The Key is the Keywords
Posted on January 24, 2010 by GuruBob
“Handle them carefully, for words have more power than atom bombs.” - Pearl Strachan Hurd
Over the next few months, I plan to write about various aspects of the Thirty Day Challenge (30DC) and search engine optimisation (SEO) and so I couldn’t start without going back to what I believe is the fundamental principle behind traffic on the internet and the key to search engine optimization.
And that is…the keyword (or key phrase).
Before I got involved in Internet Marketing, I was associated with a wealth creation company that got most of it’s traffic from a standard offline marketing strategy – newspaper advertising. I couldn’t believe the expense and wastage associated with this strategy and when I looked into radio and tv advertising it was even more expensive – with no increased guarantee of success. I quickly came to realise that if you couldn’t pay the opportunity cost for these traffic sources or didn’t have an offer that converted at a rate sufficient to at least pay for the cost of the traffic, then you would fail…and fail quickly. This is the main problem for small business…how to get traffic efficiently and at an acceptable cost that leaves you with a profit.
In the offline world, it’s about capturing eyeballs and the more eyeballs a particular advertising channel commands, the more expensive it is to advertise through that channel. But advertising through those channels doesn’t mean you get more targetted traffic, so you have to make sure your offer converts. Of course you often don’t know whether your offer will convert until you try (a chicken and the egg argument that can be very costly). It’s a numbers game and as a former mentor said to me, most large scale advertising strategies are really throwing mud against the wall and hoping some of it sticks.
Then I came onto the internet and realised that whether you are paying for clicks via PPC channels (like Google Adwords) or receiving organic traffic from the search engines you are esesentially receiving targetted traffic from people that are actually searching for the keyword you are bidding on or optimizing for.
I thought to myself, how good is this. Finally, you have the potential to allocate time and money to traffic that might actually want what you are marketing or at least have some interest in it. So just by focussing on the Internet for traffic you significantly decrease one of the key risks of offline advertising…that you have to pay to advertise to people that don’t want what you are marketing. And the cost of advertising to those dis-interested people very often renders your advertising campaign unprofitable.
I also remember a time on the Internet, before the current search engines existed, when it was very hard to find things even when you knew what you were looking existed. Google changed all that of course and with that, the science and business of search was created. If you have any interest in the whole concept of search (and the history of Google) I highly recommend the book “The Search” by John Batelle.
Have you ever noticed how simple Google’s home page is…have you ever considered why this is?
It is very elegant really, Google is waiting for you to tell it what you want (or need, or are looking for). And when you do so, every aspect of Google’s technical expertise is bought to bear to ensure you receive back content that is as relevant to your search as it can possibly be. But you start the process by entering…a keyword or key phrase.
Everything starts with the keyword. And as a potential marketer and receiver of traffic (related to a keyword) you must be aware of:
- The number of people using the keyword in their searches per day
- The number of websites that also use that keyword in their content
- The probability that when people use that keyword to search they might be interested in buying something
- The quality and authority or websites that already rank in the search engines for that keyword.
- The competitiveness and cost of buying traffic for this keyword via PPC
So much to discover and it’s only in the last 2 – 3 years that we have been able to quantify some of the variables discussed above. Of course Market Samurai and other keyword research tools have simplified the research process immensely but more of that in a future post.
While I did want to focus on the quantative aspects of keywords primarily (traffic, competition etc), I did want to draw your attention to some of the more subtle aspects of keywords which are harder to grasp but equally as important.
The most important of these is semantic relevance. There are many definitions of semantic relevance but to me a word is semantically relevant to another word, if a human being is likely to use that word in association with the keyword being focussed on. The reason why you need to give consideration to semantic relevance is that over time, Google will rank your content in the search engines not only for the main keyword you are optimizing for but also for the semantically related keywords particularly if you mention them in association with the main keyword. The more authority (defined as the number and quality and links that point to your content from other sites) your content has, the higher you will rank for your target keyword…and also for the semantically related keywords.
And this is where tagging comes in. You can signifcantly increase the potential that Google and other search related sites understands the relationship between your content and the keywords it relates to by effectively tagging your content with semantically related keywords or key phrases. So few people do this and fewer still do it well, but it is incredibly important and it’s value increases proportionally over time as more and more websites send you traffic not only for the main keyword you are targetting but also for the semantically related keywords you tag for.
There is so much to cover in a discussion regarding keywords and it is hard to do the subject justice in one post. I do hope from this post that you get a sense of the importance of keywords on the Internet and also the importance of the semantic relationships between keywords. And if you create content online, video, articles, audio, blog posts whatever…make sure you tag the content with the most relevant keywords.
If you have understood anything from this post, the keywords you use to optimize content and tag won’t be just any keywords but keywords that have associated traffic and acceptable levels of competition. There is very little point optimizing and tagging for keywords that have no traffic or extreme levels of competition. Either way, you guarantee that you won’t get any traffic either.
If you have any questions regarding some of the subjects covered in this post please comment and I will respond either in the comments or through future posts.
It is…as it is.
ps I spoke about this subject at length at the Beechworth conference. If you subscribe to receive email updates at the bottom of the page you will receive access to a video of my Beechworth presentation.
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Corinne Mitchell
- 25th Jan, 10 05:01am
I remember a time before OTE2 and Market Samurai when “getting” the whole keywords puzzle was still such a mystery to me. I had a huge break through at OTE2, (thank you very much!) and now I love researching them.
This is a wonderful introduction to keywords, traffic and giving Google what it wants. Thanks Rob! Looking forward to the next installment.
Jim Munro
- 25th Jan, 10 06:01am
I’m thankful I wasn’t part of IM pre-Google and/or pre-Market Samurai days. I’ve done a bit of manual keyword research and it is a pain.
I would definitely say I need to do better at tagging my content and plan to try this out next. Great tip!
Good post. I’m looking forward to this years 30DC. Sounds like you’re getting it warmed up.
Esteve
- 25th Jan, 10 09:01am
Looking forward for you following posts on SEO. As a 30dc and 30dc+ member, I want more and more SEO information from the sources I rely on.
By the way, do you know which tool is called AWA? Ed posted that name on his facebook wall but I can’t find it.
Thanks,
Esteve
Mark
- 25th Jan, 10 11:01am
Market Samurai is such an easy tool to use that I use it to also research topics for news letters and video content and then add the tags. This helps you stay on message and reach the people who are searching for what you have to offer.
GuruBob (author comment)
- 25th Jan, 10 12:01pm
Esteve,
AMA stands for Article Marketing Automation and currently it is my recommended tool for publishing to a blog network for the purpose of engineering back-link to your content or website. You can find AMA here: http://www.gurubob.co/AMA
George
- 25th Jan, 10 05:01pm
That was an informative post.
Was wondering if you could throw some insight into duplicate content in any of your next post
Mike
- 25th Jan, 10 07:01pm
Hi Guru Bob. Just joined the 30dc and have a question about subdomains vs domains. It’s rather long and your spam filter wouldn’t let me enter it. Just wondered if you could please email me so I can ask you the question. I checked the forum but most of the people there think a subdomain is the bit that comes after the .com. The question is very relevant and depending on your answer it may be beneficial to others.
Thank you
Mike Bowater
Steve Bishop
- 25th Jan, 10 07:01pm
Great article Bob, thanks for posting.
Vitaly Makarkin
- 26th Jan, 10 03:01am
Brilliant post! I’m very appreciate your posts, because it’s like a sip of fresh air, like all 30DC members and partners.
Super very good!
AirHammer
- 26th Jan, 10 07:01am
Hello Guru Bob,
I’m enjoying your blogs very much, everything on here is like a masterclass and I have been loving all the little details.
Just watching your Beechworth videos wiideaide eyes, and loved your link building stuff on 30DC plus.
Keep up the good work
AirHammer
P.S Sending this from my iPhone whilst sitting on my couch in Earls Court while watching Stephen Fry on TV…heaven!
Annie Binns
- 27th Jan, 10 08:01am
I drop by here every now and then but I haven’t subscribed because I try to limit my reader to only the info I feel I would be remiss not to have. Today I added you to my reader.
Great post and I’m looking forward to the series!
Annie
30DC 2007, 2008, 2009
Jacinta Dean
- 27th Jan, 10 06:01pm
Hi Bob,
Great looking blog. I was wondering when you were going to take the plunge. Have noticed your rankings already!!
I do believe your blog will definitely become an authority and one to watch out for, not only that you always over deliver when you teach. I am looking forward to learning more from you.
Kind Regards
Jacinta
P.S Really like the theme!
P.P.S Fellow 30Dcer
Scott Norris
- 29th Jan, 10 04:01am
When you say tag, do you mean use keyword meta tags? If so any advice on best practices for this?
GuruBob (author comment)
- 10th Feb, 10 11:02pm
Hi Scott, when I mean tag I mean associated your content (in this case a blog post) with keywords that indicate the subject and meaning of the content. Most Web 2.0 sites allow you to ‘tag’ content with keywords which allows you to indicate some of the keywords that your content is semantically related to. Keyword meta tags are not used by the main search engines anymore for ranking (especially Google) but I still believe it is useful to set them and in the case of a WordPress Blog I use the All-in-one SEO plugin to automatically take the tags I have associated with the post and apply them as the keyword meta tags.
GuruBob (author comment)
- 10th Feb, 10 11:02pm
Thanks Airhammer for the feedback…much appreciated. I love your videos and always get a kick out of the 30DC Plus theme song that you produced.
GuruBob (author comment)
- 10th Feb, 10 11:02pm
An interesting subject is duplicate content and would require many more words than I’m able to put into this reply. I do think there is a lot of mis-information about duplicate content especially when similar content appears on different sites. I tend to be much more wary of having duplicate content appearing on the same domain than on different sites. I’m also a believer that Google assesses the authority of content based on the number of links pointing to it. Therefore even if you decide to use duplicate or similar content, whether it ranks in the search engines mostly about the quality and quantity of the link network that points to it.