A title for instance, might contain multiple words and/or phrases.  However, the phrase at the beginning of the title is considered more important than the other words listed.  In this case, whatever that very first phrase or keyword is, is considered 100% keyword prominent (for that particular title).

The concept of keyword prominence is actually calculated seperately for each important page area….consider titles, headings, or any visible text on the page.  Think in terms of a keyword or keyphrase target as more prominent when it’s the first phrase in a title, the beginning of a sentence, the top of the page, the beginning of a paragraph, etc.

This of course, doesn’t mean that we neglect to mention keyphrases in the middle or the end of our pages.  Search engines are actually checking your pages for placement in all areas including the bottom of the page.  BUT, importance is certainly noted when a phrase is 100% prominent vs 50% (in the middle of an analyzed area).

Imagine that you are trying to target the key phrase “Dog Collars” for a pet store site.  Consider the following two title variations for the same page:

1. Your leader In Pet Store Supplies Including Dog Supplies And Dog Collars
2. Dog Collars : ABC Pet Supplies

The second title will definitely do better for “Dog Collars” since the prominence of our key phrase is 100% (this word combination goes from the very beginning), while in the first example it’s only around 40%.

In fact, if you were to search on Google right now for ‘dog collars’, you might be surprised to find just how keword prominence plays out in the titles of almost all the results in the top 10 results!  There are of course, many, many other reasons that sites without 100% keyword prominence in their titles might be in the top 10, but the concept itself is an important one to keep in mind.

Find Best Keywords

Many times, when a small business owner begins the process of promoting a website with no prior experience in doing so,  information about what keywords to use for attracting the right kind of traffic can be tough to find.

Best keywords for your site? I always start with the most generic phrases, maybe one to two words max, and start pulling the big fish site who rank organically for the top 10-20 spots on Google.

Pull out a spreadsheet and organize results…..then examine the HTML source for each home page (or page in your ranking results for each site). By looking at the ‘meta’ tags, both keywords and description tags, you’ll easily begin to form a common base of phrases with which to work with.

Notice that I did say ‘work with’ for now as it’s not necessarily THESE words and phrases you want to use! These initial phrases are generally too competitive for a small site just getting started with organic promotion. You are still simply trying to get ideas, but this is an easy way to brain storm your way into finding the right targets.

How do we get ideas?  We have to put some ‘research’ time in before we do anything further.  Make a list of those phrases, then head to Google research tools and start to whip up a list that should grow wildly before you have selected your final list.

Let’s say for instance, that your small business makes unique, one of a kind fruit baskets.  Let’s also say that you’re beginning to build your web site with the assumption that people will look for you on Google by typing the words ‘fruit basket’ or ‘fruit baskets’.  You proceed to optimize your pages for ‘fruit basket’ as common sense would dictate.

Again, look at Google’s free keyword research tool and get ready to ’spreadsheet’ before you type the first title tag on your site or optimize any copy.

The Fruit Basket Company (no, the UNIQUE Fruit Basket Company!)

Find Best Keywords

Looking at Google’s numbers, we can see that, yes, there were number of searches for ‘fruit basket’ and ‘fruit baskets’ last month….in the 60-70 THOUSAND range actually…..for the month!

So, why wouldn’t we focus on this phrase?  It’s still way too generic!  In other words, we might be ‘well optimized’ for this phrase, but so are a lot of other larger, older (important to Google) sites that have LOTS of links pointing to them….you won’t be in the playing field for this generic keyword anytime soon!

What do do?  Well, scroll to the bottom of the list…..just before we cross into the ‘not enough data’ results.  I notice that there are about 140 searches for the phrase ‘unique fruit baskets’ last month, which is what we specialize in anyway!  There were also about 110 searches for ‘fruit and gourmet baskets’ last month…..if you company does these, you are in luck!

If you build and optimize two pages for your baskets instead of one, you might get top 30 rankings for BOTH of these phrases….a total of 250 searches last month that you might be in the top results for in the next few months.  I’d rather have 10 pages that have top rankings for 10 different niche phrases appropriate to my business, than ONE product page that is NOT found for the most competitive phrase on the planet, absolutely!

Here is a quick tip….hope this helps YOU improve organic search results for your site.

Improve Organic Search

Number of Meta Keywords

In each page on your site, there is a section in the html, at the top of the page called the ‘meta’ information, or meta tags.  This area used to be a gem for search engines because the description and keyword tags are optimal for describing the content on your page and in your site.  Search engines could use this information to quickly get an idea about your site’s content and it would help them to rank your site.

Then, like so many other things in life, people started abusing the practiceuntil people started ’stuffing’ these sections with WAY too many keywords, to the point that the areas started to render the sections useless in many cases.  They no longer described the pages in an accurate way, so many engines don’t weigh keywords as heavily as they used to.

That certainly doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have them on your pages though.  In fact, they are STILL important to get right.  However, using way too many keywords is just diluting the effect of your most important ones.

How many to use?  Good question.

I’d suggest 5-10 at the most, and in many cases, even less!  Your page should really only cover 1-3 topics at any given time anyway, if you are truly considering the effect on search engines….why confuse them?

In other words, if you are going to write about a topic X, then write about topic X, and make SURE the search engines know that topic X is what your page is about so that they can rank your page as a laser focused result when people are looking for topic X (or service X, or product X, you get the idea).

To improve organic search, you just need to focus on basic ideas….keeping your page topics focused as well as the way you describe those topics is a big one!

Find Google Keywords

What you’ll find here, is a free tool that Google provides for their sponsored search customers.  In order for them to sell sponsored space, they kind of have to let you customers know why certain keywords and key phrases are more expensive than others, right?

This is supply and demand at its finest really.  The more searches in the latest month and in the latest twelve month rolling average, the more ‘demand’ for a keyword or key phrase.

Google is also nice enough to show you how many advertisers have already bought ’space’ in the sponsored search sections for that keyword or key phrase.

For instance, the screen shot to the left shows a search for the term ‘Tiger Woods’, who has been in the news round the clock recently.  However, these numbers show 246,000 searches for the phrase ‘Tiger Woods’ in October alone.

The green bar is completely full and filled in, meaning that advertiser competition is extremely high.  I think I’ll be bidding on another phrase for now

In addition, notice the brackets in the results.  This is a simple way of showing that this is the EXACT phrase that people used as opposed to a BROAD (selected by default) phrase result set whereby people might search for ‘Woods, Tiger’ or some other combination of keywords to mimic the general phrase.  I always use ‘exact’ searches personally, but I’m sure everyone has personal preferences here.

In any case, if you want to find Google keywords, especially the ones that everyone is searching at any given time on Google, this is the place to start!

When we search for something in Google (or most any other search engine), there are two basic sets of search results listed on the results page: sponsored and organic (natural).

Define Organic Search

Look at the red circles in the image to the left.  These are the sponsored search results for the term you are searching for.  Sponsored results areas list all of the people and/or companies who are willing to PAY the search engines to be in one of those areas, either at the top of the page or in the right column of the page.

However, looking at the image to the left again, everything that is NOT in the right column or in the top yellow/orange section (with a red circle around it) is called organic or natural search.  This is the place to be IF you can get there.

The reason you want your site in the organic section over the long haul, is that once  people find you there, they know you are there because the search engines find your site ‘worthy’ of natural rankings…..it takes time, lots of time for competitive search phrases, but time nonetheless well spent to get your site in the organic/natural area of the page (at least on the first page).  Anyone with enough of a daily budget however, willing to pay more than other participants for a spot in the sponsored search areas (red circles again) can get there within a few minutes!

Aside from the fact that the domain was brand new, as well as the site itself, I tried to explain that not a single external website was pointing to his site…..he had no ‘link popularity‘. I told him that it was something that he would have to build over time, and that it would have to be done in a certain way so see any link popularity improvement. Starting from zero links, this seems like quite a daunting task. However, consistent action over time will yield positive results, absolutely.

So, I want to discuss link popularity improvement, and link popularity in general. As mentioned previously, link popularity is the number of links from other website pages to your page (that search engines are aware of). So, the more links that point to your page, the better your page will rank.

The fun doesn’t stop there however, because it’s not just the NUMBER of links, but the ‘quality’ of those links that is really the important factor. If no one is linking to Site A, and Site B picks up a link from Site A, Site B has really gained no link popularity improvement. On top of that, ‘theme-based’ search engines will not be as impressed by a landscaping site linking to a hair salon site…..the two aren’t remotely relevant in the search engine’s ‘mind’.

So, in short, contact sites that are close in ‘theme’ to yours (theme, being subject matter). In addition, link from a relevant site (theme-wise) with a link containing your magic key phrase, and you may be well on your way to some major link popularity improvement!

My name is Scott Sisson, owner of Sisson Media Corporation, and I’ve been working with and building websites in and around Atlanta since 1997.  Though I spend much of my time designing and building web sites, I spend even more time helping our business partners and clients market them.

Since I work with a number of industries and businesses both in Georgia and around the country in a daily fashion, the purpose behind this website blog is to keep a running notepad of the web design marketing concepts (both industry and technology based) we run into on a week to week basis.

No big surprise here, I do not intend to write 20 paragraphs per post…..if you are a business owner, you likely don’t have the time to read ‘that kind of blog’ and I don’t have time to write it!

Rather, I prefer to keep posts quick and to the point, and I hope you’ll learn something from each and every post.  In addition, if you have thoughts you’d like to share on web design marketing…please share!