Keyword research is critical to your success when building websites to maximize your your return on time invested and to maximize your traffic.
Because regardless of whether you choose to monetize your sites with Google Adsense, the Amazon affiliate program, Clickbank products or any other method you care to mention you will need to attract visitors to your site.
And this applies equally to building a great website for your own business, no matter whether you are offering a product or service or both.
Don’t forget to read keyword research part 1 to extract maximum benefit from this series of posts which do follow a logical sequence.
Keyword research is basically finding out what searchers are looking for and then creating content for your site in such a way that the Google search engine will choose to put your site in front of the searcher in the first page of Google’s search engine results as a good match for what the searcher is looking for.
When creating websites you need to structure your site with content in such a way that your chances of being well ranked in the search engines is exponentially improved and your site/article is served up to the searcher as a good result for the searcher.
To summarize you need to focus each and every piece of content on your site for a specific key phrase for which you are confident you can rank.
But this is only part of the strategy because a very lame strategy is to have your content targeting only one key phrase- it makes far more sense to have your post or page targeting more than one key phrase.
This allows you to take advantage of latent semantic indexing (lsi) which is a fancy way for ensuring that the related terms and phrases which the Google robot expects to see in your content are actually there.
I strongly recommend that each piece of content contains at least 10 related keywords which you can obtain from the Google Adwords keyword tool.
Here is an example: say you are targeting the phrase “shed plans”.
Go to a tool (free) called http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook or the Google Adwords tool and type in “shed plans”.
You will see underneath that phrase when the results are returned a whole series of other related keyphrases and words such as “free shed plans”, “storage shed plans”,”garden shed plans” and many others.
Any piece of content that is seeking to be optimized for the phrase “shed plans” should also include these other key phrases like “garden”, “storage”, “tools” and so forth.
There is 2 major reasons for doing this-
1. Your content will be seen as relevant to the search engines becase not only does your article include the primary key phrase but it also includes other relevant and related phrases and words;
2. When you are promoting this post by back linking you can link back using ALL of these key phrases.
This is telling Google that your piece of content is about not just shed plans but all of the other key phrases that you use in your hyperlink back to your post.
Always keep in mind that whatever theme or niche you choose to occupy with your niche site, ALL of the content on your site should be tightly themed and focused on the niche that you are targeting.
This ensures that it is easy for the Googlebot to figure out what each page is about and what your site is about.
Without this focus you will not rank well in the search engines as they will not be able to really ascertain what your site is about.
Summary
In summary your niche website should be
1. Tightly focused and consistently themed
2. Each piece of content on that site should be targeting specific key phrases and include related keywords and phrases
Choosing key phrases to target
I recommend optimizing each post or piece of content on your site for key phrases with less than 50,000 search results when you search for your key phrase in inverted commas.(See previous post to understand why you use inverted commas when doing your research).
Here is part 1 of this series showing you how to create a well structured website..
Filed under How To Build a Website 
Keyword research is the fundamental basis on which you should build your niche website, particularly one which you aim to monetize by Google adsense or the Amazon affiliate program.
But the skill of good keyword choices through research with the Google Adwords tool or similar tools is a skill that will stand you in really good stead for the building of any website.
You will spend quite a bit of time writing content and promoting your site in order to rank well in the search engines and attracting visitors for free traffic which is a cornerstone of building a great website which attracts great volumes of traffic to whatever your business offers.
So, lets take an example of how you would carry out your keyword research and keep in the forefront of your mind what you are trying to achieve.
You are looking for a keyword or more accurately a key phrase which will in the first instance form the basis of your site. So lets say you are going to create a site about pens.
Pens on it’s own is a huge market and the word “pens” will be too difficult to rank for initially.
So I would give it a miss and dig deeper down into this market and go for a more niche market such as “fountain pens”. To research how competitive a phrase this is I will firstly go to the free keyword tool and type in the phrase “fountain pens”. I make sure to choose All Locations in the settings you are offered and also to choose “exact” searches in the left panel.
This tells me that today there are 8100 exact searches per month for this keyphrase. I then go to the Google search engine and type in “fountain pens” and this is important-you must put the key phrase in inverted commas because this gives us more accurate results.
I know that people do not search like this but we are trying to establish how many sites are optimized for this key phrase and the inverted commas allows us to see this. When I do this I get a results figure of 687,000 which is far too competitive.
So I will not build a site targetting “fountain pens” because the search results figure I am looking for above must be less than 50,000.
So I go back to the keyword tool and carry out this type of research on other key phrases. When I have a look again I take a look at “pelikan fountain pen”. This exact phrase is searched for 1,600 times per month and the number of sites which are optimized for this phrase is 65,200, that is to say that when I put “pelikan fountain pen” into Google’s search box the number of results returned is 65,200.
Even though this is borderline insofar as it is greater than the 50,000 I normally use as a cut off I will go for it on this occasion.
I did in fact proceed to purchase a domain name targetting this key phrase and within weeks this site was on the first page of Google and has remained there since.
This method of keyword research is designed to let you see key phrases that are not too competitive and have decent search numbers. As you get more proficient you will be able to show more ambition in your targeted key phrases but it is important when you start out that you see some little victories and gain some momentum.
This keyword research is critical important when building a website for any purpose because it saves you a lot of time and frustration trying to rank for search terms/keywords that are simply too competitive.
This method of choosing phrases to target for your site can be used for any site in any market and will ensure that you get the best return on your efforts to attract the maximum search engine traffic to your site.
And this traffic is of course “free” traffic and will grow exponentially over time as you add new content to your site and the search engine robots add more and more combinations of your keywords to it’s search results.
The alternative to carrying out smart keyword research is to write about topics and keyphrases randomly and to hope for the best..this is not a strategy designed to bring long term success.
This is step 2 in this series of starting an online business-check out step 1, an overview of starting an on line business.
Filed under How To Build a Website
I have met a lot of people who are working their butt off to increase traffic to their website.
People in different industries with different products or services to promote but with one common problem-very poor traffic stats.
There is one simple way to fail online with your web based business- a failure to generate sufficient visitors or traffic to your site.
You may be providing the best product or services in the world or in Ireland but if nobody finds your site and discovers the quality of your offering, unfortunately you will struggle and the work you invest in your site will be counter-productive.
This failure can be easily traced back to the structure you put in place for your site at the outset.
The structure that I am referring to is how to set up your site, how to set up categories, how many categories, what navigation to use, what to write about, what essential pages and posts you must have and so forth.
Keyword research
No sane online business owner should build a site without extensive keyword research before even purchasing a domain name.
The time you spend on research, specifically keyword research, is time well spent and is critical to the ultimate success you see with your website.
Like building a house, building a website must be built on a solid foundation.
This solid foundation involves picking the right combination of key phrases to be targeted on your site.
Simply put this involves picking key phrases or words that strike the right balance between having sufficient search numbers and manageable competition from competing websites in the search engines.
Latent Semantic Indexing
Latent semantic indexing put simply means that the key phrases that appear on your site should be thematically consistent.
It is an important concept in the success of your site but the scientific sounding name should not intimidate or put you off. Latent semantic indexing simply means the method by which Google ranks the relevance of your site for particular keywords by the presence or absence of other related keywords.
In short, Google rewards sites which contain the key phrases it expects to see when you are writing about a particular topic.
Publishing a lot of content on your site which does not fall into your overall site structure or vision, which fails to target specific keywords or phrases which are most relevant and valuable to your business can lead to a lot of heartache and no traffic.
You don’t want the electronic equivalent of tumbleweed rolling across your website, do you?
Filed under How To Build a Website
There are essentially 2 ways to increase website traffic to your website-
1) Buy it
2) Get free traffic
Buying website traffic
Buying website traffic is an expensive way to generate visitors for your site and is not sustainable in the long term unless your conversions of visitors to sales are sky high.
There are many places which offer advertising programs such as Google Adwords and the Microsoft AdCenter which allows you to advertise on Yahoo and Bing.
Organic (free) traffic
Organic traffic is that traffic that types search terms into their search engine browser bar when looking for something on the internet and is then presented with a page of search results by Google, Yahoo or Bing.
This traffic is
1) Free
2) Interested in what you are selling because they have typed a particular keyword or phrase when carrying out their search.
For the long term success of your business your efforts should be targeted at attracting as much of the second type of traffic as possible.
This is the type of traffic that your website should be targeting and succeeding in attracting.
But this can only happen if your website features prominently in the search engine results page (SERPS) for whatever product or service the searcher was looking for.
The key to getting this type of organic traffic is ensuring that your website is built with a great foundation.
What is a “good foundation” for your website?
It is a website that is optimised to rank well in the search engines for the very terms that your customers are most likely to be searching for.
So if you are selling your services as an electrician in Edenderry or Mullingar or wherever the goal is that your page will show up on the first page of Google when somebody types “electrician Edenderry” or “electrician Mullingar” in the search box on their computer search engine.
To build such a site you will need to carry out a good deal of keyword research to create a good structure for your site before you make a single post or create a piece of content.
This is not very difficult to do provided you have the basic skills and elsewhere on http://WebDesignDublin.org you will find plenty of information about carrying our proper keyword research and learning how to set up your site properly.
Once you carry out this keyword research you then build your site (or have it built for you by an internet marketing consultant or web designer) who understands what you want and who themselves understand search engine optimisation.
Key lesson
If you want to get maximum return on your investment in a website for your business or professional practice you will need a sound foundation which is possible through smart, search engine optimised keyword research.
The Best Way to Increase Your Website Traffic
The best way to increase your website traffic is to find out what your target market is looking for and give it to them.
How do you do this? As indicated above you can use the free Google Keyword tool to ascertain the keywords and phrases that people in your market/industry are searching for.
Then you simply target those phrases in a systematic way by writing content about them ensuring that your post/page is optimized for the search engines and humans alike.
This involves the inclusion of related keywords and phrases, synonyms and so forth in your post/page.
The outcome of this is that your site will begin to rank well for the phrases that you targeted but will also begin to rank for phrases that you would never even have thought of as the search engine robots will assemble different words and phrases to match the searchers’ queries.
However Google bot and the other search engine robots simply cannot do this if the words and phrases are not present on your website to begin with.
Conclusion
Find out what people are searching for and give it to them and watch your website traffic grow organically.
Converting this traffic into clients or new business is a separate task but you simply cannot generate new business if you are not attracting visitors to your site.
Filed under Search Engine Optimisaton Ireland
