Google Keywords Part 4: Targeting

In the last entry in our series on Google keywords, we talked about assembling a list of potential keyword targets. Today we’ll move on to the next phase, deciding which keywords to target.

By now, you should have repeated the steps in part three until you have a long list of possibilities listed in your spreadsheet. Depending on your subject, try to get to a list of at least 20 possible keywords (remember that the term “keyword” refers to a word or phrase).

Now return to Firefox, and open up your “Google keywords” bookmark folder in tabs, so that all the pages are open in one window.

Google Keywords Research

Copy the first keyword from your spreadsheet.

First we’ll check for additional related terms based on search traffic. Go to the second tab in your Firefox window, the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. Paste in your Google Keywords in quotation marks, type in the CAPTCHA text if necessary, and click “Get keyword ideas” to see the results.

Next, in the “Match Type” dropdown menu, select “Exact”. Click the “Approx. Avg. Search Volume” header to sort by search popularity. Be sure to use the average search volume – this is a monthly average for the past year.

Look for additional related keywords with similar amounts of search traffic, and add these to your spreadsheet. Scroll down to “Additional keywords to consider” and look for additional related, popular keywords. Add these as well. Leave this window open, you’ll be returning here. If you are informed that you have been logged out upon returning, simply refresh the page.

Assessing the Competition

Click the “SEO for Firefox” icon in the bottom right of your Firefox window if it is grayed out, making sure it is activated. When your research session is over, be sure to turn if off again so that your IP isn’t banned for too much activity.

Now go to your third tab, Google search. Paste in your Google keywords in quotation marks, and click search. In the results, note all the additional information added by the SEO plug-in.

Look through the top 10 results for your keyword phrase, and check the first bit of added info, “PR”. This is the Google PageRank at the time of the last public update, denoting the “strength” of the page with a number from zero to 10. With some solid SEO and link building, you have a great shot at beating 0 – 2 ranked pages, a decent shot at 3 – 4, and 5 and up will be tough. Note an approximate average PR for your front page competition (figure the exact average if you like), and type this in the second column of your spreadsheet next to the keyword.

Next, go to the third tab, Wordtracker GTrends. Paste in your Google keywords and click “Hit Me”. If your keyword appears in the results, click the graph-style icon and wait for the query to complete. This returns the number of competing sites for that keyword, and the approximate daily traffic to the number one page. Note Wordtracker’s recommendations. If you get one green checkmark, type an X in column three of your speadsheet. If you get two checkmarks, this is an excellent target, and place two X’s in your spreadsheet.

Go to tab four, the Keyword Difficulty Check Tool. Paste and click submit. Note the difficulty rank that is returned – the lower the better. Type this number in the next column in your spreadsheet.

Sorting the Results

Repeat the above steps for all of your keywords. Now sort your Google keywords spreadsheet by the last column, the Keyword Difficulty rank, from lowest to highest. Look for the lowest difficulty rank, with the highest number of XX’s in the previous column, and the lowest average PR competition. These are your best opportunities to achieve a high ranking. Highlight these in bold and save your spreadsheet.

Next time, we’ll refine our list, and get more information about our selected Google Keywords. I know this seems like a lot of work, but stick with it – it will be worth it.

Google Keywords Part 3: Ideas

Continuing our series on Google Keywords, today we’ll start assembling our list of potential targets.

Note: most information you’ll find on these techniques is about making money. The idea is to target Google keywords and then build a site around them, with the purpose of gaining traffic and raking in money. But I’m going to explain the reverse – taking the site you have, finding the right keywords to target, and optimizing your site so that people organically find your content. However, these techniques can be adapted to either goal. Perhaps in the pdf version I’ll explain the money-making aspect as well, but for now let’s just get an audience for your site.

Note for linguists: in this arena, the term “keyword” can apply to a word or phrase, although it is singular. For example, we refer to “Italian sports cars” as a “keyword”.

Now, having assembled the tools described in part two of this series, you’re ready to do your research. First, brainstorming:

1. Open up a fresh spreadsheet (pen and paper will do if necessary, but we’ll want to sort the results later).
    
2. Place your cursor in the first cell on the second row (leaving the top row open to place headings later).
    
3. Imagine you are asked the question by a stranger: “What is your web site about?” Answer this question in a short phrase. For example, “victorian furniture”, “1970s punk rock”, or “the meaning of life”. Type it in the box and hit return to move down one cell. If you think of several answers, repeat this as many times as necessary.
    
4. Imagine this stranger asks you to be more specific. Enter your answers, for example, “late victorian furniture”, “1970s New York punk rock”, or “the meaning of life in Greek philosophy”. Get creative with phrasing, and think of terms you mention frequently.
    
5. Now try to get even more specific, like “pseudo-oriental Victorian”, “1970’s Greenwich Village punk”, or “Aristotlean Nicomachean ethics”. Try to keep these phrases as short as possible. Do this for a few minutes, but don’t spend too much time. This is just the beginning, and we’ll refine our choices later.
    
6. Save your spreadsheet as “Google keywords” or the title of your choice.
    
7. Open up your site and look around. Were your answers accurate? Are you really writing about what you thought you were? Add more entries to your spreadsheet if more answers strike you.
   Now we’re ready to start using our toolbox.
    
8. Open Firefox. In the toolbar, look for the “Google keywords” folder you created in part two of this series. Click this once, scroll down and click “Open All in Tabs”. Numerous tabs will load, containing all of your research tools.
    
9. Go to the first tab, the Google Search-based Keyword Tool. This is actually a tool for advertisers, but it suits our purposes very well. Copy the first keyword from your spreadsheet, and paste in the “word or phrase” text field. Click “Find keywords”.

You may only get one or two results. If so, try removing a word from your query and clicking again. For example “late victorian furniture” returns one result, but “victorian furniture” returns 69.

Look down the list and see if any of the results might be reasonable answers to the question “What is your web site about?” If so, these are possible Google keywords.

10. Leave everything right where it is, and go to part four of this series, when published. There, we’ll talk about which of these are worth targeting and why.

Again please note this post is 600 words long, and mentions “Google keywords” six times.

You Trackback, I Follow

If you’ve been working on link building for your site, you may have seen the terms “nofollow” and “dofollow”. In a nutshell: standard blogging platforms like WordPress automatically add the attribute rel=”nofollow” to links left by visitors in comments of trackbacks (automatic links to blogs that have cited yours).  If you’re new to this, it may be confusing, so I’ll break it down.

The reasoning behind this is that visitors could spam popular sites with comments just to get links back and improve their search engine rankings. Especially troublesome were people who would sign their comments with names that were obviously just Google keywords, such as “New Jersey air conditioning repair” or “Best mortgage rates”. Since most comment systems link the commenters name to their site, it was a cheap way for spammers to get some link juice for their sites. Usually the comments would be cut-and-paste jobs that added no value to the conversation (“Great job! Awesome post.”) and the culprits would leave them on hundreds of sites. The sole purpose was to gain backlinks, not to contribute anything.

And so the “nofollow” attribute was added as the default in blogging software. This attribute tells search engine spiders not to follow and index the link, thus removing the incentive to spam. And indeed it has worked. No incentive to spam = no spam. The free market does its job. Hooray!

However, some bloggers feel that if someone takes the time to contribute something of value, they deserve at least a “dofollow” link back. (Side note: technically there is no “dofollow” attribute. When you see references to “dofollow” or “yes-follow” links, it simply refers to the absence of the “nofollow” attribute).

The “dofollow” movement has been spreading around the blog world for a couple of years now. There are popular plug-ins which tell blogging software not to add the “nofollow” attribute to comments/trackbacks, and even search engines which specifically list only “dofollow” blogs. It’s all a great communal, open-source, happy joy-fest…except that the spammers are back. The cost of wanting to spread a little link love to your commenters? Loads of bogus comments to sift through and delete.

So what’s the middle way? Enter “dofollow trackbacks”. This plug-in for WordPress removes “nofollow” from trackbacks, but not from comments. Thus when someone cites your post in their blog, they receive a link back, but commenters still get “nofollow” links. There’s still no incentive to go around leaving worthless comments, but people who link to you automatically get something back.

I’m instituting it on this site as of now. It looks promising, but we’ll see how it goes, and I’ll report on the results at a later date. For now, count me with on the “You Trackback, I Follow” movement, and let the games begin.