Keyword Research

Have you ever wondered why so many people rely on Google Keywords Tool for their SEO campaign keyword research? The Google’s tool is for Adwords users and rightfully so provides the advertiser competition for the keywords. The advertiser competition of the keywords may not be in tandem with the SEO competition. Though this tool can greatly help find keyword ideas with their corresponding keyword search volume. This can give you good insight into the achievable ROI on your SEO campaign. This post deals with what the tin says: Finding the SEO Keyword Competition using the Google SE method.

This should not come as a surprise that Google Search Engine is the best tool to find the keyword competition for SEO. This is like going out to the battlefield to find how many soldiers were killed instead of asking the soldiers of the enemy how well they fought to guess how many of your soldiers were killed!

Let’s get to the point:

Question 1: How do I know much is the general competition for my keywords? How big is the battle field?

Answer: Just punch your keywords into the Google SE and note down the number of results found. The larger the number the larger the battle field but note that this is not your competition.This leads us to the next question.

Question 2: What is my exact “SEO” competition (not advertiser competition) for my keywords?

Answer: Just punch in this into Google search box: intitle:”Your Keyword Phrase”. This gives you the first accurate view of how many sites are doing SEO for the same keywords. Just note down the result volume. Now we are zooming in. This will give you keyword SEO-competition. So now you know 292 sites are fighting with you on the SEO battle. Can you fight with them and reach to the top? Yes, but you need to do further analysis. Before moving to that note that you can also use inurl to get some more ideas but it is a limited way.

Question 3: How much effort my keywords need to get above my competition?

Answer: This is indeed an interesting question and the answer is as interesting as well. For each of your top 10 competitors found in the above step, note down the results count for: link:competitositeurl.com. This query gives you the number of back links to their site. Create an excel sheet with these metrics for all your top 10 competitors. Now to estimate how much link building efforts you need just remember the simple formula. Just exceed the number of backlinks from your largest competitor by at least one! This is simple said but another factor that comes into play is the PR of the linking sites. You need to note them down as well into your excel sheet and then compete on backlinks in quantity and quality.A word of caution, this answer assumes you have good on page artifacts in place already.

7 Habits

Here are the 7 Habits of Highly Effective SEOs. They have been compiled based on 5+ years of experience with SEO.

1. Effective SEOs do not over-promise and under-deliver but they under-promise and over-deliver

2. Effective SEOs expend a lot of energy in Keyword Research rather than hastily jumping this step

3. Effective SEOs write their own blogs and share their knowledge

4. Effective SEOs knows what Link Velocity means

5. Effective SEOs are patient

6. Effective SEOs have great understanding of workings of Search Engines

7. Effective SEOs are constantly looking for next  “change” in the horizon

The 8th Habit

What is the 8th habit? Of course that warrants a new post which I will write as second edition of this post.

Matt Cutts of Google

Every SEO knows that keyword density is one of the 200+ factors Google considers for ranking the website. It is no surprise that Google does not publicly publish the exact threshold for the keyword density beyond which it will be considered keyword stuffing or spamming. This makes sense because if they do, people will be quick to use this information to fool the Search Engines and never get caught by Google.

Google’s Matt Cutts announced the addition of website speed as one of the ranking factors on April 12. Why? Matt made the motive clear. Google wants the web to be really faster. Who doesn’t want? Now we are getting to the real meat of this post. Why did Google not publicly declare the exact number of seconds or milli-seconds beyond which a site will be considered slow?

Do you think people will take undue advantage if they know this valuable information? If yes, then that will probably make web lightening fast. Google is just trying to fool people. How can speed be a ranking factor? Good site is a good site even if it is slow. People will wait for the information to load if it really means something to them. Google knows this. Google has just discovered the enormous power it thinks it can wield over the public and tell people to do whatever they think.

And this gets even worse, nobody in the world question this move! Everybody now is busy fine tuning their sites. I don’t object someone working on their site faster, but on the Google’s part this is ridiculous at best. If this is how they want to control the people online, they could declare just about anything and make people work hard to work on things that really don’t matter for the ranking.

If they want the websites to be really fast then publish more information about it. Is this beginning of something called Google Terrorism! God bless Google.

SEO: Web 3.0 is Coming

Are you an SEO practitioner? Do you know how Web 3.0 will revolutionize the way SEO is done in the near future? Whether you care or not the Web 3.0 will be here any soon and only those SEO who are ready for this change will be able to take on this new challenge. The choice is yours.

If you don’t know what Web 3.0 is then please read this post before continuing. In short Web 3.0 is an emerging technology that will allow machines to understand the meaning of text and can extract more meaningful information from the available data than it is possible now thanks to the new “structure” Web 3.0 will impose on the data and their relationship. The Google’s Search Engine will be more artificially intelligent.

An amazing thing will happen. Google will be able to tell the lie from the truth. So you will not be able to put false information on your web page. For example, if you write “Steven Spillberg directed Avatar in 2009″, Google will be quick to note that this information is false (yes this is already possible with Freebase and Metaweb). Now what action Google takes with this new found information is up to Google but my point is: Look at the possibilities out there with Web 3.0, only imagination is the limit.

SEO’s job will take a turn. They will actually have to becomes liars. Until now they lied in terms of links a site has (so they did not really lie). These links are artificially boosted by SEOs to fool Google. But with Web 3.0 it is a different ball game. And the new game is beginning! I welcome your thoughts in the comments.

Patents

Definitely not! An interesting question though. Many people asked me this question after they read that all that the patents mention do not necessarily make it into the Google’s Algorithm. This naturally raises a question in the minds of SEOs. Is Google trying to fool around? What really is happening is…

The patents Google file are initially in the pending state and by the time the patents are granted, Google may have already implemented and people might already be using the product that the specific patent makes possible. However, there is a non-zero chance of getting the idea discarded by Google before the patent is granted. The reason could be technical feasibility issue or negative user feedback. Remember Google loves experimenting and is as quick to discard an idea as it accepts them.

So in summary, Patents are at its best a tool to know what “might” be going on inside Google (algorithmic changes) or could support some observations made be experts. It helps knowing the patents from the SEO point of view. Patent watching does help.

SEO 2.0?

You can consider this as a warning or a wake up call but either way you need to be taking solid action soon. SEO 2.0 is approaching fast enough to ring the warning bells. What after all is SEO 2.0? This is not the typical SEO is dead article. I have tried to answer some of the questions here:

Web 3.0 is going to change everything, literally. Web 3.0 is essentially semantic web which superimposes a new structure on the web pages to make the data and the relation between the data objects more meaningful for the machines. Google search engine is a machine. If the web changes the search engines will need to cope with this change and I am sure Google R&D is already working on this change. The change in the way Search Engine works takes us to the next logical thing.

Change in the way SEO is done today. This is plain logical. Exactly what effect Web 3.0 will have on SEO remains a topic to be discussed in another post which I am currently researching and will be writing soon. Till then keep your fingers crossed.

SEO Keyword Research Mothods

Most SEOs rely on Google Adwords Keyword Tool solely for Keyword Research. This is disastrous. The problem is not with using the tool for monthly search volume but the competition. Any keyword selection just does not depend on search volume but the relative comparison of volume versus the keyword competition. The keyword competition which the Keyword tool displays next to search volume is not indicative of the competition in SEO arena, it is just advertiser competition. Finding the right keywords is the step stone to success for great SEO campaigns and this requires you to find Low SEO-Competition keywords.

There are many Google and non-Google sources that can be used to come up with the list of final keyword list which have low seo competition:

#1: Google Search: The mega search engine is the best tool and there are many hidden tools this ghost hides. The names of these tools are intitle, inurl and site meta searches. Google allows these meta search within its main search interface. This technique is discussed in more detail here.

#2. SEMRush.com: Just go to site and find out what keywords your competitors are optimizing. There free version gives some insights. If you like it use the pro version. With their tool a lot of competition analysis can be easily done. This is essential for choosing right keywords for your campaign.

#3. Use Google suggest feature. It is a great tool largely under-used by the SEO community. It can be used to get keyword ideas in conjunction with Google’s Keyword tool.

All in all, these are just some of the less used ways of doing great SEO keyword research using the free tools on the internet.

From a search marketer’s perspective, it is significant to know that just because a patent is filed on a technique by a search engine, it doesn’t mean that the search engine uses that technique. Neither all the features that are imposing upon the patent have to be explained. Many times it is seen that various search engines are applying them, marketers are taking advantage of these techniques or safely ignore them.

Patent applicants are always aware of the fact that the search engine optimizers can carefully examine the patents to find out clues that can lower down its value. And that is the reason why they sometime keep the patents obscure. To do this the applicants sometimes add items for no reason or make some information in dilemma. The intention behind this is not to allow the search engine optimizers to get the actual plan.

Search engine patents never tell that these tactics are used. But the seekers are always there to find out the hidden points. What’s say?

Pondering on the issue to a certain depth, I come out with a clear concept that actually the web 3.0 will make SEO and search a lot cleaner. It is going to allow machines to understand the meaning of text and extract more meaningful information from the available data. It points out that search engines will become more intelligent. And here comes again the importance of SEO that will need tougher work than before.

With web 3.0, it will become a totally integrated world where SEO will need greater understanding of keywords, markup, search engines, and semantics to go with the wind. For this, every SEO will require to know what exactly the integration is that is the technologies that are implied and also their function.

So, it is high time, SEO needed to prepare for the big fight with unique solutions!

• Presenting effective site marketing for customers’ sites
• Using the most efficient keyword researching tools
• Submitting website into many directories
• Link building with relevant business
• submitting quality rich articles
• Creating quality blog
• Submitting Press Releases to various Press sites
• Submitting classified adds
• Forum posting etc.

The fact is that SEO is an ongoing process and knowing and implementing the recent updates are the only ways to stay ahead of the competition. That’s what the “haves and have-nots” in SEO secrets.