Are your keywords converting? (Pt.1)

Good day readers.

I’ve begun working on an optimization recommendation for a client and thought, what great valuable content to write about! The purpose is to give valuable insight on benchmarking the effectiveness of your on-page keyword optimization campaign(s) to help have as many organic (non-paid) visits to your site as possible.  It’s important to mention that in addition to having visits, you want to return relevant content right from the beginning (the landing page). It’s 2012, I’m 27 and I’m accustomed to getting what I need to know as fast as humanely possible. If I’m looking to buy a $2,000 computer, and, for the record I’m rather impulsive, is the homepage the most relevant page to show me from the beginning?

Secondly it’s important to note that doing keyword and keyphrase research BEFORE you build your site can often lead to you spending less time and money.  Many merchants, thank they know what which keywords and keyphrases may increase conversions, but why not utilize keyword and keyphrase research to validate your assumptions?

The first step is to brainstorm keywords and keyphrases you think that would be relative to the content. Since the content has already been built, I’ll scan the copy for any juicy unique copy. A quick and easy way to do this is to use a SEO Analysis tool like SEOWorkers (one of my favorites) to see what crawlers return as content keywords and keyphrases. For this post, I’m going to limit the data I use to the homepage. If I was rebuilding this site or thinking about building the site, this would be a vital step in indicating the content I will create specifically for the users I’d like to start at my homepage (or my brag page as I call it in the Ecommerce world).

Here are 3 word long-tail keywords that search engines consider to be optimized information for the homepage.

The good data is going to be the keyphrases, more commonly known as long-tail keywords. Typically these type of keywords produce low volume, but have higher conversion rates. The site that I am optimizing for does provide UPHOLSTERY TRAINING VIDEOS and VISTA UPHOLSTERY ENTERPRISES is the company but the other long tail keywords being picked up the search engines don’t really have anything to do with information is presented on the homepage.  In this particular case I’ll want to brainstorm 2 to 4 more keywords for my header metadata and to do so I’ll read the page content for ideas. After reading the page content, I’ll start with BUY UPHOLSTERY TOOLS ONLINE and ONLINE UPHOLSTERY MAGAZINE as the metadata. I’m also going to suggest re-writing the content to produce more relevant keyphrases in the body (SUPPLIES AND VIDEO could be associated with some topics that I don’t want associated to my brand…).

Next we’ll want to analyze what information so we can find out about how users are utilizing those keywords or keyphrases (aka. relevancy). We’ll also want to know if a lot of other store owners or websites are utilizing paid search campaigns to increase the competition of the keyword.  Lastly, we’ll want to know how in demand these search terms are by researching their search volume(s).  My personal favorite two tools to user are from Google – the Google Trends tool and the Google Keyword Tool. By the way, if you haven’t figured it out by now I’m really biased towards Google. Sorry, I just am.

When searching my original terms, there was not enough data to provide me with any insights.  This will happen often.  Long-tail keywords are extremely specific and their volume is low.  Don’t let this discourage you, it’s still good to step outside the box sometimes.  In addition, you can utilize Google Adwords to run a long-tail keyword campaign.  Though this is paid traffic, it could provide a general benchmark for the performance of those keywords.  For the example, I’ll edit my keywords to be more generic and I won’t limit the search to a specific category.

Here’s an example of search trends for 4 keywords I’ve researched.

From a quick glance at this, we can ascertain that UPHOLSTERY TRAINING searches are on the rise (though we can clearly see that it had a dip for a while during what appears to be the recession). I might want to recommend dedicating a new landing page on the website for training resources (videos, downloads, etc.). I also might want to suggest writing more clear and concise page content, or maybe even have a content header with this keyphrase. Secondly, it looks as if there could be an opportunity to increase branding. I might want to suggest adding clear concise contact information into the page copy.

We’ve determined that our first 2 keywords may have some value for the site. Now we should check and see if organic growth would be realistic or if a paid search campaign will need to supplement these organic results.  This is when we utilize our second reporting tool the Google Keyword Tool. I’ll droll down to Home Improvement & Maintenance for benchmarking and we’ll keep the results filter to the United States in English and online desktops or laptops.

Here’s data showing the volume and competition of keywords. Also, Google has suggested some keywords to me.

From the data I can see that the first keyphrase would be great for organic growth, but I’ll probably suggest to support an organic campaign with a paid one for it to be fully effective. My second keyphrase has lower volume and competition, so it wouldn’t hurt to brand my website with my name and contact information because these users are probably intending to reach out or buy something right away. In addition Google has given me additional keywords that are related to my terms which might be beneficial. Since 4 to 6 keywords or keyphrases are optimal, I could do a little more research on some of the suggested terms. It’s really important to understand that you’ll only be able to know how keywords or keyphrases will perform once you put them into action. Theories are useless unless you challenge them.

I think I’ve shared enough information today and to be quite honest, my fingers hurt from typing.  Stay tuned for the second part of this post early next week.

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