Posted in Online Publishing Strategy	April 9, 2008

Choosing the Right Keywords to Attract Targeted Website Traffic

Don considers this “the new direct mail”. Keyword research and implementation is perhaps the most complex, yet effective way to drive the most search traffic to your website. The idea is that if you research your keywords and compare the search to pages ratio, you can choose your keywords based on your likeliness to show up on page one.

For an easy example… a keyword that has 900 searches a day, and Google only has 10 web pages with that keyword, this guarantees you a spot on page one with this search term. “Why Google?” Don reminded the audience, “Google has 68.9% market share, that’s why!”

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If you optimize your tips for these keywords, you will dominate page one. Don recommends having two people dedicated to your keyword strategy, someone for research & analysis and another for campaign management.

About 10% of Google searches haven’t even happened yet. So how do you optimize for something that hasn’t happened? Don suggests using a service like Wordtracker to find out what variations there are of your primary keywords.

• 20% of search traffic are coming from primary keywords
• 80% of search traffic comes in on other variations of those keywords

Don reminded the audience that you want your pages on page one in Google. Research shows that by page 3, almost no one will see your page, much less by page 6. This is because most users find what they’re looking for between pages one and two. This is why it’s important to optimize, optimize, optimize your articles and landing pages for search with these keywords.

Don revealed to the audience how we at Mequoda discovered a very highly searched phrase “Landing Pages Templates” that had very few pages on Google. This created a great gap we were able to fill with a new special report that we created “8 Master Landing Page Templates.” We then created a rapid conversion landing page (or name-squeeze page) optimized for that phrase and now receive around 300 subscribers a month from that page because we’re listed as #1 (go ahead, search for it).

Valuable tools that Don mentioned during this session:

AWstats – free website analytics software
Google Analytics – free website analytics software
The Long Tail – a book by Chris Anderson about optimizing your strategy for the future, not just the present
Wordtracker – a keyword research tool that will tell you what your relevant secondary keywords are
Advanced Web Ranking - tells you where you rank in Google for any given keyword

Mequoda Summit Coverage

• Session 1 - Making Money Online
• Session 2 - Using New Media to Expand Your Brand
• Session 3 - Generating Website Revenue
• Session 4 - SEO Research and Analytics
• Session 5 - SEO Copywriting and Campaign Management
• Session 6 - Designing Effective Media Websites
• Session 7: Email Newsletter Secrets
• Session 8: Creating a Management Dashboard