Text Component

To obtain maximum search engine visibility, it is essential to understand how your target audience is searching for actual information on your web site. When your target audience uses a search engine to find the products and services you offer, they type a set of words or phrases into the search box. This set of words is commonly called your site's keywords or keyword phrases .

For your target audience to find your site on the search engines, your pages must contain keyword phrases that match the phrases your target audience is typing into search queries.

When a search engine spider analyzes a web page, it determines keyword relevancy based on an algorithm, which is a formula that calculates how web pages are ranked. The most important text for a search engine is the most important text for your target audience ” the text your target audience is going to read when they arrive at your web site.

To best understand the most important text on a web page, the text should satisfy the following requirements:

• The text must be visible on a standard web browser without your target audience performing some type of action.

• You must be able to copy and paste the text directly from the web browser to a text editor (such as Notepad).

The two most important places to put keywords are in the title tag and in the visible-body text. Title-tag text and visible-body text are considered primary text by the search engines because all the search engines index this text and place significant weight on it. Most of your copywriting efforts should focus primarily on this text.

Meta-tag text and alternative text are considered secondary text by the search engines because not all search engines read and record this text.

For example, using the aforementioned criteria, your target audience must perform an action (View Source) to see meta-tag content (see Figure 2.1). However, I highly recommend that you write effective copy for these tags for the search engines that do read this text.

Figure 2.1. To view the meta-tag content on this web page, end users must perform an action. They must select View > Source on the drop-down menu in their browsers. Alternative text can be viewed in this manner as well as placing your mouse over a graphic image. Note that the title tag can be viewed without having to perform an action.

Keyword Selection

The foundation of an effective search engine marketing campaign is selecting the best keywords that your potential customers use to find your site. Selecting the right keywords requires research.

Pretend that someone has never heard of your business but is looking for your type of product or service. Remember that you must determine the keywords that your potential customers would type in a search box, not the words that you would type in a search box.

You probably have a decent list of keywords already. Review your company's printed materials. What words are used over and over? Remove all words used for sales and marketing hype from your printed materials. Many of the remaining words are possible keywords.

When you speak to new and current customers on the phone, what questions do they frequently ask and what words do they use? Do they mention a specific product or service? Do they frequently ask for a specific department? Ask your current customers how they would find you on the web. You might discover that your current customers use terms that you haven't even thought of. Consider including these unexpected terms in your keyword list.

When you prepare a potential list of keywords, you must determine the various word combinations your target audience is most likely to type to a search query. Singular and plural versions of your most important keywords, synonyms, misspellings, acronyms, and abbreviations (with and without periods) are all potential keywords. Begin by brainstorming.

For example, let's use a fictitious company called TranquiliTeas Organic Teas, Inc., which is a company that sells organic teas and tea sets. The TranquiliTeas site might have the following keyword list:

organic teas	organic tea	oolong tea
oolong teas	green tea	green teas
organic oolong tea sets	organic green tea	tea set
tea recipes	tea cups	teacups
herbal tea	organic tea recipes	herbal teas
decaffeinated tea	black teas	black teas
whole leaf tea	decaffeinated teas	decaffeinated tea
iced tea recipes	whole leaf teas	tea drinks
tea spoons	loose leaf teas	tea accessories
tea kettles	tea pots	tea pot
tea bags	tea kettle	what is organic tea
specialty teas	jasmine tea	gourmet tea
tea gifts	tea ceremony	china tea sets
chinese tea	tea mugs	porcelain tea sets
chinese oolong tea	japanese tea	indian tea
japanese tea ceremony	japanese green tea	indian black tea
whole leaf tea	herbal tea recipes	accessories

You might have noticed that all the keywords in the preceding list are in lowercase. Generally , when people type words in a search box, they tend to type the words all in lowercase. Initially creating your keyword list in lowercase makes this task easier.

Some search engines are case sensitive. This means that searching for "Chinese tea" might yield different search results than searching for "chinese tea." Later on when you narrow down your keyword list, you might determine that the uppercase version of a word is more frequently used than the lowercase version of a word.

When you create your keyword list, think up as many combinations as possible. When people are searching for something specific, they tend to use more than one word. For example, if a person is looking for "software," he or she might find a wide variety of software listed in the search results. That person might be looking for "accounting software" and not "graphic design software." If that person is running a small business, a more accurate search phrase might be "small business accounting software" or "accounting software for small businesses."

It is usually better to target longer keyword phrases because the people who type specific keyword phrases are more likely to be converted into customers. Three-, four-, or five-word keyword phrases often yield more accurate results in the search engines.

Targeting longer keyword phrases does not mean that you give up the chance to rank well for other keyword phrases or a single word. When you target the keyword phrase "organic herbal tea recipes," you are concurrently targeting all the following words and phrases:

• Organic tea recipes

• Herbal tea recipes

• Organic herbal tea

• Herbal tea

• Organic tea

• Tea recipes

• Herbal recipes

• Tea

• Recipes

After you have determined your initial keyword list, you can begin to narrow it down using many of the tools available online.

Tools, Techniques, and Tips

When you begin to analyze your keyword list, you are looking for trends. Whenever I prepare a keyword list, I always put the list into a spreadsheet. A spreadsheet can help you see the trends more quickly and easily.

The first set of data is your initial keyword list. After you have this keyword list, you need to determine which keyword combinations your target audience is most likely to type in search engine queries. Questions you need to ask yourself include the following:

• Did people tend to use the singular or plural version of a word?

• What three or four words appeared together most often?

• What was the word order?

If you have a new web site and do not have any statistics on keywords, you can use the major search engines and directories to assist you.

Related Searches

Many search engines and directories offer a "Related searches" or "Others searched for" or "Narrow your search" feature in their search results. For instance, after searching for "organic tea" at AltaVista, the search box on the results page displays "Refine your search with AltaVista Prisma," as shown in Figure 2.2.

Figure 2.2. "Refine your search" results for the keyword "organic tea" at AltaVista.

The keyword phrases listed under the "People who did this search also searched for" heading are some of the most popular related searches conducted by HotBot's users. See Figure 2.3.

Figure 2.3. Related search results for the keyword "tea" at HotBot.

Notice that there are some words that have nothing to do with the tea business, such as the Texas Education Agency, whose abbreviation is T.E.A. You know you can safely ignore that keyword phrase. In this instance, you can see that the plural version of "tea" is popular along with the phrases "green tea" and "herbal tea."

Likewise, if you perform the same search on Yahoo!, you might get a different set of popular keyword phrases, as shown in Figure 2.4.

Figure 2.4. Related search results for the keyword "tea" at Yahoo!.

Notice that some of the keyword phrases are on your initial keyword list (Chinese tea, herbal tea, and green tea). In addition, a phrase that you might not have thought to target (English tea) is also on the list. What we are beginning to see is a possible pattern. Both "green tea" and "herbal tea" are popular searches. Therefore, when you are designing and writing your web site, you might want to have pages dedicated specifically to green teas and herbal teas.

Other items you might want to keep track of are directory categories. Which directory categories appeared most often during a search? In your spreadsheet, keep track of the names of directory categories. Many directory categories contain keywords, and you might want to use some of these keywords on your pages.

Did some phrases not yield any related searches? This could mean that your targeted keyword phrase might not be a popular search phrase on the search services but it could be a popular search phrase by your target audience. Data from any site statistics program (such as WebTrends) and your site search engine, if you have one, can confirm the actual keyword phrases your target audience is actually using to find your site.

AlltheWeb.com (FAST Search), Lycos, AskJeeves, and Teoma offer a version of "Related searches." An online service called WordTracker can also assist you in your keyword research.

Overture

Overture is a pay-per-click search engine that enables you to easily check for what Overture users are searching. The "Search Term Suggestions" feature is an excellent tool for refining your keyword list. The current URL for this tool is http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/.

Enter one of your keywords into the search box. The search results are a list of the most popular search terms containing your keyword. For instance, entering the term "herbal tea" generated the list of matches shown in Figure 2.5.

Figure 2.5. Search results for the keyword phrase "herbal tea" at Overture.

This list shows how many times people searched for the word "herbal tea" in May 2002. You can see that 6,812 people searched for the keyword phrase "herbal tea" in that month, "essiac tea" was the second-most-popular keyword phrase, and "herbal tea recipe" was the fourth-most-popular keyword phrase.

Perform as many searches as you can to get a thorough picture of what your target audience is searching for. Because the fictional tea site we are working on specifically sells organic teas, we can perform a search on Overture for "organic tea" (see Figure 2.6).

Figure 2.6. Search results for the keyword phrase "organic tea" at Overture.

Notice that the types of organic teas searched for are green and red teas. ("Choice" is a brand name .) The keyword phrase "herbal tea" might be a more popular search phrase, but the phrase "organic herbal tea" might yield better conversions.

Always perform multiple searches to get a clear picture of what your target audience is interested in reading. Search for single words, such as "tea" to see the variety of related searches. Based on that search, narrow down your list. Search for "herbal teas," "herbal tea recipes," and "tea recipes." Keep track of your search results in a spreadsheet.

Google AdWords

Google has its own research tool for its pay-per-click AdWords program. The current URL for this tool is https ://adwords.google.com/select/main?cmd=KeywordSandbox.

For this tool, you can enter one keyword or keyword phrase per line in the query box, and Google presents you with a list of keyword phrases. For example, in Figure 2.7, if you enter the single keyword phrase "herbal tea" in the query box, only three search results display. Notice that the keyword phrase "herbal tea recipes" appeared in both Google and Overture. Therefore, the TranquiliTeas company might want to create a section of recipes on its site. When applicable , Google also suggests other keywords.

Figure 2.7. Search results for the keyword phrase "herbal tea" at Google.

Both Google and Overture have created these tools for their paying customers. To keep these services free, do not perform exhaustive numbers of searches daily to determine your keyword list. Generally, you can figure out your keyword list within 10 searches or fewer on each engine. After you determine your keyword list, you can rely on other tools, such as your site statistics software and site search engines, to maintain your list.

The Truth About Misspelled Words

Many search engine marketers recommend using misspelled words as part of a keyword list. Sometimes this is a good keyword strategy and sometimes it is not a good strategy. It depends on the word(s) you are targeting.

For example, "oolong" is a commonly misspelled word. When you perform a search for the misspelled "olong" on Overture, only one keyword phrase each appears in the search results, as shown in Figure 2.8.

Figure 2.8. Search results for the misspelled word "oolong" at Overture.

Because this word does not appear to be a popular search, I would not be overly concerned with the misspelling. To minimally compensate for a misspelled keyword phrase, put the misspelling in the meta keywords tag.

Remember that for the search engines to consider a word important, you must use that word in your primary text: your title tag and your visible-body text. In all likelihood , you will not need to create a web page specifically for a misspelled word unless that word is a popular misspelling.

Word Stemming

Word stemming is the capability of a search to include the root or stem of words for multiple search results. For example, stemming enables a searcher to enter "marketing" in a search query and get search results for the stem word "market."

Not all search engines have stemming capabilities. Therefore, whenever possible, try to determine the most popular, targeted variation of a specific keyword. Quite often, the plural version of a keyword is more popular than the singular version of a keyword. If you believe multiple versions of a word (such as "market" and "marketing") are both important, then leave both words in your keyword list.

Stop Words and Filter Words

Filter words are common words (a, an, but, or, nor, for, the) that the search engines ignore during a search. Search engines filter out these words because the use of these words in a search query can slow down search results without improving their accuracy. Filtering out common words can save search engines enormous amounts of space in their indices.

Stop words are words that cause the search engine to stop recording all the text on a web page. In other words, when a search engine spider encounters a word or phrase from its list of stop words, it leaves the site without saving any of the site information to its index. Sites already in the search engine index can be removed and banned from resubmission if the search engine finds stop words on your web pages. Some search engines define "stop words" and "filter words" identically.

When preparing your keyword list, eliminate all filter words because they are ignored anyway. If you would like to determine whether a word is a filter word, perform a search on a search engine, such as Google. In the search results, Google tells you which words it ignores (see Figure 2.9).

Figure 2.9. Google ignores the word "the" because it is a common word and filters it out of search queries.

Web Site Search Engines

If you have a search engine on your own web site, the words entered into site search queries can also be potential words for your keyword list.

Many times, when your target audience finds your site through a search engine, they want to find the information they are searching for within five to seven clicks. The best-case scenario for your potential customers would be to go from the search engine results directly to the page on your site that contains the exact information for which they are searching. However, this scenario is not always realistic. In all likelihood, your potential customers will browse your site if they do not see the information immediately available. If your visitors cannot find the relevant information by browsing, they might use your site's internal search engine.

Many usability experts report that people prefer to browse for information rather than to use a site search engine. Therefore, when you gather potential keywords from your site search engine, keep in mind that your potential customers probably cannot find that information from browsing your site.

What to Do with Your Keyword List

Based on the data gathered from various resources, you can narrow down your keyword list. The following is the keyword list I came up with for the fictional TranquiliTeas company:

organic teas	organic tea	oolong tea
oolong teas	organic oolong tea	organic oolong teas
green tea	green teas	organic green tea
organic green teas	black tea	black teas
organic black tea	organic black teas	herbal tea
herbal teas	organic herbal tea	organic herbal teas
tea recipes	organic tea recipes	decaffeinated tea
decaffeinated teas	herbal tea recipes	loose leaf teas
whole leaf teas	Japanese teas	Chinese teas
English tea sets	Indian black tea	Indian teas
porcelain tea sets	gourmet teas	tea sets
		tea accessories

Now the TranquiliTeas company knows how to build part of its web site based on this keyword list. They know that the company should create product pages about green, oolong, organic, herbal, black, English, Chinese, and Indian teas.

The web site owner can also create a section of tea recipes, because that appears to be a popular search. Are black tea recipes different from oolong tea recipes? Probably so, because they have considerably different flavors. Maybe they can have seasonal tea recipes ” hot tea recipes for winter and cold tea recipes for summer.

This keyword list also sets up some possible Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) pages. Many people do not know what organic tea is. Thus, some possible questions on a FAQs page might include the following:

• What is organic tea?

• What is the difference between organic and non-organic teas?

• What types of organic teas do you offer?

• Are your organic teas available in both loose leaf and whole leaf varieties?

If you look at this short set of questions, how many times was the word "tea" or "teas" mentioned? How many times was the keyword phrase "organic tea" or "organic teas" mentioned? Creating keyword-rich FAQs pages based on audience keyword preferences is a way to generate search engine traffic ”something of which both search engines and directory editors approve.

The following list shows a possible layout of the TranquiliTeas Web site based on the keyword list:

Home Page

Organic Teas

• Organic green teas

  • Asian blend green tea

  • Jasmine green tea

  • Green Moroccan mint tea

  • Decaffeinated green tea with peach

  • Toasted green tea (Ban-cha)

• Organic black teas

  • Darjeeling tea

  • Earl Grey tea

  • Orange Pekoe tea

  • Celtic Breakfast tea

  • Mango Ceylon with vanilla tea

  • Lapsang Souchong

• Organic oolong teas

  • Hunan red oolong tea

  • Oolong orange blossom tea

  • Oolong tea

• Organic herbal teas

  • Peppermint herbal tea

  • Chamomile herbal tea

  • Roseberry herbal tea

  • Orange herbal tea

  • Ginger herbal tea

  • Licorice tea

• Loose leaf teas

  • English Breakfast

  • Irish Breakfast

  • Earl Grey

  • Jasmine green tea

Tea Sets and Accessories

• Japanese tea sets and accessories

• Chinese tea sets and accessories

• English tea sets and accessories

• Porcelain tea sets and accessories

• Tea pots

• Tea infusers

• Tea spoons

• Tea bag holders

Special Offers

• Tea samplers

  • Loose leaf teas

  • Whole leaf teas

  • Tea bags

• Gift baskets

Frequently Asked Questions

• Questions about organic tea

• Questions about Japanese or green tea

• Questions about Chinese or oolong tea

• Questions about Indian or black tea

• Questions about herbal tea

• How to order

Tea Facts

• Japanese teas

• Chinese teas

• Indian teas

• English teas

• History of tea

• Japanese tea ceremony

Tea Recipes

• Hot tea recipes

  • Green tea

  • Black tea

  • Oolong tea

  • Herbal tea

• Iced tea recipes

  • Chai tea

  • Herbal tea

About TranquiliTeas Organic Tea

• Company history

• In the news

• Money back guarantee

• Return policy

• Privacy policy

Links & Resources

Contact Us

Request Catalog

Site Map

Although this TranquiliTeas layout is by no means complete, you can see how all the keywords naturally appear in the site architecture. This type of site architecture is commonly referred to as a hierarchical site architecture .

Important

If you plan on selling products and services directly on your web site, create additional pages with a return policy, money back guarantee, and a privacy policy, when applicable.

Directory editors will be looking for this type of information on e-commerce sites.

Natural Themes

Themes are recurrent and consistent ideas presented throughout a web site. By narrowing your keyword list to approximately 20 to 50 targeted phrases, natural themes begin to emerge.

For example, for our fictional TranquiliTeas web site, the theme keyword that is consistently used throughout the site is "teas," and more specifically, "organic teas." These top words are the main theme of a web site. You know that when you land on any page of the TranquiliTeas web site, you are reading information about teas.

The secondary themes for this site might be green teas, oolong teas, black teas, and herbal teas. Various pages on the site can be created around these secondary themes. For example, a set of pages about green teas might be the following:

• Green teas (products) > Loose-leaf green teas

• Green teas (products) > Green tea in tea bags

• Green teas > Japanese tea sets and accessories

• Green teas > Recipes

• Green teas > History of green teas

• Green teas > Frequently asked questions about green teas

Likewise, a natural theme might emerge about oolong teas:

• Oolong teas (products) > Loose-leaf oolong teas

• Oolong teas (products) > Oolong tea in tea bags

• Oolong teas > Chinese tea sets and accessories

• Oolong teas > Recipes

• Oolong teas > History of oolong teas

• Oolong teas > Frequently asked questions about oolong teas

Based on these natural themes, the TranquiliTeas web site owner now knows how to cross-link related pages based on keywords.

A simple way to create natural themes on your site is to create a corresponding set of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) pages for each category of products or services. For the fictional TranquiliTeas site, the web site owner can create a set of FAQs for each main tea category: organic teas, green tea, oolong tea, black tea, and herbal teas. Likewise, since "tea recipes" is a popular search phrase, the TranquiliTeas web site owner can create various recipe pages for the different types of teas.

Important

It is not necessary to build a Frequently Asked Questions page for every product or service you offer, just the main categories. All FAQs pages should contain unique content and provide information that your target audience is generally interested in reading.

A general rule of thumb is to have at least 4 to 15 questions and answers on each FAQs page. If a FAQs page only contains three questions and answers, the FAQs page probably will not contain enough content on a specific topic.

After a FAQs page contains 16 questions and answers, specific information becomes more difficult to locate, and the download time of the page can significantly increase.

Whenever you create a FAQs page, make sure you link it to the related products or services page. If the FAQs page ranks well in the search engines, you want to encourage site visitors to view your products and services, not just to read your FAQs page.

Likewise, in terms of sales, if a potential customer is interested in purchasing loose leaf green tea, for example, maybe that customer might need a loose leaf tea spoon (to measure the loose tea) or a tea infuser. Maybe a customer interested in Japanese tea sets might also be interested in purchasing green tea. Carefully planned cross-linking encourages your site visitors to make more purchases and communicates to the search engines which pages are important on your web site.

Building your web pages based on keyword research and natural theming makes your content easier to find on the search engines for the following reasons:

• Most web pages on your site contain very specific content, keeping your pages tightly focused.

• Important pages are linked to each other, making it easier for your site visitors to find and purchase related products and services.