Last week I spoke about the importance of determining overall site goals before writing copy. This week I tackle finding the right keywords to use in your site pages.
Step 2. Compile a keyphrase list. I highly recommend a comprehensive keyphrase analysis which looks at monthly search volumes for each keyphrase related to your offering in addition to how difficult it will be to rank for these terms. Many internet firms including Clarity Quest offer a keyphrase analysis service.
However, if you cannot afford this step or you sell into a very niche field, you can create a keyphrase list yourself. Come up with a list of 25-50 seed phrases you think prospects would type into a search engine in order to find your products or services. Try to think like your buyers, not your product development team. Note the phrases your competitors are using on the headlines and title tags (first line in the browser) of their sites. You can also enter competitor website URLs into Google’s Keyword Tool and it will extract keywords used in that site.
Once you have a seed list, plug it into Google’s Keyword Tool and make sure the “include synonyms” box is checked. If you have different product platforms or vastly different services, it makes sense to break your seed list into sub-segments. If you select “exact match” under “Match Type” at the far right, Google’s Keyword Tool will return an estimate of average search volume during the previous month for the keyphrase. Note: these numbers are not exact, in fact, they are inflated. But give you a way to compare keyphrases to each other.
If your search terms have significant volume you can run them through Google Trends. You can also try Google’s search-based keyword tool. Based on your URLs, the Search-based Keyword Tool displays a list of relevant user queries that have occurred on Google.com (and on other Google search properties, such as google.co.uk) with some frequency over the past year.
In addition to keyphrases with a lot of volume be sure to include product names, brands and model numbers that you sell. These won’t have high volume in many cases, but they will be extremely relevant to a searcher.
To analyze the competition, look at the top 5 Google results for the keyphrase. A quick and dirty way to do this is to check the number and quality of backlinks the top sites have. To do this go to Yahoo! and type linkdomain:url.com -site:url.com in the search bar. For example, to see the number and listing of back links for “technologymarketing.com”, type in:
linkdomain:technologymarketing.com -site:technologymarketing.com.
Once you have possible keyphrases narrow your list down to 1-2x the number of pages on your site based on count, relevance and competition. For example, if you are writing copy for a 20-page site, you will be able to optimize for approximately 20-40 keyphrases. Separate your list into your primary keyphrases (top 5 heavy hitters) and secondary keyphrases. Using your sitemap for reference, create a table in which you pick at least a primary (and possibly a secondary) entry webpage for each keyphrase.
What’s next? Part 3 of Wow Your Visitors and Search Engines with Your Web Copy will focus on creating a master web copy template.