Uh!? Should my site have a theme?
Fortunately Google have been pretty good about giving you tools allowing you to tighten up your on site theming. So I thought I’d run through a few of these tools to maybe give you a little inspiration.
I’ve worked these as case studies since it will help you contextualise this better.
So lets say you want to get your site to rank better on the long tail i.e. not the core trophy phrases, but those 2nd level ones with 2 or 3 words in the phrase i.e. “RSS Widget Feed”
Step 1
Go to the Google keyword search tool (Either the Adwords one or this: http://www.google.com/sktool/#)
And do a search for your root phrase across your chosen site. In this case I chose the apple site and the keyword “widget”. See an example here & Below.
Thats useful!
Keyword - Webpage url
“hotel search widget” – http://movies.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/travel/
world clock widget for – https://ssl.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/travel/
create dashboard widget – http://eg-www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/justforfun/dogtags.html
rss dashboard widget – http://eg-www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/justforfun/dogtags.html
widget freeware – https://ssl.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/travel/index_abc.html
dashboard widget that – http://eg-www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/justforfun/dogtags.html
rss widget dashboard – http://eg-www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/justforfun/dogtags.html
make dashboard widget – https://ssl.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/justforfun/index6.html
dashboard widget rss – http://eg-www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/justforfun/dogtags.html
rss feed desktop widget – http://movies.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/travel/
freeware widget – http://eg-www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/justforfun/dogtags.html
widget pour dashboard – http://eg-www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/justforfun/dogtags.html
minutes dashboard widget – https://ssl.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/travel/index_abc.html
Now you have the pages Google thinks are relevant to your chosen keyword, in this case “widget” and the other variations of the phrase it thinks is most relevant to the word “widget”.
So its got: “hotel search widget” that refers to this URL:
http://movies.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/travel/ (popout)
You have an initial line up of the 2nd tier phrases and their associated pages, now its a case of giving those pages even more internal prominence and diverting a whole load of nice relevant internal links to these pages.
Step 2
Point as many related pages to an appropriate single page to give it internal prominence.
Go to http://relatedlinks.googlelabs.com/ and follow the instructions (here is one I made earlier! )
Cool!
As you will see, you now have a list of other pages on the domain that Google thinks relates best to your phrase and that page.
Keyword here is: “hotel search widget” and the page is: http://movies.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/travel/ and the domain is apple.com
Now all you do is take those URL’s and link those into your root page that you want to have rank and now you have done a nice internal page rank reworking.
To take this further, you could take each of the pages from the 1st search for ‘widget’ and use those pages as your root related page and link those into your initial page i.e. instead of having 10 links into your target page, you now have 100.
Step 3
It’s time to do some external link building!
This is a huge subject, but a good pointer is to use Google sets to help you come up with a nice mix of anchor text that is on topic. Essentially if you linkbuild and only use your core phrase i.e. “widget” then you are likely to not gain rankings because the engines can see its a manipulated link acquisition programme.
So the game is to have a natural mix of anchor text. This is where Google sets comes in so nicely because they tell you what associated phrases to use!
See example here for “Hotel + Search + Widget” and from that you have a huge list of words you can write content around!
http://labs.google.com/sets?hl=en&q1=widget&q2=hotel&q3=search&q4=&q5=&btn=Large+Set
Nice mix of relevant words
I hope that was helpful.
Tags: Research
September 14th, 2010 · 2 Comments
Keywords!
I had read this great article by Andy Beal on Google suggestion and how you now need to account for it when you are doing keyword research.
So I thought I’d add a quick “how do keywords research extra” too, since I haven’t seen this anywhere else.
Step 1
My general view is that a site should have a root keyword theme. In other words this is a word or a few words from which the whole theme emanates. Forinstance, you might have a site for widgets. You do lots of variations of widgets, but at the root of the site is the word “widget”. So that’s is the starting point for the journey.
Step 2
So you have your core phrase, in this case “widgets”. Next step is the Google keyword finder here.
Now you also have the other related phrases in order of volume.
Step 2.1
Google have a search based keyword tool that lets you add a site and a keyword you’re interested in i.e. your root phrase for a site and it gives you a list of phrases and the pages it thinks are best related to that given phrase. In this case I have used http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/ because it ranks for KW “widget”.
See the keyword results here
From this I can get a feel for what words to optimise the various pages for on your site. Nice.
Search Keyword Tool
Step 3
With your core phrases, in this case “widgets”, go to a Google search page and type it in.
You will be given some suggestions:
widgetbox
widget software
widget logic
widget uk
widget locker
widget world
and so on
Now you have phrases around your core phrase that Google thinks relates to your search. This is good, since you now have other words to optimise for. (Assuming Google has got it right when they assume these are genuinely related searches)
Google Suggest
Step 4
So you have your root phrases, your associated phrases and now you are after broader set of phrases that Google associates with your root phrase ‘widget’: here
Google sets give you the words it thinks associates with a given keyword or phrase. they get this data from the relative placement of one word against another i.e. widget+google or widget+Wordpress and so on.
This information is great when writing content that is on theme since Google’s algo sees these words as naturally associating. So in this case if I wrote a piece about “RSS” then in the algo’s interpretation#, this is a closely themed piece to “Widgets”. In general I use this tool to help create variety but keep things on theme.
Google Sets
Roundup: Keyword research is an endless cycle, depending on how deep you want to go. In my experience its a case of being pragmatic and not trying to go to deep, other wise you will get swamped in complexity.
of all the tools, I think Google sets is the most interesting in that it helps you theme your content without overtly keyword stuffing.
Tags: Research
SEOMoz have produced this excellent slideshare on SEO. It covers just about everything SEO at a high level – great read.
the original post
Tags: Research
Search over the years
This is an excellent collection of infographics, and IMHO the most interesting of which is this (see thumbnail) :
Marketing Pilgrim post
The infographic on search engines:
Tags: Random
Tags: Random
SEO is changing and its now moving away from gaming the flaws of the search algo and moving towards creating a ‘social’ footprint to sugggest the importance of a site. This doesn’t mean banging out a succession of twitter posts, but it does mean being in the places which are prominent in search engines and where users care most about a given subject.
So with that in mind I’ve thought up a very rough reputation management framework that can double up as a process for getting ranked on the terms that bring in the money.
Its more than an SEO trick
The broad model here is to get
- Feedback on what a business is doing to make iterative changes to the products or services from the feedback cycle
- Manage reputation, both positive and negative
- Use the online ‘ecosystem’ to spread the good word about a product or service.
- Keep clear of trouble from regulatory authorities who can affect you
The Preparation
Agree messaging for Professional / trade / consumer
Define online hotspots of interest and commercial intent:
- What keywords should the product or service be found on
- What kind of site / blogger / thought leader should be associated with this and how can their positive comments be given prominence around
- Most relevant searched phrases
- Brand terms for the client
Create the right environmental conditions to ignite consumer demand.
- Build a ‘tribe’ of followers, who you support and in turn will evangelise on your behalf. This is where you have a two way ‘conversation’ with your community of customers.? This was famously done with the Obama online campaign or with Lady Ga Ga and her ‘little monsters’
- Manage reputation very carefully.
- Be seen as transparent, honest, serving the user/customer as best as possible on value and service standards.
The Actions
Monitor sentiment towards the brand online using online monitoring tools like Google alerts and http://www.trackur.com/
If there is prominent negative sentiment:
- Respond to it immediately and be transparent and honest
- If its something where the brand has done wrong and can’t / won’t rectify, then abondon the client! or bury it by up-ranking other content above it (the resource calibrated by the reputation damage caused)
- If there is positive sentiment towards the brand, but the content is not prominent, then use SEO to get it up-ranked for critical phrases like brand phrases and get it referenced in other big conversation hotspots
Reach out to thought leaders who can evangelise the service or product
- As with Offline, if you can make it easy for these people, they will find it easier to write about you. Give them the ingredients from which they can make up their own minds about the product or service.
- In online there is a massive long tail of writers and thought leaders. In accumulation they are very valuable. Have online press packs and all the ingredients from which they can write up their own informed views
- Give your tribe the resources to feel included and tools they need to talk about you
- Have a contributing presence wherever there is an important and prominent conversation about you or where there could be an important conversation i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Forums, Chat Groups, Linked in
- Your comment / feedback points on your site or 3rd party sites
Give prominence to the positive feedback on the product or service
- Have these reviews rank on search engines on keywords users would naturally search for when thinking of the product/service
- If possible, gather reviews and testimonials from users and re-publicise them.
Structure feedback into:
- Reviews with ‘useful? yes/no’ and ask for ratings. Ratings out of 5 stars (standard rating formula online) so you can get a positive rating for the company / service that you can disseminate to 3rd party sites
- If its a product then encourage existing customers to write about your products on 3rd party sites i.e. reviewcentre.com Amazon.com
Support/Education:
- Have a comprehensive help section online
- Online Press pack (giving evangelists the information they need to propagate the service)
- Forum with knowledgeable staff at hand to answer specific questions
- A staffer out online engaging with users who are asking questions. This person would also engage in important conversations that ‘can be found easily’
As I was saying earlier, this is only an outline, but hopefully it will give you a sense of the scope of activities that can be undertaken.
More reading on the subject:
http://www.sempo.org/learning_center/articles/ElixirSystemsOnlineRepMgmt.pdf
http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2006/03/online-reputation-monitoring-beginners.html
http://www.radicallytransparent.com/
http://mashable.com/2010/04/25/word-of-mouth-marketing-stats/
Tags: Social
