Keywords – Tools to Online Success
Many of us in the online marketing community look at keywords as a synonym of a real key that “unlocks” traffic, however, I rather like to look at keywords as actual tools that gives your website the ability to open more than just doorways to additional traffic. Let me explain:
Keywords, similar to screwdrivers, don’t always fit the screw that you have sitting in front of you. Similarly, targeted keywords aren’t always going to perfectly fit every user’s request. Search engines are looking to find the “best fit” from the tools that are in their “proverbial” chests. To that point, semantics are becoming more important than the actual keyword you are targeting. For this reason, it is extremely difficult to be semantically related to a particular topic with minor amounts of content, not meaning you have to provide a dissertation about “pink slippers” or anything, but a reasonable amount of content (a paragraph of content) should be included for each keyword targeted on a page.
Semantics are becoming more important in SERPs, as specific keywords are being replaced by context and topical themes (more information about semantic units). Why are semantic relevance becoming more important? Simply, it makes sense for the benefit of users.
Here is a case in point:
“football magazine article” in Google – 5,030 results
football magazine article in Google – 59,100,00 results
What I am not saying is that you shouldn’t optimize content for head terms, however, it isn’t reasonable to think that optimization of a particular keyword can only contain that particular keyword. Google sees that there are more than 59 million results that are relevant to football magazine article, but it is only specifically contained in just over five thousand pages on the web. So, there are approximately 1,000 times that, that are relevant to the keyword query.
Incorporating user-centric content optimization, does not mean having the keyword a user searches for on your page, rather, it does mean that your content is relevant and addresses the intent of the search. If I am looking for those “pink slippers” for my daughter for a gift, I really don’t care to have missed out on the sites that call the color of their slippers coral, fuchsia, raspberry, rose or even salmon. Makes sense, right?
On the horizon, Google caffeine (not available at this time), appeared that it gave a reasonable advantage to websites that were more semantically related to a keyword phrase than to a specific keyword. It appears that sources are indicating that Google may be implementing caffeine now, just before the 2009 holiday season. or after the holiday season.
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- Keyword Research – Tips and Tools
{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
Sometimes it is difficult to find exactly the right set of keywords for a specific type of website and the best you can do is come as close as possible and over lap as much as you can.
Thanks for this. Would you say it is very important to target keywords that will be searched specifically then? I know not many people use it but you can see the massive difference when using the quote marks.
Alex,
I would work toward what keywords are related to the most searched terms. Not just focusing on “shoes”, but running shoes, dress shoes, casual shoes, whatever makes sense for the context of the page. Pages below this in the hierarchy may be better suited to be more specific and support the pages above. Thanks for the comment.
Thanks! I was a little confused about how to really go about optimizing for keywords. This had cleared it up a bit.
SEO and SERP are factors which we must take much care. Simple mistakes can outtake all our Search Engine Rank.
Your blog looks cool because the Nice font you have selected. I liked it very much. Keep blogging.
Google caffeine will be a game changer for SEO’s and all search engine optimization rules will have to be revisited. I have been using Google Keyword Tool for a while to find hot keywords which have less competition. Thanks for your article .. it was nice to read your perspective about keywords ~ websites
Thanks for the post. Ranking high for short phrases is such a pain these days… Every bit of info helps.
One of ancient technique of wrestling up with semantic representation is acronyms. Unfortunately google and others fail royally at dealing with acronyms.
Alan, is Caffeine really a game changer- from what I’ve seen to date it has only changed the speed at which sites get indexed – especially social media content… Very little has changed aside from that really.
What do you think?
Abdi for me,
caffeine’s effects will be for 2010.
Google changes every time and we have to adapt us not google to us
May I just add that keywords are great, and people should use the Google Keywords tool always before publishing a post, because a tiny difference in the Title could make a great difference. But don’t spend any time on the meta tag keywords, google doesn’t give credits to that anymore.. not since a loong while ago.
Just my 2 cents
i made a tool to compare Google and Google caffeine and after they turned off dev preview i got ip from mattcutts for the datacenter that is still testing it so i could keep checking caffeine results
When you look this up on Google’s keyword tool, do you use Broad, Phrase or Exact Match?
I assume you use broad match however it would be good to know.
Cheers
Ben,
Thanks for the question. Actually depending on the type of keyword research I am working on will be the determination of the broad or exact match type. At the page level, I will always go for the exact match because this is the most realistic in terms of expectant traffic.
A bunch of things to say to this:
1. Always focus on usability and the user’s needs. The reason why keywords are highlighted in search results is that Google is telling the user these are most relevant to what you typed. I like to use related terms (see point 3 below) but they are nominally useful to the actual user.
2. Googel Caffeine a game changer? I hope you are not a professional SEO telling that to your clients, Alan Write. And besides, local results, real time results, otehr vertical results all changed the game – I dare say a lot more than Caffeine will. Abdi is right that it is mainly about speed – Google’s and site’s page load speed.
3. I like Google’s keyword tool because I *think* the list of Additional Terms to Consider provides a hint of Google’s LSI, so you might use these in further content development or links from the page you are building.
Our experience is, that nothing is better than content! Do not just rely on optimizing your site towards keywords. Google seems to be “intelligent” enough to reward sites that provide real (and unique) content.
This may be no short term website “pusher” but in the long term your site will rank higher!
Nice post though!