Winnipeg Web Design

Part 4: SEO and Content Development

Introduction

Hello again! Continuing the series on How To Create a Web Site, today’s tutorial is about search engine optimization and content development. We’ll discuss how to research keywords, where to implement them in the code of your site, how and where to position them, and create a basic foundation for an online marketing infrastructure (for this tutorial, we’re mainly focusing on SEO and SEM as part of that online marketing structure).

Get Started

Let’s start with checking our keywords in Google’s keyword tool guide. Since we already know that Crea+ive Communications is a company based in San Diego, California, it is then easy to create a rough draft of certain keywords that I would like to use for this research. All I am doing is creating a list of initial keywords as starting point, so that we can see which keywords will work and which won’t be used.

In doing so, below is list of keywords that we can start to use in Google to see what kind of results we can generate.

san diego marketing firm san diego marketing san diego web design san diego web development san diego graphic design san diego brand marketing san diego web marketing san diego internet marketing san diego web design firm san diego public relations san diego advertising san diego pr firm san diego web designer san diego graphic designer san diego search engine optimization san diego search engine marketing san diego seo san diego sem san diego seo specialist san diego search marketing san diego web marketing specialist san diego internet marketing firm san diego search marketing firm san diego search engine marketing sem san diego search engine optimization seo san diego search engine marketing company san diego public relations company san diego advertising company san diego advertising firm san diego marketing firm san diego internet marketing company san diego graphic designers san diego brand marketing firm

1) Go to https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal and

• Select descriptive words and phrases
• insert keywords, then
• answer the security question.

Selecting descriptive words is much easier and more robust to create because you can tailor that specifically for web sites with no existing content, and for sites that you want to revamp content to create specific call-to-action targets and positioning

The results should look something like this:

2) Explanation of results tab

1. Advertiser competition
   1. This is most common for using in Paid Search marketing but is also helpful in looking at the overall SE real estate.
   2. Shows how competitive the keyword / phrase is in determining SEO and PPC strategic methods and actions
2. Local Search Volume
   1. Shows statistics (approximate number of search queries matching exact keyword result) on local geographic time and most recent month.
   2. Specific for targeted country / language and correlates with match-type dropdown (broad, phrase, exact)
3. Global Month Volume
   1. Shows statistics (average number of search queries matching exact keyword result) for global Google queries in all countries for the most recent 12-month period.
   2. Specific for all locations in all languages and caters to match-type dropdown
4. Match Types (taken from Google) https://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?answer=6324&ctx=tltp
   1. Broad match: keyword (no punctuation)
      Allows your ad to show for searches on similar phrases and relevant variations
   2. Phrase match: “keyword”
      Allows your ad to show for searches that match the exact phrase
   3. Exact match: [keyword]
      Allows your ad to show for searches that match the exact phrase exclusively
   4. Negative match: -keyword
      Ensures your ad doesn’t show for any search that includes that term

3) Explanation of results

So now that we have the results let’s break it down into how to choose the best keywords.

In choosing the best keywords for your site, it’s best to analyze the competition, the monthly search, and global search as a whole. You want the competition to be high enough so that it’s worth competing in – not too high so that it’s too hard to compete, but not too low where it’s not even worth the competition. Same goes for the monthly and average search volume. Too high a number will prove to be time-consuming and difficult to compete in, especially with high-profile players competing against you. Too low a number will not be enough to warrant the kind of time and effort to make your site rank well.

Furthermore, a high monthly search volume can result in a more stiff competition to rank high, but may have a relatively low global monthly search. Or a medium competition can cause relatively mediocre monthly search volume and subsequent global monthly query. Each individual category can move up or down depending on the quality of the key word and the competition it brings.

Note that the results of your keywords research will also depend on how “targeted” you want them to be. Targeting your keywords refer to implementing a more specific mark or direction to your keyword, such as a place or object. The phrase “web designer” will net you a hefty global and local volume search because it is too broad. Targeting that keyword to include a specific mark like “San Diego” will produce a more funneled results of your keywords.

“San Diego Web Designer”

Competition = HIGH
Monthly Search = 1,600
Global Monthly Search = 1,600

In the search results, the key phrase “san diego web designer” displayed a fairly high advertiser competition with 1,600 monthly search volume and global monthly search volume. This means that the average search volume per year stays the same as the monthly search query while remaining competitive. With that in mind, we can note that search volume, regardless of timeframe, has been consistent throughout, while keeping competition fairly tight. Thus, we can then take into consideration that the quality of the keyword is fairly high, which makes it easier to assess that the search engine weight (or “search weight”) for this keyword is very strong to warrant that competition and consistency.

“San Diego Marketing”

Take the “san diego marketing” key phrase for example. The local search volume generates 74,000 results on a given month (in this case, that is September). 74,000 results per month translates to a very sought-after key phrase, which in and of itself seems to be a good key phrase due to its popularity. But the competition to rank out of that 74,000 can be very difficult to achieve, especially in ranking for the top 2 pages.

1,600 monthly search volume for “san diego web designer” may not compare numerically to 74,000, but in this case, we shouldn’t focus our efforts on quantity. 74,000 monthly search volume is too much to rank high in SERPs, so we should focus on less monthly search volume but still maintaining competition and global search query.

The formula that I usually use to create keyword list:

• Competition: normal to high
• Monthly search: usually between 1,000 to 3,500 (depending on target market, demographic audience, and geographic location)
• Global search: usually beween 900 to 4,500 (depending on target market, demographic audience, and geographic location)

The search volume keeps marketing methods with minimal search to maximum search without sacrificing relevancy to our marketing efforts. We want to make sure that people are searching with these keywords enough to make a difference and impact in search, but not too excessive that makes it harder to compete. In Global monthly search, I’m making a wider cushion for this averaged query, since there will be times when certain months will have higher search volume than others, and balancing out that query to a good number can help determine how effective your search keywords are.

4) Once you have the results and based on the formula that we have, pick out those keywords and phrases that match the formula. On the match type category, select the type of keyword that you want to include.

For this exercise, I included both the “broad” and “phrase” types to be added to show you how it works on adding keywords in this Google tool, but really all you need in organic on-page SEO is the broad type.

5) Once you have picked the keywords and match type, download the keywords via text format, csv, or csv for excel. I typically use text files.

6) Open up your text files and keep it open. We’re going to use it to write our content.

Writing content

7) Now that we’ve generated our keywords, let’s focus on placing those keywords in content. We’ve already done a portion of that in the last tutorial, placing keywords in the
h1 tags. But let’s not stop there. There are other places where we can insert our targeted keywords in our content. Below is the list:

• Any header tags (i.e. h1, h2, h3, h4, etc.)
• Title tag (in between the tags)
• Meta tag (description, keyword)
• Comments (This can be tricky and shouldn’t be abused)
• Content (Thought it is just a guideline, no more than 2-3 links per paragraph to prevent too high keyword density)
• Sitemap
• Footer
• Links
• URL file names

The placement and positioning of these keywords depend on the whole of the content. It is easy to get lost in the positioning of keywords in your paragraphs, but it shouldn’t be too difficult when you have certain goals and guidelines to help you write them. Below are just a handful of guidelines that I have come up with over the years, and are also taken from my online content developer/editor wife:

1. The “general guideline” in organic keyword implementation is to add no more than 3-5 specific keywords in a page. This is to prevent bloating keyword density within the page and thus creating a more quality-oriented keyword-rich page that is targeted and funneled.
2. Depending on the content and target audience, it’s safe to bet to limit your keyword links to no more than 3 per paragraph.
3. Place primary keywords first in each paragraph, followed by secondary and tertiary ones.

I’ve already created the page contents, header tags, and meta content for each page for you to see how I created them.

Sample organic SEO implementation

Title Tags

Open the index.php page and in between the title tags, enter the following:

San Diego Marketing Advertising | San Diego Public Relations | California Web Design Creative Communications

In this example, you want to be able to target as much keywords on the title page without going over certain character limits so that search engine spiders can fully read your title tags. Usually, you want to have your primary keywords first then secondary and tertiary keywords placed accordingly.

Meta Tags

9) Create description and keywords meta tags by inserting the following code after the title tags:
<meta name=”description” content=”" />
<meta name=”keywords” content=” ” />

10) For the description content, type in the following:

Creative Communications is a marketing and advertising firm experienced in internet marketing, public relations, brand marketing, web design, and print design. Based in San Diego, California, we serve all clients all over the United States in any type of marketing and advertising.

Here, I don’t necessarily have to display the targeted keywords for our site. Rather, I want to show enough “generic” keywords and mention the targeted location, while creating a descriptive portrait of the company.

11) For the keywords content, type in the following:

san diego marketing, san diego public relations, san diego advertising, san deigo web design, internet marketing, web marketing, brand marketing, public relations, graphic design, print design, san diego, california

Here, I’m implementing both specific targeted keywords and generic keywords including locations. This way, specific keywords can be used in an “exact” or “broad” sense, and the generic keywords can be mixed together in “exact” or “broad” phrases.

Header Tags

We have already written out the header tags from the last tutorial, and those keywords are based on the keyword research mentioned above. Why are header tags important? They’re a piece of what makes a complete SEO foundation. Header tags heads out the categories of the information hierarchy of your content. As the heading of a category of content, it establishes itself as the authority of that particular content, which gives it more weight for SEO purposes.

Comments

Though I hesitate to make comments a part of SEO, it does add to the arsenal to SEO marketing if used right and properly. To this extent, I only make a comment once on a page, right after the body tag. The contents within the comment should be targeted to that specific page content. For example, the web design page should have the following comment:

<!– San Diego Web Design | Web Development and Marketing –>

12) For the index page, insert the following:

<!– San Diego Brand Marketing | Advertising and Public Relations –>

Sitemap / Footer

I could have implemented all of the sitemap contents on the footer of the page, a well-known SEO technique for a more rapid-fire search weight. To do this, I would put all of the keyword-rich URLs on the footer. While this is would have been feasible, it’s not necessary for this tutorial, but something to consider for your own projects.

For example, in addition to the contact information and copyright information, the footer content could probably look something like this:

Copyright 2009 by Creative Communications. All Rights Reserved.
San Diego Marketing | San Diego Public Relations | San Diego Web Design | San Diego Print Marketing | San Diego Brand Marketing | San Diego Advertising

That same principle can be used for the sitemap page, where the URLs are listed as the keywords and not the titles of the pages.

Links and URLs

Quality keywords should be used in your links and in your URL naming conventions. The links and URLs from a keyword perspective all intertwine, since the naming convention of your URL should be derived from your keywords, while the links names you are using to link to pages should be derived from those keywords as well. Thus, the keyword link “San Diego web design” should be directed to the “san-diego-web-design.php” page where that web design content is hosted. By doing so, you are a) creating a relationship between the keyword link and URL name, and 2) building both keyword search weights through the use of those links.

There is an exception to this rule, and that is when the keyword link is linked to a landing page that may or may not host the same content. For example, the “San Diego web design” keyword link can be directed to the contact page but with a landing page name of “san-diego-web-design.php”. This technique serves in the same 2 ways as stated above, but instead of creating page weight on the web design page, it is creating page weight for a specific landing page. In this case, it is the contact page.

Well, that’s it for the summary on SEO implementation and content development. I hope that gives you some ammo to get started. Best of luck to you all!

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Written by David Abling

Online marketing specialist. Web Designer. SEO/SEM/SMM dude. Musician. Emcee. Bboy. Fashion Freak.