Part Four

How do you tell which words have significant search volume?

Take a good look at the existing site content and meta tags to get an idea. Then use keyword tools and your own imagination to determine what they should be going after.

Example: http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

But it’s a double-edged sword. Just because a phrase has tons of volume doesn’t make it the best choice to optimize for. You should geo-target and use longer, more relevant (i.e. ‘pink roller skates’ instead of ‘roller skates’) iterations whenever possible to reduce the amount of competition and increase conversion potential via said relevancy.

1. Run a ranking analysis on the site using something like Website Grader or WebCEO. Words on your list that you continue to do very well for – defend. Words on the list that do poorly for, attack. To do a more detailed report I use a tool called WebCEO which I pay for. It is the best. Defend the keywords you already do well for and simultaneously go after the words that you’re invisible for. A lot of people think that once they get onto the front page of Google they are done. That is not true and having to defend good rankings via offsite SEO (link building) is important to do... forever.
2. Weigh the weaker words against their title tags, page content, etc. to see what should be changed in order to rank higher – make changes to physical site code.
3. Start an aggressive off-site link building effort targeting specific keywords that they want to be more visible for.

What do you mean by off-site link building effort and how do you target keywords in links?  

There are many creative ways, commonly referred to as ‘link-baiting’ to get people to link to you without you even having to ask. The easiest way to sum that up is: engaging original content. Bingo – target keywords in your <a> tag hyperlink. The algorithm will pass through and begin to associate the site being linked with the keywords used in the text hyperlink.

To achieve this use a combination of a blog, article directories, press releases, squidoo, wet paint, hubpages, paid links, online charity donations, etc.

What is an article directory?  When do we send a press release and where should we post it to?

 An online press release is similar to a traditional one. It is a self-serving marketing ploy. There are right and wrong ways to spin them. Make sure that they are well written, catchy and actually newsworthy. Bad press release title: ACME Hammocks are the Most Awesome in the Universe and you Should Buy One. Good press release title: Innovative and Environmentally Friendly Hemp Hammock Introduced by ACME. There are free and paid PR sites and I can send you a list. The big paid ones are prweb.com and pr.com.

An article directory is a depository of objective, useful and free articles that webmasters are allowed to use on their sites. The catch is they cannot edit what is there. So if you have an ‘about the author’ section at the end that links back to your site with a keyword-laden hyperlink, and they syndicate it, that’s one more link built to your site. I wrote an article recently for a client that was a how-to guide for installing a household improvement. I submitted it to a bunch of DIY article sites, or article sites with DIY categories, with a link in the intro paragraph to the client’s site using the most appropriate keywords. If it is useful and considered a resource as opposed to a blatant marketing ploy (like an old fashioned press release) people will syndicate it.