Choosing the right words for search optimisation
Posted 2 May 2007 at 9:22AM by Simon Dickson in Managing your website
When people talk about optimising your website for searching, they're invariably talking about 'keywords'. You need to second-guess your potential users, to think of the words they will probably use when looking for websites like yours; and you need to second-guess the search engines, to decide where they will go looking for those keywords.
Let's tackle the first of those first. If you're an expert in a particular field, you're probably fluent in its jargon, but your customers probably aren't. (We're especially bad at this in the technology business, of course.) Your ego may be boosted if you use the precise technical language on your website, but your bank balance almost certainly won't be.
So what words should you use? It would be brilliant if Google published details of the number of times people searched for a particular word... but sadly, they don't. Thankfully, Yahoo does make this information available, if you know where to look.
Hidden away on the pages promoting Yahoo Search Marketing is a link to its Keyword Assistant. This tool asks you for a word, then tells you how many times people used that word - and crucially, phrases including that word - in searches during the last calendar month (or thereabouts). With so much data to trawl through, the site can be slow, and may even time-out on you... but be patient.
The actual number of searches doesn't really mean a lot, but the ranking is reliable, and the relative numbers of the various phrases can be taken as a reasonable guide. Spend a bit of time with a thesaurus and your imagination, and see which (relevant) words and phrases score highest - then make sure you use those same words and phrases on your pages.
Sometimes, of course, you might not want to focus on the highest-rated words: you might be better off trying to be 'number one' for a less popular word or phrase, where competition is reduced. For example, countless businesses are probably battling to be number one for 'hotel' in most towns; you might get more business overall if you focus your efforts on less used terms like 'bed and breakfast' or 'guest house'.
The best Google can offer is its Keyword Tool which offers several different data selections - including 'search volume trends', 'keyword search volume' and estimates for the costs of keyword advertising for your chosen words or phrases. All very good but crucially, it only gives mini-graphs to show relative popularity, rather than real numbers. It's a guide, but it's no substitute for the hard data.
PS: used in reverse, the same tools might provide you with some useful business insight. You might spot a large number of people looking for a particular service in a certain area, and not finding it: that might be a tip-off as regards your expansion plans.
Tags: google, keywords, search engine optimisation, yahoo
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