Getting started with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
This document is the first part of three stage guide to help you begin a search engine optimisation program on your website. It assumes that you at least have an understanding of what SEO is. If you don’t – just call us on 01793 832102 and we can help you.
Part 1) Keyword research
At Digital Trading Creative this is the absolute start point when we take on an SEO project. It has to be because if you do not have a clear view of what keywords/phrases you want to be found for then you are heading off on an SEO journey without a map!
It is critical to the future success of your SEO campaign that understand which words you need to target and what their value is to your business (how much traffic will they drive to your website and will it convert?) and how competitive are the terms you have selected (does your website stand a chance of ranking highly with them?)
With so much riding on getting the keyword selection process right here are some pointers for identifying the most effective keywords for your business.
Where to start?
Website Reports
If you already have a website and you have access to the site statistics (usually provided via your hosting provider) or maybe you set up your own using Google Analytics (well done if you did by the way!) These stats are a good place to start. Amongst other things they’ll tell you what keywords or phrases searchers used to find your site. These can often make interesting reading.
Brainstorm sessions
Arrange a brainstorm session or sessions with colleagues in your business and come up with a list of keyword phrases that you think people would use to find your business online.
If you are a sole trader you could ask other businesses associated with yours to help you with this exercise – suppliers or even better existing customers. If you belong to a business networking group ask the members to assist you and there are always family and friends around.
The really important thing to remember here is to try and put yourself in the position of a prospective client who wants the products or services that you offer but who does not know you exist. What would they type into the search engines? Be aware that these days people are using phrases of three four or even more words to try and get the most relevant search results.
Also avoid using industry jargon and buzz words that are not commonly used by your target audience. The daily jargon and acronyms that you might use with your colleagues inside the business may not be known or used by your target audience outside.
Look at your competitors sites
Take a look at the keywords your competitors are using on their sites. Have a read of their main pages - have they come up with anything you missed? Also if you go to your competitors website and from your toolbar select “page” and then from the drop down menu select “view source” this should allow you to see the keywords they have used for that particular page of the website. Look for the keywords tag;
meta id="MetaKeywords" name="KEYWORDS" content="Web design Swindon Business Websites online Marketing Increase traffic web design" /
Ask Your Customers
I often think that we don’t use our customers as much as we could for help and advice on how to develop our businesses. Information from your existing customers on the keywords and phrases that they themselves would use to find your business online could prove invaluable. After all they are exactly the kind of people you want to reach.
The exercises described above will generate a lot of keyword information. Now you need to sort the wheat from the chaff and to do that you need to determine which of these keywords and phrases are going to be most valuable to your business.
This next stage is critical because if you make the wrong selections at this point you could waste a lot of time and effort optimising your site for keywords/phrases that are either not searched for or are so competitive that you stand no earthly chance of getting onto the top two or three pages of search returns. (If you are not in the top 20 search returns – i.e. first 2 pages your chances of being found drop off a cliff!)
So how do you determine which keywords to focus on?
You will really need to use some online tools to help you here. Wordtracker is a widely used tool, used by many search marketing companies and Trellian’s Keyword Discovery Tool is also useful. However for a free tool that you can easily use try the Google Adwords Keyword Tool – enter the keywords you want to check and this will give you some top level search information - amongst other things you’ll get the number of searches made on that phrase in the past month. The Google Adword Keyword tool will give you an indication of the competitiveness of your selected phrases though do bear in mind it is skewed towards the paid search environment.
Wordtracker and other similar tools will give you a more meaningful indication of how competitive your chosen keywords are. It is important to know this because you could be wasting your time trying to compete in a hugely competitive space with certain keywords that you will never be found for because the competition is so fierce. To compete effectively in this situation you need to find niche keywords or focus on long tail keywords that are less strongly competed for.
If you have some budget available then I would recommend that you set up a short term Google Adwords Pay Per Click campaign to test your keywords in a real live situation. But do make sure that you set up the campaign correctly or you will not get meaningful results. Your campaign does not to need to run for too long and the results you get back will be invaluable.
By this point you should be in good shape to make final decisions on the keywords you want to optimise your site around. So make your choices – prioritise them and go to the next stage which is all about Content.
The next stage in this article series will be added next month. However if you can't wait - just contact us and we'll happily send you the full document straight away. Just ask for "Getting started with SEO".