SEO Tips: Determining the Competitiveness of Your Keyword Phrase

Choosing the right keyword phrase is important in search engine optimization. There are a few questions that you will want to answer when it comes to selecting a keyword phrase:

1. How much search volume is there for your keyword phrase?
2. Does your keyword phrase convert?
3. How competitive is your keyword phrase?

In the video below, I will focus on the third question – “How competitive is your keyword phrase?”

Here are three searches that you can do on Google to give you a picture of the competiveness of your keyword phrase

1. Go to Google.com and search for your keyword phrase in quotes. This search will show you the number of pages that Google has indexed that include your keyword phrase. The higher the number the more competitive your phrase might be
2. Go to Google.com and search for allintitle: “your keyword phrase” This search will rank pages solely based on their titles. Title tags are important search engine factors
3. Go to Google.com and search for allinanchor:”your keyword phrase” This search will rank pages solely based on the anchor text pointing to those pages.
4. Compare the allintitle and allinanchor searches. If those two searches on Google are almost identical, then you have a highly competitive keyword phrase on your hands.

Competition does not mean that you should shy away from a keyword, but you should be prepared to work much harder and expect the results to take a long time. If time is not a luxury that you have, then you will want to target a different keyword phrase.

My Website is Not On Google What should I do?

Last week I showed you have you can check quickly to see if Google has your website indexed. If you find that a page or that your website is not indexed what should you do? Some might be asking this question: How do I submit my site to Google? I would suggest you don’t submit your site via their URL submit tool, but rather create a sitemap and submit your site that way.

Below is a Video that will talk about 3 ways you can get your pages indexed in Google.

In the Video we talk about 3 things.

1. Submit an XML sitemap

2. Write a blog post about your new page and link to that page

3. Have other write a post and link to that page on your website.

If you have questions or comments, let me know by commenting below.

How do I know my if my Website is on Google?

This was a question I received from someone just yesterday. I actually think I made a video about it in the past but thought I’d take a minute and show you one more time.

You can go to google and use what is call the “site:” operator to see if your website is included in Google’s index.

If your site is listed you will see a list of all the pages that Google as indexed for you website – some thing like this.

Now if you want to know if Google as indexed a specific page on your site, you could search for this on Google site:www.yourwebsite.com/some/page.php

Replace the some/page.php with the actual address of a specific page and replace yourwebsite.com with your actual website.

Finally if you want to know if what pages on your website are about a certain topic in Google eyes, your can search for this site:www.yourwebsite.com “some topic”

This final search is important because you can use this to see which pages on your site have to do with “Condos” or “Baby Strollers” and make sure that all related pages are linking to your most important “condo” or “baby stroller” page with good link text.

In the next blog post I’ll answer this question – “I did a search on Google for site:www.mydomain.com and my site is not listed. What can I do?”

Talk to you soon.

Rodney Bartlett
Lead Instructor – Reachd.com

Google Squared Set to Launch end of May

In case you missed it at the Searchology event hosted by Google earlier in May a new look to Google search could be coming soon.

A quote from the google blog about what Google Squared is.

We also showed a preview of a new tool that we’re calling Google Squared. Unlike a normal search engine, Google Squared doesn’t find webpages about your topic — instead, it automatically fetches and organizes facts from across the Internet. We’ll be opening it up to users later this month on Google Labs.

Below is an exclusive video from Techcrunch where you can see the new product called “Google Squared” demonstrated live. (if  you are reading this via email, then be sure to click through to the post to watch the video.)

What does this mean for you?

1. With Google squared search could become more and more personalized. It will become increasingly important for you to “know” your searcher and write content for them.

2. Comparison of products or search results on Google will become more robust. If I’m shopping or researching a person or product, I can lay out a very detailed matrix of what I find as the strengths and weaknesses of the search results.

Google is a little secretive about when Google Squared will be launched but did mention in the video that you should watch for it at the end of the month. It could possibly be released at their Google I/O event but no one knows for sure.

4 Phase Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Strategy

In our seo bootcamp we spend two days going through some of the do’s and don’ts of search engine optimization.  Search engine optimization, often called SEO, is the process of optimizing your website so that Google, Yahoo! and MSN understand exactly what a page on your site is about and will show that page on their search engine for a determined keyword search.

I want to boil that definition down for you and give you a quick overview of how SEO works in this blog post.

My simple definition of SEO: “Making Google’s Job easy.” Building your site so it is easy for Google (and the other search engines) to find, crawl, and understand exactly what each page of your site is about.

How can you make Google’s job easier? Below are 4 phases of search engine optimization. They are not really steps because you are continually repeating these phases. It is important to understand that SEO is never complete. Your website is an organism and needs to be continually fed with content and updates.

Phase 1: Determining Your Keyword Phrase(s)

Often called keyword research, in this phase your are seeking to determine how your customers search for your products or services online. What exact words do they use and in what order. Do they call your product that same thing that you call it or do they have a different name for it. In my case, I’ve found that some people also call SEO, website optimization or google optimization. So I need to call my product what might customers might call it so that I can be certain that Google will find my website for the chosen keyword phrase. Here is one tool you can use for keyword research and another blog post I’ve written about this keyword tool

Phase 2: Writing content to address needs of your web searchers

In this phase you will take your keyword phrase and then write some content to address the needs, questions, or concerns that searchers might have when they are searching for this particular phrase. The search engines are not your primary concern at this point. You don’t even need a website to complete phase one and two. You goal is to take the keyword phrase that you’ve found and then address the concerns of your web visitor with content on your website. If you write for poeple first and not the search engines you will likely avoid getting into trouble with the search engines. Here is an article that gives you a few tips on laying out your content for people

Phase 3: Help Google Understand Your Webpages

This phase has actually has 2 parts. Part 1 deals with the content. Once you’ve written the content for your visitors, how do you go back and edit that content to ensure that Google understands what your page is about. This includes things like your meta description, title tag, link text, etc. Part 2 of this phase is geared towards the technical issues on your site. Do you have an XML sitemap? Is your menu structured properly? Do you use proper redirects? How are your URL’s structured? Did you get all that? Did that make perfect sense so far?

Phase 4: Help Google (and Yahoo! and MSN) Find your website

Besides submitting and XML sitemap, the search engines will also find your web pages through in bound links to your website. Each link is sort of like a vote for your website. Some votes count more than others. The more “votes” that you have the better, but also the more quality votes that you have for your website the better. You should always be working to get more and more links and more and more quality links back to your website. The search engines do want you to get links along what they determine are natural means. Stay away from sneaky leaking schemes or link farms.

If you follow those 4 phases for search engine optimization you will rank higher in the search engines and your traffic will increase.

SEO does take time and it does take effort. If you are looking for search engine exposure instantly – Google adwords is the way to go.

If you have questions leave a comment below or attend our upcoming seo training to learn how to execute your seo strategy.

We have seo courses in Vancouver as well as SEO courses in Wichita, KS

All the Best,
Rodney Bartlett
Lead Instructor – Reachd.com

Flash Website and SEO

A big questions in our last search engine optimization course was will Google like my website if it is flash? Watch this 4 minute video to see what I think about the answer.

Yes Google has gotten better at indexing flash, but flash websites are still difficult to index. I would recommend that you do not build a website in all flash. You can have flash elements, but you do not want to have too much flash on your website.

Beyond what Google does with your flash website, what do visitors do with your flash website? Does it take a while to load? Is all the flash distracting and keeping me from completing my goals on your website. If so, then bag the flash and go with a simple website.

7 Minute SEO Instructions

The video below is longer than what I typically recommend people make for their blogs, but I had a lot to cover so I hope you will indulge me.

A few of our students left the SEO course yesterday scratching their heads. I made this video to help clear up some of their questions. I hope that it helps you as you pursue your quest for higher Google rankings – increased traffic and increased conversions.

In this video I talk about what I think are the 3 most important on page elements for your website. Hopefully you plan to edit all the on page factors for SEO but if you only have time to do three, at least edit the three factors listed in the video.

All the best!
Rodney Bartlett
Lead Instructor – http://www.reachd.com

Stephen Jagger Presentation to the Board of Trade

Steve Jagger spoke to the Vancouver Board of Trade about Search Engine Optimization and gave tips on how to get more out of your website and web presence. This is a one minute clip from that presentation.
There were 90+ business owners and marketing managers present listening to Steve’s presentation.

One of the big take away’s from the presentation was.. “Don’t worry too much about what you don’t know. Take what you know and get busy applying what you know. Then as you begin to see improvement start adding in some new pieces to your strategy.”

Questions from Yesterday’s SEO Training in Vancouver

Graduates of 3 Hour SEO Course

Yesterday we taught our 3 SEO course. One of the things I work hard at is to give people a chance to ask their questions and make sure that the things they must have answers to are addressed. In the course we had a few people with some search engine optimization experience but the majority of our attendees were just business owners or entrepreneurs like you that wanted to learn more about how they could get the most from their website.

Below are the questions that were asked and a few answers

Q: “When adding text on website should I put my keyword phrase in bold or all caps? Or does it matter?”
A: You start your second paragraph with your keyword phrase and use bold. This won’t give you a huge search engine optimization boost, but it will draw the visitors attention to the keyword phrase and confirm in their mind, that they’ve come to the right place. Stay away from using all caps, because there is research to show that all caps is more difficult for us humans to read

Q: “Meta keywords – I heard that these don’t matter. Is that true?”
A: Yes this is true for the most part. The major search engine (aka google) does not use the meta keyword as a ranking factor. However, other search engines do. As a good rule of thumb you should continue to use Meta Keywords on your website. Just don’t lose too much sleep over the question, “what is the right meta keyword…”

Q: “What percentage of people use Google?”
A: According to Hitwise the Google market share in the U.S. is now around 65%. In Canada, that number is much higher around 80+%. If you are curious where that Canadian number comes from comment on the post or drop me a message on twitter and I’ll let you know.

Q: “SEO does it cost money?”
A: The technical answer is “NO” rankings on Google, Yahoo!, MSN are “free” in that you don’t have to pay to have your website listed there. However it does cost you time and time is money. You will want to consult with someone or hire someone to manage your SEO efforts for you. There are some important directories that you will want to submit your site to. It does cost to have your site listed in those directories. This question is a bit relative because for keywords with lower competition it will not take as much work to gain higher rankings.

Final Question: “How often should I resubmit the XML sitemap?”
A: You don’t need to resubmit your sitemap. Once you have set it up in the google webmaster tools, it will be downloaded for you automatically. If you do a lot of reworking to your website, like adding lots of pages, you would might want to go in and resubmit the sitemap. I log into my Google webmaster tools once a week just to make sure everything is working and that there are no errors.

I hope those questions and answers help you achieve success with your website. Remember to always point your aim towards conversions and not just high rankings and more traffic.

Committed to Your Success!

Not All Links are Created Equally

I’ve had a few emails and questions about linking and building links so I’d like to offer a few linking definitions here just so everyone knows some of the different in’s and out’s of linking. Primarily we are talking about in bound links (IBL) with this post – that is someone linking to your website.

First, why are links important? Links are like votes for your website. Remember – Google is basically a machine and although the machine is very smart it needs a little nudge from human’s to help it sort out which sites are most valuable. Links tell Google, “Hey, check out this site. It is a good one” But not all links are created equally.

Follow & No-Follow Links – No-Follow is an attribute given to links which webmasters don’t want the search engines to crawl. You would also use no-follow if you don’t want to pass pagerank off to a certain page you are linking to. More about page rank here and stay tune for a future posts on page rank. No-Follow was introduced by Google because many webmasters were running around to blogs and submitting comments on blogs to get links. N0-follow was introduced to ignore those links. No-follow is most often used, in social media websites, (facebook, youtube, etc) and on blogs (especially in the comment section). If someone is linking to you, generally you do not want them to use No-Follow.

Reciprocal Linking – This is a link that is the easiest to get and one that some directories will require for you to get a link in their directory. A reciprocal link is where website A links to website B if, website B links to website A. While there is no known penalty for reciprocal linking, you will find there there is little value add regarding an increase in rankings. The one positive to reciprocal linking is traffic. If a reciprocal link in a directory brings quality traffic to your website, then it could be worthwhile. Generally speaking reciprocal links are not valuable.

One Way Text Links – These types of links are by far the best for your website. Links from a quality website with steady page rank will be the best “vote” for your website. You can grab some of these links from high quality directories, talking with your partners (other businesses that you work with) and colleagues in other locals (if your business is bound by geography.) The emphasis here is on quality. Please be careful of link farms and in general stay away from sites that look questionable.

Getting votes or links to your website is never a completed task. One important part of getting links is to be link worthy.

1. Build a quality website in which all the links work and images load properly

2. Add some content that is valuable to your visitor. As the owner of a few websites, I would be more likely to link to your site if you are providing some valuable meaningful content for visitors.

I trust those linking thoughts help you. If you do power down your business for Christmas, I would encourage you to sit on the couch, crack open the laptop, fire up “It’s a Wonderful Life” and look to build some quality links to your website. That is what I will be doing over the break

If you have questions or comments, drop a comment by clicking on the comment link above this post.

All the Best,
Rodney Bartlett – Lead Instructor