9 Steps to making a SEO Plan
1. Keyword Selection
2. Tactics
3. Links
4. Content
5. Meta Tags
6. On-site SEO Optimization
7. Analytics
8. Analysis / Reviews / Audits
9. Optimization
Powerful Keyword Selection
We all know that proper keyword selection is the foundation of successful search engine optimization plans and strategies. Lets look at why you should never skimp on the keyword research for SEO campaigns.
Imagine working all year to rank for some amazing keywords that you thought “for sure” will bring you more traffic, customers, sales, and leads. How did you find these words? Were these keywords backed up by concrete data and free readily available tools that prove that your chosen keywords are worth the time, money and energy investment. If not you may find your business website ranking on the top of Google for that great 2 word phrase and yet you get more spam form fills than paying customer leads.
This is not the exception to the rule it is the probable outcome if your website SEO is not based on firm analysis of the best keywords for your company. This is something learned the hard way many times, take our word for it. If there is any part of our SEO system that you can ever spend too much time on it would be proper keyword selection.
Now that you understand the importance of this first step of search engine organization lets analyze a few different methods to find and value your firm’s best keywords. Lets explore the many free tools available that can help you search out the top keywords for your industry. In addition to free SEO tools we will also cover many software solutions that for a small price can help you get more accurate data faster.
Free Keyword Research Tools
Lets look the complete suite of Google SEO programs and free software tools to identify easy to rank long tail keywords, and the more competitive short money phrases.
The first step in keyword research is brain storming. Just sit down a write some of the words you would like to have your website show up for on Google. If you just cannot come up with anything that is no problem. Just try an write down some business competitors rather online or not that . We will be able to use these as a launching point from which our seo spaceship will take off.
So lets jump on over to Googles Adwords and log in. First well show you how to generate more relevant keywords with the keyword planner. Enter your list of keywords and push the “Get Ideas”. For the sake of brevity we will not walk you through this amazing free seo software in its entirety however you can learn everything about the the results and how to use them here.Our main concern for right now is that download button as you see pictured below. Just click that download button and make sure you choose Excel CSV and don’t bother segmenting the statistics by month.
Next lets go back to the enter keyword screen and instead of place keywords in the”product or service”, enter one of the competitor websites we selected in our previous. The seo tool will say “Your landing page” and that is the input box to past the URL. Go ahead and download that list as well as any other lists you generate form all the competing business webpages.
Now it is time to combine several Microsoft excel files filed with juicy keyword suggestions. you should have your self a very long list of keyword phrases and some other useless stats. Ok, they are not without merit but for your purposes now we will bypass this data because it is not as accurate as it may seem. This is because of the keyword data in this list is broad match and not as predicative to concrete numbers as we can get with exact match keywords.
Exact Match vs Phrase Match vs Broad Match
What is the difference in match quality of keyword lists from Google keyword planner. By default the seo keyword reports from this tool are based on broad match. Board match means that if Google thinks something is about that keyword then they will display all kinds of phrases that may or may not relate to your business services. As you can imagine this is not a very good metric to forecast or measure anything specific.
An examples of “broad match” search results would be receiving web pages about the top SEO companies in the usa when you really just search for “Organic SEO Services”
Phrase match as its title denotes is representative of Google displays that include the exact phrases you rank for and long tail keywords that include the phrase somewhere in the search query.
An example of phrase match results would if you were to search Google for “Organic SEO Services” you will be shown results that are related to “the best organic seo services” or “organic seo services in Phoenix”.
The final match type is labeled the ‘exact match’ setting for Adwords, Google Keyword Planner which you will learn to acquire by combining the3 previously obtained broad match keyword list and using the “Get traffic forecasts for a list of keywords”. Lets paste our excel list of words into the traffic forecast.
Google Adwords Daily Keyword Planner Daily Forecast screen.
Getting exact match keywords form Google with CPC and CTR
There may be many methods of using this SEO keyword tool however when time is of the essence we know that we just need to get get to the good stuff. This is just one path that leads to the same perfect keywords for your company.
Anyway back to the tool, look at the top left of the screen for the “Enter a Bid” Input box and the “Enter daily budget”. Enter 999 in the bid area and 99999999999 in the budget. Why? Well this is a tool based on CPC (Cost Per Class)
Next change the date range on the lower left side of the screen to the next 7 days for the basis of the forecast and display the forecast by day. Still reading ? Ok great we are heading to the finish line for this SEO section.
Visually search the middle of the screen of the left 33% of the page, select the “exact match” ad match option of “All ad groups”.
Next click “Download Plan” and select the Excel CSV SEO words list option. A word about the other boxes available to check for “Include average month searches, competition, and other statistics”. You should select both boxes and click down load. Whala you now have some real finite numbers that can be sorted to produce a more clear base for a great initial Keyword selection process. Now that we have gathered out list of keywords lets turn our attention to sorting and ranking our SEO keywords by value to yoiu.
Keyword Rankings
It may seem odd that you need to rank your keyword lists so the we can “rank for keywords” but none the less we have found this is the best way to quickly get a trustworthy blueprint for your keyword selections and prioritization for rankings. We will need a few tools such as Microsoft excel, ok well….just one tool. 🙂
Sorting Keywords in Excel
Feel free to view the metrics of exact match CPC(cost per click), CTR(click through rate), Competition, and Search volume any way you see fit to rank your keywords. The SEO schooling solutions you have available here are to insure you are strategizing best way to get fast results that are proven to work. YOur mileage or something or other, may vary. Any who…lets go bak to excel and look at our list.
Search Volume vs Competition vs Suggested Bid
You will notice viewing your newly downloaded best SEO company near me keywords list that their are many columns of data. You can sort anyway you like but our method is the safest bet in our experience.
Keyword Competition
This system you are using to find the top keywords in your industry is based on competitors Ad budgets. Our logic here is that if many competing companies are competing for the same keyword it is very safe that this keyword will be profitable for your website. For right now we say sort all the keywords by “competition” column under the AG( if you are following exactly.
Seperate the rows right around the .89 mark in competition percentages. This allows you to find all of the long tail keywords that are worth targeting with your search engine optimzation strategy. However usually yoiu may find lower search volume and CTR on the highly competitive phrases. This problem has led us to suggest the .89 mark. You will find that you also still have some heavy duty search terms as well with a high search amount in the low ninety percentile range. This metric becomes much stronger when we also further sort the remaining words by CPC and Suggested Bid.
Cost Per Click vs Suggested Bid
Remember earlier when you read that our method is based on competitor spending. There is no deviation from that focus here. Further sort your remaining word list by ‘Suggested Bid’ from highest to lowest. Seperate again the rows of keywords that fall below your bid threshold. We like to stay in double digits initially so we make our best Simon Cowell expression and cut o
With your new seo keywords list from this free tutorial you can rest assured that the concrete foundation for your skyscraper(website) is solid and durable. Of course there are many ways to skin a cat so we do offer more keyword research plans and strategies for you to learn better SEO skills for DIY (do-it-yourself) website owners and executives to further understand what they pay for.
Well great what now?Learn to use the keyword strategy above as the basis for this expert SEO optimization system that is a easy to understand tool for professional search engine optimization consultants and “gurus” around the world.
Optimizing Your website with Keywords
Your keywords are ready and now we turn our focus to adding these words to your webpages with relevant content so that Google knows what you have to offer and can deliver free customers ready to buy your product or service.
Updating your Website
Unfortunately the scope of how to edit a website or web page is beyond our Search engine optimization class here so it will be assumed from hence froth that you have a working knowledge and ability to modify, change, and/or update your own website. Not quite sure how to change your website’s pages and content? No problem, our professional search engine optimization services are an affordable solution to adding search researched keywords and content for your website. As the top ranking organic SEO service provider as rated by Google, Webspand offers expert consultation, management and optimization packages to best suite your specific needs.
Adding Keywords to your Title Tags
Title tags are important, not just in the keywords they display but in the message they present. Is is the art of a search engine optimziaiton expert to elegantly intertwine the two needs into one great SEO Title. Ideally your Web page title should be less than 69 characters and that includes spaces and special characters. Your websites titles not only inform Google what your page is about but it also attracts or repels more traffic. We go into more about title tag optimization at our SEO academy that offers classes to learn how to optimize your website for better search engine rankings.
The gritty is this, put the Keywords you would like a page to rank for at(or near) the beginning of every Title Tag. This applies to the corresponding page’s content or targeted keyword that the page is about. This is more important than many give it credit for so its worth learning now so you do not develop poor habits.
Website pages that rank on the top of the first page of google all have this in common and that is the 6 basics of SEO for every page on your website.
Keywords Meta Tag
Read any blog post on the keyword meta tag, and they all scream its antiquated and irrelevant. The reasoning for this is the Google’s Matt Cutts and all SEO experts agree that Google no longer considers the keyword tag for any value. However there are others still that say even though Google does not recognize the meta tag for your keywords, that Yahoo and Bing do. It is the belief here that it can “only help” to place a nice relevant long tail seo keyword in there. Historically the resources like SEOMOZ (now MOZ) said that 3 keywords divided by comas was the industry standard. Hedge your bets and place one the most relevant keywords you would like that page to rank for.
Description Meta Tag
Out tutorial covers this in depth for the self SEO’r business owners and students that want to learn more about the meta description tag . We have summerized that SEO lesson here for those just looking to get on the first page of google the quickest and smartest way possible. There are three main categories of meta tag description optimization and they are:
- length
- keywords
- unique content
Description Meta Tag Length
Description Meta Tag Length” Your page description should be no more than 166 characters and that does include spaces and symbols
Description Meta Tag Keywords
In a perfect world you would choose the very first words of the description to be your page’s keywords that also begin the title tag. Our current digital climate is becoming more complex as web users are becoming more savvy and less tolerant of errors. The best tip here is place the target keywords for the description near the beginning of the tag. While being mindful that your traffic will judge whether or not they will click your website based on the possible solution your content will bring to their problems.
We should sum this up so here you go: keywords placements should be a priority at the start of your meta tag description while encouraging customers to click.
Description Meta Unique Content Just like how Analytics based keyword selection is the foundation of search optimization success, so to is the importance of UNIQUE RELEVANT CONTENT to META TAG SEO OPTIMIZATION SUCCESS. In testing around the world it is proven that the meta tag description is more than just a place to stuff keywords to rank for as many phrases as possible in a shotgun SEO approach. A websites page description should be roughly under 166 characters and over 69 characters and be 1000% different than any other meta tag description for any other page on your website or blog. In fact that is equally devastating to SEO as having 2 or more web page titles be identical. You will have to trust us on this one. In fact it is a huge secret many “SEO experts” will not reveal.
We have provide oodles of research if you want to learn every thing about the wonderful world of SEO page description copy writing. Other wise you are now ready to start adding your target keywords and keyword phrases to your web site content.
Search engine optimization keyword Placement
The placement of key words in the body of your website is on a page per page basis. Place your keywords somewhere in the actual text of your content. There are many nuances to the art of true on page SEO that is quite beyond the scope of this free search engine optimization guide. Again here you will learn all you need to know to get all your pages indexed in Google with organic SEO rankings. With a goal of a great foundation resist the temptation to add your keywords many times through out the text of the page. This is a form of over optimization of SEO and can even be viewed as “black hat” by Google and the potential leads.
The content on your pages should be well thought out an relevant to what that page’s keywords subject matter is and different from any other page content on your website.
Pro Tip: People love to see pictures, in fact Google gives websites with pictures a higher value than those that don’t. It is a great idea to add at least 1 picture to every page of your website. If the pictures within a body of text are also conductive to the message, all the better.
SEO SECRET: It has long been known that high page rankings have been measured to correspond with pictures or images about the content. A great way to sore past your competitors often requires just…(Sign Up for our Newsletter and we will send you a free Search engine optimization strategy guide that includes tips and hints that take most people years to learn on their own)
Once you have completed the above search engine optimization guide step by step your content is now ready to show the world. You can optimize each page even more with our free expert SEO optimization lessons about other social and SEO tags that can help your website be even better than it already is. Learn about URL structure and conicalization, content first page loading, and website page load speed optimization.
The next section is all about of page (off-site) search engine optimization and is divided among 3 categories, search engine submissions, directory submissions, and link building or what is called backlinks.
Off Site Search Engine Optimization Services
What is Search Engine Optimization? Search Engine Optimization: Known also as SEO, search engine marketing and optimization is the process of improving on page and off page factors about your website and digital presence. This strategy is employed in the hopes that it will allow a Search Engine( read . . .Google) to know that your content exists and what it is about. That way when your customer is searching online for the consumer products or services you provide, Google hopefully will find your “content” or website one of the most relevant authorities on the subject. And then subsequently displays your brand in its search results for that customer.
Organic SEO Services – Is basically all the free website SEO tips, tricks, & optimization tactics that are not black-hat, grey-hat or other wise shady and unethical.
Search Engine Submission Services
Bing SEO Tools – http://www.bing.com/toolbox/seo-analyzer When you sign up you even get a free $50 coupon for search advertising on Bing pay-per-click ads. This then provides enough incentive i believe to actually sign up for a MSN or hotmail or whatever it is that Microsoft makes you sign up for just to submit a URL. Oh wait never mind again I’m listening to an episode of Archer while i create this post and it seems Bing indeed has made it easier to submit your site to Bing.
Yahoo Search Engine Optimization Services – Submit your site on Yahoo.com, and when i say “Yahoo Search Engine Optimization” I AM not mentioning the yahoo paid directory. You see yes you could get off-page SEO benefits from submitting your URL or new website domain name. However mostly digital agencies are not sold its worth it. Well never mind it probably is i just never want to pay that much for a public direct backlinks. I mean come on; its not like its the DMOZ Internet directory.
Google Search Engine Optimization Services – Now every ones knows about the Google “Add Your URL” link for their inclusion to their search index. of course they do not guarantee listing but I have to believe that if the one place you would like to have your brand show up for in the results its probably a good and safe tactic to actually submit your new website to them as soon as it is complete. not immediately.
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION TIPS #1 * In testing over the multiple search platforms I(Craig McConnel) have come to feel reasonably confident in suggesting that if you are planning to actually let Google know about your new brand launch any agency may do well to delay this until the development of all content and internal linking is ready to rock and edited for perfect sales copy.
Why? I have no proof but if you start out as mediocre and then grow it may always be classified as non authority /high rank. Thus if legacy data (like How to do a 301 redirect) is applied to future Google algorithms, the sheer fact that it was ever a sub par digital piece of content may negatively affect organic search placement
