Keyword Madness
I was checking out Search Engine Guide’s article about on-page optimization because I need to rebuild TheLocoMono Website and its’ sub-domain’s searchability. It provided a link to a free PDF, Keyword Research and Selection written by Pole Position.
In Part 1, it discussed about finding the core terms that applies to your site, or in my case, my site.
Write down the purpose(s) of the website as well as a detailed description of the scope of the website in relation to its industry/subject/service, etc.
I have to admit I groaned when I first looked at this instruction. I know this is a blog that is supposed to explore the relationship of money and business, personal finance, real estate, and travel.
WordTracker Results
Using the free keyword suggestion tool provided by WordTracker, I looked up the number of results it came up with specific keywords regarding my blog.
Blog - 2777
This site is a blog. The original purpose was to explore personal finance topics but I expanded it slowly into four pillars or sub-domains covering business, personal finance, real estate, and travel.
Money - 4896
Money is the central theme tying all four sub-domains and supposedly the focus behind TheLocoMono Website.
Business - 2904
This was the third result. Better business bureau and business cards were the first two results for this keyword which surprised me since this did not happen with the other keywords.
Personal Finance - 1012
Pathetic! The lowest score of all the keywords listed here which amazes me considering all the personal finance blogs out there. Of course, it is only a sampling, mind you.
REI - 4701
I thought REI would be stronger than real estate when I saw it turned up the largest results after blog. On a whim, I typed “real estate” to see if I was right. WRONG! As it turn, “real estate” had 9152 results.
Travel - 20236
Did I hit a homerun here? I guess Google sure makes quite a bit of money with the travel agencies considering how many results turned up for travel. I may have to change my sub-domain from travelling.thelocomonowebsite.com to travel.thelocomonowebsite.com.
Why are you bugging out about keywords?
Good question. Have you checked out to see which site was the number 1 search result for the keyword “money”?
If not, here is the link to the number one result.
Exactly, CNNMoney.com or actually as their home page spells it out for you and me, money.cnn.com.
Yes, SEO experts, there is proof that sub-domains can exists independently of their parent site whether it is on Mars or in Virgina or in your world.
But that still leads me back to my question, how the hell am I supposed to tie all these keywords to create an “umbrella” for TheLocoMono Website when I am too loco to keep track of my progress?
Just out of sheer curiosity, I checked out the source code for CNNMoney and I have got to tell you, I laughed. See for yourself.
<meta name=“Keywords” content=“CNN/Money,CNNmoney,CNN money,CNN,money,money magazine,fortune,fortune magazine,fortune 500,business2,business2.0,business 2.0 magazine,Business2.0,business2,fortune small business,fsb,CNNfn,business news,financial news,stocks,stock quotes,stock portfolio,personal finance,personal finance advice,retirement,401k,mutual funds,taxes,bonds,financial calculators,tools,investing,mortgages,college savings,529,company news,international business,world business,economy,business news video,best companies,top employers,best employers,business research,business and finance,business profiles,company snapshots,financial trends,fortune list,business list,technology news,ecommerce,wireless,entrepreneurs,small business”>
67 keywords
That’s right, I counted how many keywords there were. Tell me you did. I don’t want to be the only one who thinks I am crazy here. Did you count them too?
I went ahead and checked out the source for this website and counted how many meta keywords I had. None. That’s right. This schmuck just found out for the first time in over a year of blogging that he had zero keywords for his site.
Ah-hah! Mystery Solved, Scooby-Doo!
That’s what I thought so too but there is a second step to the instructions,
Determine an umbrella phrase that covers the entire scope of the site; the technique is to strive for the greatest specificity without excluding any topics that are covered by the site. This umbrella phrase is the website Theme.
An umbrella phrase, you have got it buddy! I have no idea when it is suppose to rain visitors but I want it to RAIN!!!!
- A money blog about business, personal finance, real estate, and travel.
- A blog about travel, real estate, personal finance, money, and business.
- A blog about money, business, personal finance, real estate, travel.
As you can see by my dilemma, I have no clue what the heck keywords are suppose to do for me. I do understand it helps with search results, I know that much. I have been using Google for over 5 years now.
Anyhow, what started all this madness was SEO Improvements by Young Entrepreneur. It was a great review of the areas I need to work on for this site. While I may not have a page rank at the moment, I am doing fairly well in Technorati and Alexa and I do turn up as the number one search result for “thelocomono” and number two for “loco mono”.
Can anyone point me in the right direction to understanding what the heck do I have to do to build my keywords to make a stronger presence on the Internet?
Comment by Jean from Koala Bears on 5 July 2008:
I don’t believe that editing keywords, or meta descriptions, alone will make up the ground that you desire for in Google. I am still trying to learn myself, but I can point you to some great videos I found on youtube. I watched all of this guy’s videos on his youtube channel, I gained some confidence by watching the videos, but at the same time, there is still an empty whole of unanswered questions.
http://www.youtube.com/user/wilreynolds
Comment by Rob from Online Term Insurance on 10 July 2008:
This is interesting Mark. I think it is important to target different landing pages to specific keywords and longer-tail search phrases. A bit of time researching can reap benefits in the long run.
Comment by Craig on 13 July 2008:
I see you have your site name and page title in your site title tags. I don’t like that, on my site I prefer to have only the page title up there. Then I also like to go for longer tail keyword targeting, like 5 or so keywords. Also every page on my blog has it’s own meta description. Maybe you should experiment with this a little and let us know what you find.
Comment by serviced offices on 15 July 2008:
Great post!I don’t believe that editing keywords, or meta descriptions, alone will make up the ground that you desire for in Google.
Comment by Joey on 22 July 2008:
Choosing your keywords, and making sure there all over your site is not even 10% of what you have to do to get ranked for these keywords. The most important thing is SEO is linkbuilding, you need to find ways to get as much links as possible to your website.
Here are some tips, and some tricks I use.
1. Directory Submission (Free) You can submit to 1000s of directories, and that would surely give you a jump in Search Engines.
2. Social Bookmarking
3. Article Submissions
These are some tips of what you should do, research them in google and one day you will get there.
Comment by Michelle from Real Estate Marketing Blog on 13 August 2008:
I love using the free keyword tracker tool - It can be a great source of inspiration as well as finding out how to get more search traffic to your site.
Comment by Sarah on 21 August 2008:
Interesting numbers on these keywords, but your talking about keypharses that are impossible to rank. I think you should focus more on the easy keywords.
Comment by Social Bookmarking 2.0 on 20 September 2008:
I don\’t normally leave comments, but your post really got me thinking! Thanks for this!
Comment by Monica from current account on 3 October 2008:
Thanks, I stumbled upon this post on technorati and I can’t tell you how happy I was and UI will tell you why.
When I talk about keyword stuffing, I tell people that big organisation always think they can get away with anythin unethical. Just the meta keywords tells you that they really want to rank highly or doesn’t it?
Use a combo of tools for your keyword research + google search insight tool. Keep it simple.
Comment by Conny on 3 October 2008:
Well, you will have to target long-tail keywords, because competition for your main keywords is too big to make any results. And to find long-tail keywords you will have to make a bigger keyword research. That part is bit risky because no one can tell you which long tail keyword will perform and give you search engine visitors, but you will have to experiment with them.
But at the end, that would take very much time and you would loose your main goal. So don’t worry, post useful and interesting content and visitors will come…
Connys last blog post..Why Online Businesses Fail
Comment by Web Design Company on 15 November 2008:
Getting the keywords right in the begining is an essential part of an search engine marketing campaign. If you identify the most important keywords and work towards optimising your website for them, you wil soon be able to check form website statistics that your website wil get hits from a combination of many long tail keywords which you may not have catually planned for. Hittail is another good keyword tracking software which is free and highlights the long tail keywords that is bringing traffic to your website.