Search Engine Optimization

Once you have the keywords in the spreadsheet, select the biggest ones, and do some more keyword research. So if you term was “running shoes” and one of the keywords that showed up was “nike running shoes”, then take it and do research using that term. Set a separate column, and put all the exact match combinations that come up in the keyword tool. Do this process for all the keywords that have considerate search volume. Don’t bother with anything below a 100, unless your source term did not have much volume to start with.

Once you got the secondary keywords in, each with its own column of related phrases, you have to repeat the process, but this time for the “third tier keywords. The ones that are IN the column.

For this stage, you may switch to broad match if you’re using Google tool, since most likely you will not find much as you plug them in one after another. The key here is to only search the biggest ones. Small phrases will only take time, and won’t give much in return. Don’t get obsessive about capturing everything. The pool you already have will cover a broad tree of searches. Combined with regular words, you will capture loads of long tail traffic.

Now that you have all the keywords in place, it is time to write the SEO content and then optimize it. It’s a 3 stage process and you can find more in part 3.

Before even opening Word (or getting pen and paper if you’re old school) start with keyword research. As we mentioned in the intro to the article, up to half of all traffic comes with long tail keywords, thus the landing pages with SEO content must capture all that traffic. How do you find the long tail keywords? You do not have to. As long as there’s enough words on the page and as long as you got all the possible key phrase combinations on the page, Google will do the rest.

So go to your keyword tool, and start the research. I like the Google tool and Word tracker. Word tracker paid tool is very useful, since unlike Google it actually shows all long tail keywords in its database, while Google does not. Maybe they will expand this down the road as Wall Street presses for more profits, but for now their tool does the job. They also got sights on mobile, and finance comparison fields, so my bet it will be a while.

Take the keyword your are targeting, and do the research. If you use Google, specify your country and set the match to exact. Obviously if the keyword is too big, like “shoes” you have to pick a smaller one, like “running shoes”, but my assumption is you got the basics down. So put in your keyword, with exact match, and take all the keywords that show up (the ones that could have some financial value to you), and copy them into a spreadsheet. If you see an entire page of keywords, your term might be too big, and you might have to select a smaller one. Usually 20 – 100 keywords will show up. Use your judgment. Don’t forget to expert the search volume, and make sure it is local.