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Do you understand how keyword research works? Are you using keyword research tools to decide upon the best keywords to rank for?

And then… when you know your keywords and you start using them in your business… how do you promote your website to rank for those keywords?

If you want to know more about how the latest Hummingbird release impacts your web rankings, or if you are simply looking for step-by-step instructions on how to run a quality keyword research (or want it done for you), then click on the Play button above… or read this article.

In today’s latest podcast I interview Brent Hodgson, the founder of Market Samurai (one of the worldwide leading keyword research tools) to find out more about the issue of keywords… and how to solve it.

Discover in the podcast:

• 1. What are keywords?
• 2. Hummingbird dictates where keywords go
• 3. Title Tag versus Page Header
• 4. SEO as a game of content
• 5. The 4 benefits of identifying the RIGHT keywords to go after
• 6. The strength of competition
• 7. That content marketing stuff
• 8. Why has (not provided) sky-rocketed?

Now let’s take these headings one by one and see what they mean…

1. What are keywords?

We can’t talk online business if we don’t understand keywords. They are the driving power behind your website and your content… and of course, your rankings.

Keywords are the core part of any online business

Understanding keywords is easy: they’re whatever you type into Google Search. They can be one word, or several words long (in which case they are known as keyphrases).

Q: How do they relate to your website?

A: If you want to be well-ranked for a particular keyword then you have to target it: have content published around that keyword and target your page for that keyword as well.

The problem with keywords…

“Most of the time, what’s happening is people invest a whole bunch of money in their sites, a whole bunch of time, and a whole bunch of effort and they never get ROIs [Return On Investment]. So what the website becomes is a liability of the business rather than an income-generating asset of the business” – Brent Hodgson.

2. Hummingbird dictates where keywords go

As I was saying in a previous video, Google has changed the rules of the game when it launched the new Hummingbird algorithm. I talk about it as Google having replaced NOT parts of its engine, but its ENTIRE engine…

These specific changes now dictate the RIGHT place to use keywords on webpages.

e.g.: In the Title Tags of your webpages (more about Title Tags as you scroll down)

The main goal you aim for with these keywords is to build a sort of virtual spider web to catch as many “flies” (aka visitors) as possible. Different pages will therefore target different keywords, but the keywords will be intertwined (connected by the same theme, topic, etc.)

Tip: Don’t put as many keywords as possible on a single page. It’s spammy and you will get penalised for doing it. On the contrary, create pages whose main focus is around a single keyword.

The rule is:

1 page = 1 (relevant & valuable) keyword = optimisation

The big no-no is:

1 page = [X] keywords = confusing

3. Title Tag versus Page Header

Not many people know the difference between the two so I think it’s about time to find it out.

Title Tags:

• People don’t read it.
• Very specific/short keyword is used.
• Written for SEO purposes

Page Headers:

• Used to define headings in your content.
• Written for the human eye (what makes people click?)
• Has a different purpose from the Title Tag

Editing Header Tags in WordPress:

• There are 6 header types

 

Tip: For more SEO info read the Google Webmaster guidelines.

Listen to the podcast and find out more information about Pages and Page Descriptions (what appears inside Google when they are listing pages; sometimes it’s the content that Google pulls off the page, other times it is a unique description that has been written into the code of the page).

Bonus tip: Having the keyword inside the description is:

1. LOGICAL

• because Google is looking for it
• because Google is bolding relevant keywords which are prominent and therefore likely to get clicked
• they provide value and therefore higher, better rankings

2. VALUABLE

4. SEO as a game of content

SEO is NOT dead as long as there are search engines out there. When we say that SEO is dead, we refer to the black hat techniques which used to work but are not punished by Google.

SEO not dead = the white hat techniques; built for the long term

SEO dead = the black hat techniques; built for the short term

When talking about SEO, everything comes back to the Google Webmaster Guidelines: content does NOT have to rank well, it has to be VALUABLE for the end user (readers, trainees, web surfers). The topics must be interesting, well-written, engaging, interactive, designed for the human eye.

SEO is going to become increasingly a game of content.

Tip: when writing keywords, use variations of the same keyword. Try not to think about keywords when writing content; think about maximizing the value and everything else will flow naturally from it.

5. The 4 benefits of identifying the RIGHT keywords to go after

There are 4 factors which contribute to a website’s success:

1. Traffic

The more people are searching for your keyword, the bigger the chances are that you are going to get more customers.

2. Relevance

It’s not just about finding high search keywords; they need to be relevant to the product or service you sell.

3. Commercial Value

Some keywords are going to be a lot more valuable for you than others.

4. Competition

There are 2 aspects of competition:

1. The number of competitors (how many people are there in the marketplace?)

2. The strength of the competition

If you want to achieve THAT traffic that big companies have, you are going to have to be a big company that can afford to put a lot of money in your strategies. You are going to need to outrank the biggest, most valuable companies that are out there, and they are not going to give up their rankings easily.

So what you need is you need to really stand a chance of actually getting those rankings.

6. The strength of competition

If you are a startup business or your website is fairly new and doesn’t have that sort of marketing budget & the age of the website behind them, then it is better to go for the “low hanging fruits”.

These are long tail keywords, longer phrases with less search but lower competition. And, as Brent puts, it, “Even though the pie is smaller, you get a bigger chunk of it”.

This is where the whole content marketing stuff gets in.

7. That content marketing stuff

You need to work out what you want to rank well for and then there’s the actual work that you have to put into setting up the page and making it rank well. This is called Content Marketing, and I have an entire pillar article about it right here.

Think about your website as opening up a new store: there’s still things that you are going to need to do to manage the store and make sure it is running efficiently.

8. Why has Google Analytics keyword (not provided) skyrocketed?

Google has changed the way that they are displaying search results.

In the past when you went to Google Search it had a http:// kind of website. Now they switched to the https:// version (the “s” stands for “secure connection”).

This apparently small change is, in fact, HUGE. If before we could see where the visitors were coming from, now it has become more important than ever to do keyword research. It’s a sad change… and it changed the rules of the game in some sense.

Still, the game remains the same: high quality content.

Why has Google made the switch?

Nobody knows. It could be because of the privacy issues… or it could be because they want to make SEO harder and therefore to make paying for ads more valuable.

The bottom line is: if you want to rank well, the single most important option you are left with is running a keyword research.

How?

1. You can use tools such as Market Samurai. Go to http://supersavvybusiness.com/samurai and download the free trial and test it. It also has some fantastic video training which shows you how to use it.

2. Head over to http://supersavvybusiness.com and contact us. We have an entire team ready to do the keyword research for you. What you’ll end up with is a full 30-40 keyword research report which contains suggestions of pages you should target for each keyword AND new pages you could create for keywords.

That’s it for today! If you want to connect with Brent you can do so by accessing this link: http://brent.to/facebook.

Remember: doing this research is just the peak of the iceberg. Once done, Content Marketing joins the stage…

STOP!

If you want to find out more about Content Marketing and how to implement it in your online business, I will host a full-day of training in Sydney on November 2nd.

It will be an Action and Implementation full day workshop where I will grant access to 10 people only. I want it to be a workshop focused around quality and not quantity, and this is why only 10 seats are provided. 2 tickets have already been sold.

You can claim your seat here.

What you’ll get during this workshop is the nuts and bolts of EXACTLY what I am doing in my Content Marketing strategy… and which also works for your business GUARANTEED.

It’s the strategy, workflow and plan of a tested and proven content marketing optimisation.