The Softnik Blog

Keyword Strategy Studio Updated

There is a minor update available for Keyword Strategy Studio (build 050808). This fixes a bug in keyword builder that caused the keywords to be copied to the wrong list when the "Export to another list" option is used.

We have also enabled sorting the entries in the "compare ranks" view in Keyword Explorer. The sorting was originally disabled because it will make the list appear in wrong SE ranking order. You can now get back the original ranked list by clicking the "#" column header.

Some More Keyword Strategy Studio Tips

"I have large keyword lists containing thousands of keywords. Your software allows me to find and pull out keywords containing the terms I type in. But how do I extract keywords that do not contain the words I type in?"

That was a question we recently received.

Actually it is quite easy...

Use the "Filter" option to highlight the keywords that contain one or more words. Now use the "Invert Selection" option under the "Filter" menu to invert the selection. Then use the "delete selected" option to delete the current selection. You will be left with all the keyword phrases that do not contain the terms you specified in the first step.

"The software lists a lot of sites in the "Competitions" tab. How do I verify if the sites I specify are listed? Actually I wanted to check if my own sites are present and found it very difficult to scroll through and look"

You can use the "Find" ribbon bar button to quickly check if a site is in the list. Just type in the site URL, even a partial text will do, and click OK. If the site / URL is present in the list it will be highlighted and scrolled into view.

You can also copy the full URL / site list into one of the "My Keyword Lists" and then use the features available in Keyword Builder to locate the sites that interest you.

Are you not yet using Keyword Strategy Studio or any of the other insider tools in the IM Toolpad software suite? You can download a fully functioning trial copy... click here.

Keyword Research Completed? Ten Things You Can Do Next!

1. Look through your web pages. How many of them have no titles or titles that are too generic? Modify them to include important keyword phrases.

2. Do the same with your web page headings. Use a good page structure that includes <h1>, <h2>, <h3> tags. Don't over use the h1 tag. Use a software like Website Explorer (part of IM Toolpad) to study the existing headers in your web pages. You can use it to check web page titles also. Make sure that the headings are natural and relevant. Simply don't stuff keywords into headings.

3. Use keyword phrases in your web page content. Keywords when used properly as part of web page text can really increase your traffic from long-tail keyword searches. However, don't over-stuff keywords and make your web pages spammy.

4. Use keywords in link texts (anchor text). Replace the links that say click here to more relevant ones that have the keyword in it, if possible. Use good anchor texts even if you are linking to pages on your own sites (internal links)

5. Use keywords for image tags (img alt tags). Many images may not even have an alt text. Look through your web pages and add them wherever possible. The Website Explorer will help here too.

6. Do a Google / Yahoo / Live search for the keywords and then study the top competitors. Improve your products, services and web pages based on your research. The blog post linked above has some tips.

7. Write an article that contains some of the important keyword phrases and post it to your blog. Don't have a blog? Start one. If you don't want to mess with technical things you can easily start a blog by signing up at Blogger or Typepad.

8. Use keyword phrases in your Pay Per Click (PPC) advertisements. Create new Adword groups if required. Make sure that your landing pages have good quality score before you create new ad-groups.

9. Study your log files and pick all the long-tail keyword phrases used by your visitors. The advantage of studying long-tail keywords is that the intention behind the search is more easy to understand. Do you think your product or service can help such visitors?  Optimize your web pages so that you offer what they are looking for.

10. Try and convince others to link to your web pages using relevant anchor texts. While this may not be always possible, you can always ask your affiliates and friends to use a specific keyword phrase while linking to you. Make sure that the anchor text you suggest is relevant.

A simple method to find the Internet keywords you want to optimize for!

Here is a simple but very effective method to know the keywords your prospective customers will use to search...

Ask them!

Yes, not very original and certainly not innovative... But still a very powerful idea!

If you have any kind of offline dealing with your customers, simply add a new question into any form they might fill in. You can also make a simple on-line or printed  survey form for this.

If you are in the travel business, you can probably ask the following question...

If you are looking to travel to [name the city or country here] what would you type in to search on-line for finding hotels there?

Make sure that you ask only the one question above. Most people will gladly answer a simple, precise question like that without any objection.

Here is what you should do...

For each of your product or service create a question similar to the above. Spend some time polishing the way the question is framed.

Add this question to your offline and on-line forms. If you already do surveys, add this question to your survey. Ask the question to friends and existing customers,  preferably after purchase, or send them to the survey form in your "thank you" email.

Collect as many answers as you can...  Then combine the data from your survey with the data from your own log files.

Within a few weeks or months you will be sitting on a keyword gold mine!

Collect the keyword phrases and use Keyword Strategy Studio to find the top sites ranked for those keyword phrases. Are you listed? Study the competitors who are listed. Are those websites offering what the customers are really looking for? Can you improve your sites so that your solution is superior?

How To Make Your Web Page or Blog Post Titles Unique and Interesting

Here is a simple tip to make your web page titles unique, interesting and search engine friendly!

Use Keyword strategy studio and do a keyword analysis on the topic you are interested in. Click the Top Titles tab and look through the web page titles of your top competition. You will see all the titles listed along with their strengths (The strength is based on the ranking in top three search engines).

Can you create a better title? You can use the ideas from the previous post on creating good headlines while keeping an eye on the existing titles. Make sure that your title is unique and better.

Looking through these titles will also give you more ideas about keyword phrases and also ideas about topics you may want to discuss in the future.

Keyword ideas from your customer emails and forum posts

How many times have you found it difficult to find the right information on the web? It is no longer easy to find something through a search. You end up doing a large number of searches, always getting thousands of search results, but none with the right answers.

And just when you were about to give up, a post at an Internet forum points you to a web-site that immediately solves the problem!

Is your product or service difficult to find?

Having a product or service that solves a customer problem is very good... but, you also need to let your customers know that you have the solution.  Unfortunately, your web pages may not describe the problem and the solution the same way a prospective customer would describe his or her requirements.

How do you improve your web visibility?

Start looking through the customer emails, third party forum posts and blog comments to see how people phrase their questions. Look for keyword phrases you haven't thought of and then add them to your keyword lists.

Add frequent customer queries to your FAQ section and provide the answers.  This reduces the number of customer support queries and increases your web visibility.

Common Keyword Research Mistakes - 6

Not Checking Your Own Server Log Files At Regular Intervals

Your server log files already contain the list of keyword searches that are bringing traffic to your site. You also have the means to know if the visitors coming through those searches are converting well.

All you have to do is...

1. Get more traffic for the keywords that are already working.
2. Improve the conversion rates of visitors coming after those searches. You can do this by improving your landing pages. This is a lot more easier than just trying to improve a random web page because you already know what the site visitor was looking for.
3. Find more keyword phrase combinations similar to the already working ones. Once you know what keywords the visitor was typing in, you can find more variations of the same keywords. Use Keyword Strategy Studio to do this.

Previous posts in this series...

1. Avoiding Keyword Research Completely!
2. Obsessing About The Exact Keyword Search Counts!
3. Constraining Your Keyword Research Based On Wrong Assumptions!
4. Not Managing Your Keyword Lists Properly!
5. Doing Only Automated Keyword Research!

Flashlights and Torches!

Does your keyword strategy take into account the differences between English usage in USA and the other parts of the globe?

Here are a few words that are used differently (UK and US)

• Bonnet and Hood
• Torch and Flashlight
• Lorry and Truck
• Tap and Faucet
• Tick and Check

You can use Keyword Strategy Studio to find such alternate words.

For example, analyzing flashlight brought up

• Electric Torch
• Torch Flashlight
• Flashlight Electric Torch

as some of the related keyword suggestions.

Common Keyword Research Mistakes - 5

Doing Only Automated Keyword Research!

This is a very common mistake because of sales pages promoting software products that claim to automate everything. The only problem with automating your keyword research is that a real human being can always come up with better solutions and strategies any time.

Automated keyword research tools base their results on factors like search popularity (mostly supplied by a third party tool) and search result counts. As we have already seen these are no longer good indicators of keyword search volumes, demand or supply.

A good keyword research requires careful consideration of multiple factors like regional and seasonal trends, the search context, if searches are from actual customers willing to spend money and so on. So use a software tool or use an on-line research for preliminary analysis and then brainstorm with the help of a few intelligent human beings to decide the keywords you want to target. Another surefire way is to use a pay per click search engine and actually test your keywords.

Automation is best when applied to repetitive tasks that require no application of thought. So use automated tools to multiple your keyword lists (long tail keyword generation), cleanup keyword lists, etc.

Common Keyword Research Mistakes - 4

Not Managing Your Keyword Lists Properly!

Once you realize that it is simply not possible to accurately find the actual keyword search volumes, you will also realize the one simple, basic fact regarding keywords...

There are no best keywords for a web page... there are only the keywords that happen to work for that web page!

If you have been running websites for a while you would have already accumulated a number of important keyword phrases that are highly relevant to each of your web pages. You should give your keyword lists the importance it deserves. Your log files and site statistics will tell you which keyword phrases got you the sales. You will also know which keyword phrases do not convert. These data are gold and should be managed properly using spreadsheets or a software.

This is even more important if you use pay per click advertisements. The success of any pay per click advertisement depends on your keyword lists, the advertisement text used for the keywords, your landing page and of course the product or service on offer. The only way to optimize this is to use different advertisement groups and associate each group with its own keywords and advertisement texts.

This leads to the most important thing you can do as part of your Keyword Strategy...

1. List all your important web pages
2. List keyword phrases that work for each of these web pages. You can find this from your server logs and PPC campaign data (if you are running ad-word / PPC campaigns).
3. Manage and tweak your lists so that your actual results continue to improve.

You can use a software like Keyword Strategy Studio to do this more easily.