Search engine optimisation is a marketing discipline. It is not a stand alone function.
Before any specific optimisation activity is undertaken it is essential that two areas are
non-search areas are appraised:
Understanding your Organisation’s Online Business Strategy
Good SEO requires a through understanding of your organisation’s overall business
strategy. How does search fit in with activities such as advertising, e-mail and direct
marketing? Is there a marketing plan? What does it say about objectives, strategy and
budgets? What is the overall direction of the business and what can search contribute?
Researching your Market Category, Customers and Competitors
Good SEO also requires a thorough understanding of the market category within which
the search project and web site will compete. What is the category size and how is it
developing. What other channels to market are there? What information is available
regarding their behaviour and attitude of customers? What role in the buying process is
played by the search marketing? Who are current and likely competitors? Once the above
is fully grasped you can proceed to the first real activity of SEO; Keyword selection.
Keyword Selection - Factors
Keyword selection is the first search specific discipline. Having explained that spiders
read and index text, we find that some text is more important than others. That text is
keywords. Valuable keywords are the words or phrases that prospective customers use
when searching in your market category. Keyword selection is therefore crucial and has
implications for so much else within search. I have drawn up a list of factors that should
be taken into account when selecting keywords.
Category Priorities
The first thing to remember is that the number of keywords you can use on any one site
or page has a finite limit. A general recommendation is that there is an overall limit of 20 individual words. In my opinion – due to other factors – the limit should be drawn much
tighter than this. Rather than a limit of words, I prefer, a limit of characters – including
spaces - of no more than 64. In essence, you must be sufficiently focused to sum up the
key priorities of your business within this limit – typically no more than 6 to 8 words.
The only way around this limit is to have an endless number of pages on an endless
number of sites – all optimised, monitored and updated on a regular basis.
Search Volumes
You should use a word or phrases that have sufficient search volumes for your needs.
You can find out about search volumes by checking with Word Tracker software or
Yahoo’s Overture keyword suggestion tool. Read more about these tools below.
Competitive Advantage
A place to look for keywords is where you enjoy some competitive advantage. How are
your products or services differentiated? What are the real strengths of your business
compared to your closest competitors? What proprietary advantages do you enjoy? What
is it you do better that may persuade prospective purchasers to visit your site?
Competition
You may have decided on your own keyword priorities but you must also check out the
competition for those keywords. Selecting a word or phrase already prioritised by a
multitude of competitive sites will see you struggle for visibility. Try to find words or
phrases that appear ignored or underutilised by your competitors. An alternative but
higher risk approach is to see what keywords are used by competitor sites and then
attempt to outmanoeuvre them by better use of links, content and meta tags.
Relevance
The keyword terms you select must be relevant, salient and part of the vocabulary used
by the audience you are seeking to attract. If that audience is a consumer one it is unlikely
to use jargon. The opposite may be true if you are seeking B2B prospects. My experience
suggests that consumers will often use entirely different vocabulary from marketing,
advertising and IT people. To avoid confusion use simpler but more specific terms.
Making your keyword choice
In essence, you must synthesise all of the above five factors in selecting and refining your
keywords. Ignoring any one of the factors could create problems. Do not rush into this
process. Test out your keywords by making trial searches on the major engines and see
what company results you might keep. Getting it wrong may involve a large amount of reworking.