of a new one–but we frequently buy refurbished technology and have never had a problem. The site we purchased from was well done, clearly explained everything, provided a manufacturer’s warranty, and seemed entirely reputable. I still think that small business is entirely reputable, so I am not naming them in what might appear to be a negative story.

The problem wasn’t the small business. We searched for Xbox 360s and that site came up near the top of the list. We checked them out several different ways and they came up clean. The site looked good and the purchase experience was easy and we received the console quickly. Everything worked.

We had a minor problem that we called Microsoft about and they cheerfully verified our warranty was in force and sent us a replacement part for free. My son is happily playing with his Xbox and it’s another happy story about a small business that helps out consumers by selling refurbished units and a large business that services its customers.

But you know the story doesn’t end there, because that would be the most boring blog post of all time. Instead, the Xbox suddenly starts throwing the dreaded E73 and E74 errors, so we followed the troubleshooting procedures and were informed by the Microsoft support site that we needed to get the unit repaired, and we could do that online.

Except we couldn’t. We dutifully followed the instructions to register with Xbox Live to report our “Xbox dead.” We put in the serial number and pressed the “Request a repair” button, but it always provided an error message telling me that the service is temporarily unavailable. (It’s been temprarily unavailable for over a week now, which makes you wonder what a permanent outage would look like.)

So, I got on the phone and requested the repair and the technician verified that we were covered and promised to send us an empty box (and Xbox box, I guess) for us to return the unit to be fixed, which takes four business days. After five business days went by with no box, I called back and was told that we were ineligible for service (the technician actually said we were “illegible” for service, but I decided not to squawk about how neat my handwriting can be) because we had viloated the terms and conditions.

I won’t take you through the literally hours of phone calls with technicians and supervisors that ensued. There was a multitude of times that I was told that they had no record or only a partial record of my last call, that the person I talked to the last time was mistaken–all the usual big company support crap. But the bottom line is that Microsoft had banned our console from service, voided the warranty, because they claimed that we violated their terms of service. They refused to say how or when we had done this, and claimed that it could have been something the previous owner did.

I know, I know, none of this makes any sense. If the previous owner had done it, you’d think they would have known about when we had the minor repair done months ago, but they were unmoved by such logic. They even have a page posted on their Web site that explains that there is no appeal process for console bans. So, even if they make a mistake, you’re screwed. That is really their official policy. The support technicians won’t talk to you about it and their online forums have a policy that any posts about console bans are deleted without response.

So, at this point, I thought that this must be some weird situation that rarely happens. Hardly. I found similar stories of people banned here and here. Now, for all I know, Microsoft has never made an error in banning someone before they banned us. But because they won’t tell us why we were banned, I have no trust in their process. They know why they banned us, but they just won’t tell us. And they won’t tell us why they won’t tell us.

The moral of the story for small businesses is that you must choose your partners carefully. The small business did everything right, but Microsoft ruined the customer experience. I know enough about business to place the blame where it is due, so I am not running around online giving this poor small business bad reviews. But someone else might. And I can totally understand why. Microsoft threw the small business under the bus, intimating that it was because we purchased a refurbished console that all of this happened.

But that isn’t so. What’s really true is that Microsoft has a set of policies designed to protect Microsoft, rather than its customers. The refurbished story is just a ruse trotted out in this situation. The truth is that Microsoft does not tell people why they were banned, what they did, or when it happened. And they don’t have any process to appeal if Microsoft makes an error. That is a set of policies that no small business can live with, if they want to safeguard their reputation of caring for customers.

And sad to say, I won’t ever buy a refurbished Microsoft product again. We’re going to buy a brand-spanking-new Xbox 360 because we don’t want to punish our son by throwing away his Christmas present. It kills me to do this, because I am giving more money to Microsoft, precisely the company that is at fault in this entire mess. I’d rather say I’ll never buy a Microsoft product again, but I know I will.

I am hoping that if enough people speak out, that Microsoft will change its ridiculously secretive policies and enter the age of open information. If Microsoft has such iron-clad evidence that something was done to void the warranty, they could present that evidence, but they refuse.

So, small businesses get hurt because their sales drop off and their reputations are endangered, all because they are working with a big company that has policies they’d never adopt with their own customers. Beware the partners you keep, because they will end up reflecting on you in ways that you can’t control. Being in the refurbishing business is perfectly fine, as long as you can count on your partners to stand behind the products that you sell. If you can’t, then it’s your business that will likely take the fall.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

Listen to Your Customers to Adjust Your Keywords

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Posted on 14th February 2010 by admin in SEO

Alerts, cell phone, Chief Strategist, conversations, cost of ownership, feed, focus groups, full disclosure, Google, Keyword, keyword research tool, marketing, Mike Moran, nuggets, phone changes, research, RSS, search, search engines, search keywords, smart phone, surveys, technology changes, time, variations, way, word

by Mike Moran

You probably use many sources to brainstorm your search keywords, but how do you know if your customers are starting to change the way they search for your products? Have you listened to what your customers are saying? Time was that listening to customers demanded expensive focus groups and surveys, but that time has passed. Nowadays, you can listen to social media conversations and analyze them for any number of purposes, including search keywords.

Image by ~~Jo~~ via Flickr

Think about how you do keyword research normally. You probably start by entering into the search engines some keywords you know are relevant. Then you look at what pages come up and start to catalog in your mind some other words that you see on those pages. Then you start entering some of those words and continue the process until you start to see that you are getting too far away from the original subject.

Then you take those words and use a keyword research tool to help you see which words are searched for frequently enough to be valuable, and then you let those tools show you other popular variations. And while all of that is very smart, you know that over time your customers start to shift what they are looking for.

The language around your product might change, due to technology changes (cell phone becomes smart phone), changes in customer needs (low cost becomes total cost of ownership), or simple shifts in the language (energy efficient becomes green). When it does, you need some way of picking up on what’s happening so you can adjust your keyword mix in response.

For large businesses, you can use social media listening services to help you find new words that your regular keyword research might not have uncovered. The listening companies will do the work for you and find those nuggets that you might have missed. [Full disclosure: I serve as Chief Strategist at Converseon, one of those companies happy to listen to your conversation and help you with search marketing also.]

But for small businesses with limited (no?) budgets, what can they do to listen to their customers’ conversations?

Google Alerts to the rescue. You probably already use Google Alerts to monitor mentions about yourself and your company, but you can also use it for keyword research. You can load up Google Alerts with a bunch of your keywords and start reading the stories that come your way for new keywords.

But, gee, that seems like a lot of work, doesn’t it?

To take the drudgery out of it, use a word cloud (as pictured above), which visualizes the words being used so that you can see which ones seem to be occurring more than others. To automatically generate a word cloud from your Google Alerts, set up an RSS feed for your Google Alerts, rather than e-mail notification. Then, enter the URL for that RSS feed into Wordle, which creates a word cloud from any RSS feed.

Just point your RSS feed at this tool every once in a while, and immediately see what you are missing. When you listen to what your customers tell you, it’s amazing how smart you can look. (Only you and I know the truth…)

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

SEO 101 – Part 8: Everything You Need to Know About Keywords

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Posted on 14th February 2010 by admin in SEO

accurate results, bloggers, blue prints, Cycle, downside, Google, great tools, information, insight, interest, Keyword, keyword combination, keyword research tools, l oreal, low hanging fruit, major search engines, marketing efforts, New York, optimization, phrase, process, research, ROI, search, search phrase, searcher, segment, word phrases, word queries, wordtracker

by Stoney deGeyter

Keywords are the blue-prints from which all your marketing efforts are built upon. Keyword research tools provide valuable insight into what words people are searching on the major search engines. But research tools are just the first step in a thorough and well-planned keyword research process. Great tools like Keyword Discovery and Wordtracker or even Google’s tools don’t tell you the intent of each search, however that information can be deduced with a bit of analysis and keyword organization.

But before we get into that, let’s look at how people search so we can better understand how to segment and organize your keywords into an effective optimization campaign.

How People Search

Over the years searching trends have changed. Once upon a time the majority of searchers used one word queries. Eventually they started realizing they they get better, more accurate, results when you give the search engine a bit more information about what you are looking for.

The more accurate the search phrase you use in your search is, the more accurate the results will be that are returned. Studies have shown that four and five-word phrases often have a higher ROI than one and two word phrases because the searcher is more likely to get results that meet their needs.

The downside of longer phrases is this increases the keyword combination potentials so the number of searches for any one phrase reduces dramatically. This makes optimization more difficult. Instead of optimizing for one general phrase you have to optimize for five very specific phrases. This is the long-tail of keywords, also known as the low hanging fruit. These longer phrases have far less competition and are much easier to get ranked, but also produce lower traffic volumes.

Long-tail phrases should not constitute the primary focus of your optimization efforts. Nor should you focus primarily on short-tail phrases either. A good keyword optimization strategy goes after both simultaneously.

keyword Buying Cycle

Every user has different needs and ultimately different goals they wish to achieve when they begin a search process. Many searches are quick with a sole purpose of learning something such as “how many days does it take the Starship Enterprise to travel from Earth to Vulcan at Warp 7?” A few searches may give you a satisfactory answer and then the ~~sci-fi geek~~ Trekker can go back to watching her ST:TNG marathon.

Other searches have another simple goal: to buy a product that best suites your wants and needs. While that goal maybe simple the process to reach it isn’t. Most searchers–no matter what the goal–will ultimately use at least parts of the following research cycle.

Every search starts with an interest. The interest generally uses broad keywords with one or maybe two words. As the user moves through the other stages–gather, research, exclude and purchase, they make their queries more and more specific. Every change in query, brings the searcher closer and closer to their goal, each giving them more information along the way.

Most searchers go through this process unintentionally, but as they start in the lower stages they learn more about what they want and how to search more accurately. How does a searcher know they want a 1080p blu-ray player (for his Star Trek Blu-rays) until they learn that 1080i isn’t quite as good?

Most businesses want to be ranked for the interest level searches because that’s where the most traffic is. This can often be a mistake because searchers will often use those sites as a springboard to get to the other sites that meet their more specific queries. There is still valid reasons to be ranked on these broader searches as that can help brand your site and bring people back as they know more of what they want, but the conversions come from the more specific terms.

What You Learn

Once you understand how the searcher progresses through the buying cycle you can then learn something from the keywords that were used to search. The information you glean can be crucial in determining how to develop the content and direction of your website.

Target Audience: The more you know about who your target audience is the better position you will be in to meet their needs. The keywords used by business professionals will often be different from keywords used by students and hobbyists. Both will be using keywords that appear to be relevant but depending on what you offer, not all of them truly have the same intent or delivered to the same page.

Areas of Interest: Keywords can tell you what is important to your target audience. Are they looking to satisfy a quick query about warp speed travel or are they looking for the quantum mechanical details of how warp propulsion works? Both of these queries take you to Star Trek sites but the latter would certainly turn the non hard-core Trekker away muttering, “stupid sci-fi geeks” under their breath.

Needs to be met: Finally, your keywords can tell you what needs the searcher is looking to have met. Some hobbyists are looking for a strategy for tackling their next project and a business leader may be looking for a community of like-minded individual.

Unlike the chart above, keyword research isn’t always a linear process. There is a lot of overlap and much that you do in the process requires going back and repeating once you have new data on hand. Keeping your keyword research fluid helps you maintain accuracy and adapt as changes are made in visitor search patterns.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

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