Have you optimized your web pages in order to receive traff?c from the major search engines (SE) like Google, Yahoo or Msn?
- If you have, then I’ll show you a simple method you can use to increase your traff?c further by up to 50% or 100%!
The most common practice is to optimize each page with one keyword and by “keyword” I mean a search phrase. The reason for this is that in order to be rated high in the SE, the keyword needs to be found in the page’s title, in the headlines and to be included a number of times in the main text.
You can have a maximum of two relevant but different keywords included in the title. If you include more than that the optimization for those additional keywords will dilute your result.
This is because the optimal length of the title is limited to only a few words for effective SE optimization.
The best option is to optimize for just one keyword per page.
The two most useful tools for keyword research are WordTracker and the Overture keyword inventory tool.
Both will give you an estimate on how many searches are made on keywords on the Web.
WordTracker is a pay service which also measures the number of competing web sites for keywords. Overture’s inventory tool is a fr?e service. The main purpose is to give bidders a way to measure how many times each keyword is being searched. Overture is the leading pay-per-click search engine. Its keyword inventory tool is not made for SE optimization research.
However, that is what a lot of people use it for. WordTracker keyword statistics are better than Overture’s. Overture uses an aggregation from Overture’s partners and often the traff?c statistics are diluted by automatic queries.
Of course the statistics from Overture and WordTracker are not always accurate. What is important is that from these tools you can extract a lot of extra words so the exact number is not so important. Use them together with your main keyword or spread them out throughout your page.
Any combination of your main keyword together with one of the extra words will give you a boost in ranking. This is because you have already optimized your page for the main term “backup program”.
If someone searches for “best backup program” and you have included “best” in front of “backup program” only once in the text you will show up high in the results. You will also probably show up high even if the word “best” is not next to “backup program”.
Extra words as candidates to include in our case are: “Free, computer, dvd, add, remove, software, data, drive hard, windows xp, cd, windows, recovery disk, installed, home edition, outlook express, backup, win2k and database”.
Special Note on Overture’s Tool:
The number of searches for “backup program” is 999. This number also includes “backup program”, “backup programs”, “program backup” and “program backups”. Both in singular and plural.
This gives a somewhat misleading figure for the keyword, especially for searches that include many individual words.
Which of the word combinations have the highest number of searches?
You just don’t know! You have to use your common sense.
Overture often lists the different words in alphabetical order which give misleading information. For example, people don’t usually search for “backup drive hard program”. They are much more likely doing searches for “hard drive backup programs”. Or “backup programs for hard drives”. Words like “to”, “for”, and “on” are ignored by the SE.
This method to include extra words works best if the page contains at least 400 – 500 words. A page that contains more words is better.
If you sprinkle the text with some of the suggested words on your page, you will increase the number of visitors you get from the SE substantially.
This does not mean that you should sacrifice the quality. Don’t use it for keyword stuffing.
Include words that fit in naturally on your page.
The advantage of doing this for the less searched phrases are:
1. There is less competition for those keywords.
2. Searches for the keywords are more specific, which means a more precise search. Visitors are more likely to cl?ck on your link and also to respond positively to your message.
3. Web users are more likely to look beyond the first search page. This is because the searches are more specific and other results on the list are more likely to be on target.
Recently, in November 2003 and January 2004, Google made changes on how it values web pages. Small web sites with few inbound links were hit hard. Many websites lost good ranking or worse disappeared all together for important keywords.
What disappeared from the SE results was in most cases only the primary keywords for each page. In our example that would have been “backup program”.
By adding related keyword combinations together with your primary keyword you would still be found in Google’s search for a large number of keyword combinations. For example, in our case, we would be found for “best backup program”.
