Keyword Research is the key

As we at SearchAmelia are expanding our Courses/Bootcamps on how to build and maintain successful Wordpress websites, an important and largely misunderstood  question from our students always comes down to optimizing keywords. Keywords in essence represent a form of stepping into the shoes of your potential customers and imagine what they would type into a browser to get relevant returns on their questions (answers). Now to be completely clear upfront, searching is a slowly diminishing part of how people get answers or relevancy on the internet. Increasingly Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and a host of other social media connect people to your site and stories, but even there consistency in keywords gives direction to the quality of the search. Google obviously is the granddaddy or search and as such the powerhouse to deal with. And Google stays at the forefront of search by constantly changing their algorithms; a complicated mathematical validation of many factors that define relevancy, trends and needs/wants.

The first step in understanding the importance of keywords and phrases is Keyword research. It will help you to compete in the marketplace. Knowing for example what keywords your successful competitors use can help you to gain momentum quickly in the search engines.
When you write your blog posts, submit your articles to places like Ezine Articles,  and when you upload your videos to YouTube and Vimeo these keywords will also be very important.

A simple and easy tool to use online for this research is Spyfu.
Spyfu allows you to enter a domain or a keyword and find the SEO value, Organic Traffic value and more. If you’ve ever wanted to see what your competitors were paying for their ads in PayPerClick (PPC) and what keywords they were using, this is the way to do it.
What if you could be a ‘fly on the wall’ of your competition and find out what works and what doesn’t when they do their online marketing?
Spyfu enables you to do all of this. Another valuable free source is for example Wordtracker .
When you start out doing keyword research you could get sidetracked however thinking that by using every single keyword anyone in your niche is using you’ll rise to the top. This is not true. In a WordPress platform you could actually be accused of keyword stacking if you do that.  But finding the top 10-20 keywords and use them alternately will serve you well.
Look for the keywords that are not being used generically everywhere else.

For example I have a client who applies eyelash extensions. Using a keyword such as eyelashes or even eyelash extensions is far too generic. My client however has a long history of being a highly dedicated emergency room nurse (RN) who has studied and become licensed in every aspect of medically correct extension procedures. Her uniqueness is not that she does eyelash extensions and permanent make up procedures, her uniqueness is that she is the ONLY one in the region fully licensed with an extensive medical care background to do these procedures. A great keyword for her is therefore not eyelash extensions, but licensed eyelash extension artist – because believe me it is true artistry with a steady hand to do this procedure correctly, because eyelashes are just very close to the eyes, with substantial hazards if done incorrectly.

When I did extensive searching on Spyfu we also found that keyword reversals as well as misspelled keywords would work well, such as eyelasch extension lisense. Little did she know that people were actually searching for these words reversed or misspelled. Here on the local scene nobody realizes how often Fernandina Beach is spelled and searched for a Fernadina Beech.
Allot of people make these mistakes or tipos and yet, before they realize their mistake the search engine has returned a result, that just might be you!
I also discovered her competitors were using words such as false eyelashes and licensed eyelash extension specialist. These and other words are quickly implemented into her blog and her website.

Being able to find these and other keywords, we recommend that a webmaster reviews the PPC ads that are being used by successful competitors and then taking action to position your website/blog accordingly.
When you write your articles in your WordPress blog, don’t forget to use these keywords in your SEO description, title tag and keyword section.
Also use these keywords in the post tags area.  Google will find you more quickly and so will everyone looking for what you offer.
Don’t make any assumptions when it comes to what your ideal clients might be putting into a search engine to find you. You may know what your site is about and how you, the site owner, would find it, but it’s different when it comes to predicting how a potential or paying customer would go about looking for it.

Remember as well that just because you think people will find you with a specific keyword doesn’t mean they are. Being the top listing for an irrelevant keyword or phrase means nothing if no one is searching for you with those terms. It’s a waste of time and money.
Pay attention to what SpyFu shows you as the other organic and paid keywords people enter when looking for your product or service. Use these words as well in your blog posts and meta descriptions.
Something many beginning website operators buy into is the thought that ‘more is better’. This is not true when it comes to using your keywords on your blog. Be careful to stay away from  ”Keyword stacking“. Using the same key words in a dozen different places in an article, will get you penalized. Not a good thing.

Your page content isn’t the only place where you can insert keywords. Keywords should also be used in several other elements on your site:
* Title Tag
* Meta Description Tags
* Headings
* Alt text
* Anchor Text/ Navigational Links

After you’ve spent a lot of time finding your keywords; make sure you use them in all the appropriate fields to get the maximum benefit.
Lastly, don’t forget to use your SEO plugins and tools that in particular WordPress platformed websites/blogs offer. All search engines love Wordpress
We talk about them quite a bit in our Wordpress Website Building Bootcamps and courses. A tool like Scribe SEO will show you additional keywords you might want to pull into your post tags once you have written your articles. It will show you how many anchor text links you’ll want.  This is your best tool for making sure all of your hard work is pulling together and creating the most optimized content possible, with the highest potential for traffic, ranking and conversion.

If you are interested in learning more about how to successfully operate your web presence, our next course is scheduled for late August. (yep we take a Summer Vacation from teaching as well). Register early by dropping us a note