3Apr09 Adwords Marketing – Your Domain Name is Virtual Real Estate
keyword adwords


Your domain name is virtual real estate.  A relevant domain name will boost your Google quality score.  Plus, using keywords in the destination url will also boost your quality score.

There is an old saying that the three most important things in selling real estate are location, location and location.  This drives home the point that the one major concern of real estate is the location of the property.  It’s the number one rule of real estate.

On the internet, real estate is the domain name.  If you want to receive traffic for a particular keyword or market, you must choose the proper real estate and location.  That means you want a domain name related to your keywords and market.  Ideally, your main keyword or phrase should be the domain name or part of it.  This will put you in the right location for your market.

Both search engines and human consumers will respond to the proper domain name.  Google Adwords will reward you with higher quality scores if it can match your domain name to the keywords.  Plus, Google will also boost your organic search results for your keywords if the domain is relevant.

Human visitors will assume you are more of an authority with a relevant domain.  Imagine an Adwords ad where the search term is part of the domain name.  The consumer will recognize your domain as targeted for their search.  That will increase the likelyhood of a consumer clicking your ad. 

One question with domain names is should you use dashes or underscores in your domain name.  One school of thought is that the dashes or underscores will help search engines recognize individual keywords, and hopefully boost organic rankings and quality scores.  The other argument is the human visitors are likely to forget dashes and underscores when typing a domain name in the browser address bar.  The safest play is for you to buy both domain names, one with dashes and one without.  You promote only the dashed domain name but you have the second doain in case someone types it without dashes.  Domain names are less than $10 a year, so it’s well worth the price.

In Google Adwords, the destination url and display url are important as well.  A domain name cannot cover every keyword for your market.  You must ultimately select one keyword or phrase as you domain name.  But your destination url can include the keyword as part of the path.  That way you have a revelant domain name plus a path that contains the keyword.  If you give each keyword and seperate destination page, then each keyword can be part of the path.

Similarly the you can put the keyword in the display url.  The display url is not used for anything other than display.  It has no effect on the destination url.  But, since it is displayed the consumer will see it.  So, using the keyword as part of the display url will make your ad more appealing.  The consumer will notice your url is targeted for their search term. 

Dynamic keyword insertion can be used to place the search term in the display url.  It can also be used in the destination url, but it should not be used there.  Adwords will not give any benefit to a url that is using dynamic keyword insertion.  It is not treated as the keyword itself when determining the quality score.

 



No Comments Posted by ewwink in Internet Marketing
Tagged ,
3Apr09 The Google Keywords Tool Guide
keyword tool


If you have thought about starting your own website or already have one, and have done any research at all, you have read about the importance of keywords. Everything on the web is driven by keywords. It’s the fuel the Internet runs on.

One of the ways to get great traffic to your website is through the Google Adwords program. You select the keywords you want to bid on and set up the budget you want to use to get traffic based on those keywords from websites that utilize the Google Adsense program and other sources.

There is a tool to help you choose the best keywords to bid on that you definitely need to know about. I just learned about it from a friend, so we are going to learn how to use it together. Open a new browser window and copy and paste this address into your address bar.

If you are not sure about all of the terms used in association with keywords and Google’s Adwords program, click that very first link that says, “Keywords for your ad campaigns”. You can use that as a guide if we get into unfamiliar territory.

In that first paragraph is a link titled, “Learn More”, that gives a more detailed explanation about using the Google Keywords Tool. In this article, I am going to try to give you the information in layman’s terms to make it easier to understand.

As with anything, you should also at some point read the terms of service. It is always a good idea to read the terms of service for any program you are about to use. But we will skip that step for now.

We all think we know which keywords we want to and are targeting with our website. I just had a humbling experience. I have been at this for a long time and have a lot of experience in optimizing websites for keyword content. However, I just clicked the tab at the Google Keyword Tool that says, “Site-Related Keywords “, to extract keywords from one of my own websites and can see that it is not optimized for the keyword I would have chosen.

You may want to do this first. Put in your URL and let it pull out the keywords it finds to be most relevant to your website. You might be as surprised as I was. Now I am going to be re-writing some of the text content at my website before I bid on any Google Adwords. Without the Google Keyword Tool, I would have likely just wasted money.

Make sure your website is optimized for the keywords that you wish to target by analyzing it with the Google Keyword Tool before bidding on your Google Adwords.

Now, using the other tab, “Keyword Variations”, you can type in one keyword phrase or keyword per line and it will give you suggestions as to other keywords and phrases you can bid on that are related to your topic. (I like to type in one keyword or phrase at a time)

The suggestions the Google keyword Tool creates for you are based on statistical data Google compiles from the numerous searches that occur daily through their search engine, so those keywords and phrases are more likely to produce targeted traffic to your website.

As you type in each keyword or phrase and check the results the Google Keyword Tool gives you, look over to the right. You can add the keywords and phrases you might like to bid on. Create your list as you go. You can always edit it down to a few later on.

Once you have your list of keywords and phrases you might want to bid on, you can login to your Google Adwords account and check to see how much it will cost you for each of them. Then you can decide how to spend your budget wisely. Nothing replaces good research. The Google Keyword Tool takes a lot of the guesswork out of buying Google Adwords and I applaud them for creating this great tool.

Now, what they do not say anywhere at the Google Keyword Tool website, is that you can use this tool to analyze your competitor’s websites as well. Go to Google and type in your targeted keyword or phrase. Copy the URL of the top 10 results. Analyze each of them using the “Site Related Keywords” tab at the Google Keywords Tool.

By doing this, you will see what keywords and phrases their websites are optimized for. If you want to compete with them, you need to optimize your website in a similar way and you may want to start bidding on keywords and phrases that match those that were pulled from competing websites.

Follow success and it will follow you. Do what successful people are doing and you are likely to also achieve success. The Google Keyword Tool can help you do that.



No Comments Posted by ewwink in Internet Marketing
Tagged ,
3Apr09 Keyword Selection and Website Optimization
keywords


Marketing and optimizing a website for search engines is a broad topic. There are many factors to consider when heading out with the goal of improving your website’s visibility and ranking within various search engines. In part one I will discuss the highly requested topic of website keywords. In follow-up articles I will cover additional topics such as page ranking, pay-per-click advertising campaigns, the marketing techniques to avoid, and the latest analysis technologies including eye tracking software.

Choosing the right keywords for a website is an important and informative research task. In the process of improving your website you’ll learn a lot about your industry and your competitors.

Keywords are one the main factors that come into play in the algorithms used by major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Windows Live Search. If a web surfer is looking for home decorating tips and types ‘home decorating’ into a search engine, it will search its database for websites that contain that phrase and those individual words.

Selecting the correct keywords

If you are an expert in your field, you know what your customers are looking for. Specifically, you know many of the words and phrases your customers would use to describe your products and services. Start with what you know.

Write out a list of phrases and words that describe your business. If you have a home decorating business you may think of words like ‘interior design’ and ‘furnishings’. Sort your list so that the most common phrases are on the top of your list.

You will now want to cross-reference the list of keywords that you have compiled with other lists generated for your industry. This will bring to mind other keywords that you may not have thought of. I recommend using a popular web-based keyword research tool named Wordtracker (http://www.wordtracker.com). Wordtracker helps identify additional keywords and phrases and offers a free trial of their service. It provides only a limited number of related words, but is still a great starting point. Searching for related keywords for ‘home decorating’ with Wordtracker produces a list of keywords like ‘home’, ‘decor’, ‘decorating’, ‘home decor’, ‘furniture’, ‘design’, ‘interior’, ‘interior decorating’, ‘art’, ‘wall’, and ‘fabric’.

Other keyword tools, which produce similar results, are also available. These include, among others, the web-based tools provided by Yahoo (Overture) (http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/), and Google (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal).

After compiling and merging the various lists of keywords, you’ll be ready to move on to the next step.

Using the correct keywords on your website

Now that you have a clear picture of which keywords web surfers may type into their search engine to find your business, you need to be sure your website contains these important keywords.

A strategy is required when updating your website to include the keywords in your list. Starting at the top of your list, quickly review the keywords. Think about which keywords would naturally be present on your website and which keywords you probably wouldn’t use. Using the first list of keywords, you may now start reviewing the different sections of your website.

Your selected keywords should be placed in various areas of your site with the proper frequency. Your website content should focus on making sense to your visitors, not fed with keywords that will hopefully improve your search positioning. Search engine algorithms can detect the over use of keywords, which can negatively affect your positioning. Let’s now look at different areas of your website.

Website Title

Every website has a title. This is not a website logo or a bold heading found on the top section of a website. The website title is displayed in the web browser’s title bar. This is the top most area of the window located to the far left of the window’s minimize, maximize, and close buttons. The website title is also the text that is displayed in search engine search results, which is often in a larger font and underlined. The website title is the first thing that a web surfer sees when performing a search. Web surfers quickly scan through search result website titles to evaluate which website will meet their needs. This is your first opportunity to grab their attention.

A website title should contain as many of your keywords as possible, while maintaining easy readability. This will do two things for you. First, the search engine will find your website in its database and display your website in their results. Second, the website title will catch the surfer’s interest as they see their search criteria matching your website title. Over-stuffing the title with keywords makes the title difficult to read and may be seen as abuse by search engines. The website title is updated by changing the text located between the opening and closing title tags, in the header of the HTML code. The title length should be kept to handful of words. The website description allows more space for describing your products and services.

Website Description

As with the website title, the website description should also contain a variety of keywords. Unlike the website title, the website description is not visible on any part of the website itself. The description is the summary information you see in search engines results, displayed below the website title. The website description gives you a little more space to describe your website and your products and services. Again, be sure that your description is easily readable for your visitors, in order to attract them to click your site title. The website description can be updated by changing the text in the description meta tag, in the header of the HTML code.

Website Keywords

Along with the title and description entries in the HTML code, there is also an area to define a set of keywords that you’d like to associate to the page. This is called the keyword meta tag. Keywords are entered as a comma separated list. The industry consensus is that the keyword meta tag is currently of little or no use with today’s major search engines. However, search engines continue to recommend their usage.

Website Content

This brings us to the meat of our website, so to speak. Our chosen keywords should be used throughout the website content where it makes sense. Again, over-stuffing page content with keywords so that the message is unnatural can be detected by search engines. A good practice is to use the keywords to make the page content more descriptive. For example, a pet store may sell a variety of pet foods. This can be written in a descriptive manner, such as, ‘dog food and cat food’, instead of using ‘dog and cat food’. In this example the keyword ‘food’ is used twice.

Headings and Hyperlinks

Special attention should be given to the usage of heading tags and anchor tags. Keyword usage in page heading is more valuable than keywords used in a paragraph of text. The same can be said with anchor tags (a.k.a. hyperlinks). Using keywords as the clickable text of a hyperlink is very valuable.

Keyword Density

Keyword density refers to the percentage of occurrences of your keywords compared to the other text on the web page. Keyword density tools such as Webconfs.com’s Keyword Density Checker (http://webconfs.com/keyword-density-checker.php) provides a visualization of the main theme or message on a chosen page. This tool counts the number of times each word is repeated on the page, which is a good test of how you’ve done at inserting keywords to optimize the content. It is also a good representation of how search engines will see your page. ‘More is better’ is not the most effective keyword density goal. Although the optimum keyword density is much debated, having some balance is definitely in order. A density below 1% makes it difficult for a search engine to understand your main message, where a density over 5% will start to make the content appear unnatural. At this stage in website optimization, the page content can be continually edited while the keyword density is being re-checked. Continue this process until your keywords are among the words with the highest density.

Conclusion

Choosing the correct keywords for your website is a must. Website keyword optimization is not rocket science, but it must be implemented carefully. By using the correct keywords, not only will your site be positioned well in search results, but it will draw visitors to your website.



No Comments Posted by ewwink in Link Popularity
Tagged ,
Pages (128): « First ... « Previous 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 Next » ... Last »