Keyword Marketing

SEO aka. Search Engine Optimization is an art. For those of you who don’t know what SEO is, it is the process of optimizing a webpage/website so that that page/site ranks higher in the various search engines. Higher rank=better traffic. There are many keys to proper website SEO, and one of the main ones is the keyword.

Focusing your efforts on certain keywords can really pay off. I have been able to acheive 1st page rankings for several keywords I focused my energies on for various websites I run by properly conducting keyword marketing. The traffic that comes from the right keyword can be very nice!

Keyword Research Tools

Picking and choosing keywords to focus on used to be much more difficult because there weren’t all the tools back in the day that there are today. There are many pay sites you can go to, but there is just as much great info to be found on the many free keyword selector tools. Here is a list of the various free tools you can use to help you out:

The Best Keyword Tools

• Google Keyword Tool – Top Pick – Enter one or various keywords and find out search volume for the previous month and advertiser competition for those terms. Other data the tool gives out are: Estimated Average CPC for each term, Estimated Ad Position (Google AdWords), search volume trends over the past year, and possible negative keywords. Finally, you can also have the tool search your site to see what keywords it sees; this is extremely useful, as it can help you see what Google sees.
• SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool – Top Pick – Based on Overture’s keyword data, this tool offers much more. You can find estimated monthly search volumes for Google, Yahoo, and MSN, “links to price estimate tools from Overture and Google AdWords, links to Google Trends, Google Suggest, Google Synonyms, Yahoo! Suggest, Keyword Discovery and Wordtracker keyword research results.” There are tons of other features here and you can spend a long time just exploring all the resources related to a few keywords. This tool is a must for anyone doing keyword optimization!
• Overture Keyword Tool from 123Promotion – Like the other Overture based keyword tools, you can find related terms for any keyword, but where this one is cool is in their estimated searches for the term and related keywords Per Hour (Avg.), Per Day (Avg.), Per Week (Avg.), and Per Month (Previous month). Best of all, it will also project the search traffic over the next 12 months, and will project the traffic per year in 3 Years time.

Other Keyword Tools

• Overture Keyword Tool – The grand-daddy of keyword tools – this one has been around forever. Just enter a keyword you want to learn about and you’ll find other related terms with the number of searches conducted in the previous month for that term.
• DigitalPoint Keyword Selection Tool – Another oldie but goodie. This tool (a bit annoying because of the very long captcha required with searches) just repackages the Overture keyword data, giving related search terms and number of daily searches for those terms.
• Webmaster Toolkit Keyword Tool – Using various search engines, this keyword tool will find related terms based on the one you enter in their form. This tool, I believe, is most useful in seeing the different related keywords that each search engine chooses.

I haven’t heard much conversation in the blogosphere about the use of blogrolls. What I have seen is that the top blogs no longer use them. Is this a recent trend? I have my theories, but I think the blogroll is still important for newer blogs.

Today, one of my favorite real estate bloggers, Teresa, asked me about my blogroll, and it all came to me. For a while I had been thinking about removing my blogroll, but her email put me over the edge; I removed the blogroll on my real estate blog. In case you’re wondering, I’ve been averaging several hundred subscribers a day for the blog’s feed, and our daily site traffic is pretty decent as well.

Why Get Rid of Your Blogroll?
I regularly read hundreds of other real estate blogs and if I were to have an up to date blogroll of my favorites, there would be too many links to realistically keep. In addition, there is no longer the need to do “link exchanges” on my blog to draw traffic. It now has a life of its own and it gets most of its traffic organically.

I think that once your blog gets to this point, you can start to think about saying goodbye to your blogroll. You’d be better served focusing on selling advertising, as you are likely now getting enough traffic to make some decent money with your blog. The easiest way to do that is thorough a link broker like Text Link Ads.

Why a Blogroll is Important for New Bloggers
Blogrolls are still useful tools for newer bloggers. An easy way to build backlinks is to forge relationships with other bloggers and put their link on your blogroll; in exchange, they would put your link on theirs. These links will help you grow your blog and your audience. The blogroll’s purpose here would be to serve as a forum for you to do a link exchange. One of the most fundamental ways to start to get traffic for your site is to do this.

What do you think about blogrolls? Are they just another trend from the past?

Most SEO experts will likely agree that gaining inbound links is one of the most important steps in growing your website. The methods for gaining those links continue to evolve with time. In the old days, we used to email other webmasters and request reciprocal links. That faded as the ‘net grew and people started to SPAM every site around in an effort to get some links. People used link farms and uncounted other techniques to get links. With the advent of blogs and forums, building links has become somewhat easier, provided you have something useful to say.

As the search engines have improved their algorithms, they have maintained one factor in ranking that still stands true:

Links from “trusted” sources are more important than links from newer, unknown sites. With that in mind a quick tip from Darren at Problogger.net explains an easy to get backlinks from these trusted sources. He explains that links from sites with .edu and .gov extensions help increase search rankings.

To get these links, just find forums or blogs with the extension and get involved in the discussion. You will naturally create backlinks to your site with forum signatures and your blog comments. Locating good sites is easy too! Just search for:

“keyword” forum site:.edu
“keyword” blog site:.edu
“keyword” forum site:.gov
“keyword” blog site:.gov

Replacing keyword with the topic you’re interested in, and start posting!

While this is a great “trick”, be sure you don’t start spamming. Any trust you may gain from “respectable” inbound links will quickly be lost if you start pissing everyone off and being spammy.

• Brian at SEOMoz tells us that meta-tags are making a comeback.
• Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft have all agreed on a new xml sitemap protocol for their search engines. Visit Sitemaps.org for more info.
• Jaimie at SEO Egghead gives us 6 Questions To Weed Out Charlatan SEOs. I might add “What are social networks and how are they important?” to the list. If they don’t know that one, well . . . I’d also ask “how do I get more hits for my site?” — if they don’t go on to explain the difference between hits, uniques, page views, etc., I’d stay away!
• I guess independent blogger types and the corporate world just don’t mix. The big news today is that blogging Guru Jason Calcanis resigned from AOL