Easy steps to find great keywords without Keyword Tools

Most people use a keyword suggestion tool when they try to find new keywords for their campaigns. While keyword suggestion tools are good, they should not be the first step in your keyword research activities.

Before you use a keyword suggestion tool, ask yourself the following questions:

1. What problems can your product or your service solve?
2. Which questions do potential customers ask?
3. Can you offer unusual solutions?
4. Which products and services do you offer?

As you can see, the products and services that you offer are the least important. A person with a headache might not now that the Shiatsu that you offer will help them. They even might now know what Shiatsu is and if they know it, they might not be able to spell it properly. The same applies to all other services and industries.

For that reason, it is important that you focus on the first three points before using your products or services in the keywords.

1. What problems can your product or service solve?

In this example, the problem that your product or service can solve is a headache. Create a list of words that describe the problem:

headache, racking headache, migraine, vicious headache, splitting headache, megrim, constant headache, etc.

2. Which questions do potential customers ask?

People type different things in Google's search box when they try to find a solution to their problem. Here are some real queries that have been done on Google (use IBP's keyword suggestion tool to find keywords that are searched by real web surfers):

• why does my head hurt
• why does my head hurt when I cough
• how to get rid of migraines without medication
• how to get rid of migraines when pregnant
• why can't i concentrate on anything
• why am i so tired
• etc.

The problem that your product solves creates certain circumstances (fatigue, temper, concentration problems). Address these circumstances in your keyword phrases.

The problem can also be connected to another factor (for example migraine and pregnancy). Create keyword phrases that are related to these factors.

3. Can you offer unusual solutions?

Most people will take a pill when they have a headache. In this example, you offer a solution that many people don't know about (Shiatsu). The following phrases would work for you:

• get rid of migraines without medication
• get rid of headache without pills

The unusual solutions that you offer can also be used in your AdWords ad copy and on your web pages. For example, you might create web pages around the following topics:

• How to get rid of headaches without using Aspirin
• An unusual way of healing migraine without medication
• etc.

4. Which products or services do you offer?

Of course, you should also use the names of the products and services that you offer in your ads and SEO campaigns. In this example, this would be:

shiatsu, shiatsu massage, etc.

When you try to find new keywords, tell a short story that describes the problem and the solution: "A person has a racking headache. The person cannot concentrate because of that headache and the person is tired. Instead of taking a pill, there can be other solutions. That solution is my Shiatsu service."

By doing this, you'll find many keywords around which you can create new web pages and PPC ads. Of course, you can also combine this method with keyword suggestion tools.

"Copyright Axandra.com - Web site promotion software"

MBA Internet Marketing Manager

Google Caffeine: how will it affect the rankings of your web pages?

Google Caffeine is the name given to Google's next algorithm update that is going live after the holidays. It seems that Google Caffeine will be more than Google's regular updates. It will probably be a major overhaul of the calculations that Google uses to rank web pages.

What is going to change?

Of course, Google hasn't revealed the details of Google Caffeine yet. However, the new index has been live on some test servers and some Google employees also talked about the next index. The following factors might play a larger role in Google's next index:

• Website speed: if you have a slow loading website, it might not get high rankings on Google.
  
  
• Broken links: if your website contains many broken links, this might have a negative impact of the position of your web pages in Google search results.
  
  
• Bad neighborhoods: Linking to known spammers and getting a lot of links from known spammers isn't good for your rankings in Google's current algorithm. The negative impact of a bad neighborhood will probably be even worse with Google Caffeine.
  
  
• The over-all quality of your website: Google's new algorithm probably will take a closer look at the over-all quality of your website. It's not enough to have one or two ranking factors in place.
  
  You'll probably need good optimized content, a good website design with a clear navigation, good inbound links, a low bounce rate, etc. The number of social bookmarks might also play an increased role.

Factors like the age of a website, its past history, authority etc. will still play a role in Google's new index. However, the effect of the different factors on your rankings will shift.

How can you adjust your web pages to Google's new Caffeine index?

Although Google's Caffeine update hasn't been release yet, there are some things that you can do to increase the chances that your website will get good rankings in Google's new index:

• Remove all spam elements from your web pages. Anything that might be considered spam can and will have a negative effect on the position of your web pages sooner or later. This includes text that has nearly the same color as the background, cloaking and fully automated linking systems.
  
  
• Check your website design and the navigation of your website. Your website should have a professional look and feel. The navigation should be easy to understand and your web pages should easily be parseable by search engine spiders. You can test this with the search engine spider simulator in IBP (Select Tools > Search Engine Spider Simulator in IBP's main window).
  
  
• Get links from social bookmark websites. Social bookmark links already play a role in Google's current algorithm and that role might increase.
  
  
• Check your links. You shouldn't link to websites that look like spammers. It's better to focus on selected quality links instead of as many links as possible.

Google Caffeine is going to be released after the holidays. If you follow the tips above, your website will be in a good position when Google's new index will be online.

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My blog MBA Internet Marketing Manager

Reciprocal links: Are they useful or not?

Reciprocal links are discussed controversially among search engine marketers. Some think that reciprocal links are great, others think that they are a waste of time, another group thinks that reciprocal links work to some degree.

What do search engine marketers think about reciprocal links?

There are three main factions:

• Group 1: reciprocal links have no effect at all on the position of a website in the search results on Google.
  
  
• Group 2: reciprocal links work just like any other inbound links.
  
  
• Group 3: there's a threshold value. For example, you shouldn't have more than 33% reciprocal inbound links.

Which group is right and should you use reciprocal links with your website or not?

Is there a threshold value for reciprocal links?

Webmasters in group 3 think that a high number of reciprocal links is a red flag for search engines. The idea behind this is that links should not be trusted if (for example) 100% of a site's inbound links are reciprocal.

However, this is not really a good indicator. If high quality websites do link to each other, they won't harm their rankings in any way.

For some sites, it is normal to have a high reciprocity percentage

Link building expert Eric Ward recently did a test. He found out that there are websites for which it is perfectly normal that they have almost 100% reciprocal links.

The more specific the topic of a website is, the more likely it is that it will have a high reciprocity percentage. As an example, Eric Ward used the website of "The Southeastern Bat Diversity Network", an organization with a goal to "conserve bats and their habitats in southeastern North America through collaborative research, education, and management."

The top sites in that subject are all linked back and forth to all other websites that write about bats. This is not surprising and it shows that a high number of reciprocal links can also be a sign of high quality. It depends on the topic of the website.

If the websites were about different topics, then the reciprocal links would look suspicious.

Should you use reciprocal links for your website or not?

You don't have to worry if a link is a reciprocal link or not. That does not matter. Reciprocal links are neither good nor bad. They are just links and it always depends on the individual link whether it is a good link or a bad link.

If a link comes from a website that is related to your website then it is a good link. If the other website is related to yours then you can link back and this won't cause any problems. As long as you make sure that the links make sense to your website visitors then everything is okay.

You can use IBP's link building tool to get links to your website. IBP can help you with one-way links, reciprocal links, links from blogs, links from related websites, links from Internet directories and much more. It is a spam-free link building tool that helps you to get high quality links.

Copyright by Axandra.com

MBA Internet Marketing Manager

Keyword strategy basics: Where to start in your SEO Strategy

Lots of people rush into Tags, URL’s and code optimizing without realizing that the first step in any SEO strategy will probably have nothing to do with that. Starting to correct code, optimize tags, URL’s and metatags without carefully having planned a coherent “Keyword Strategy” beforehand is like throwing all your soldiers into a battlefield without analyzing the terrain, the enemy, your weapons and your tactics.

Your “Keyword strategy” means in other words which are the keywords that you choose to position your website with. To create an efficient and effective keyword strategy, 4 main aspects need to be considered:

- Keyword Search volume: The search volume of a given keyword determines the total potential traffic that this keyword can drive to your website. To give an example, the monthly volume of searches in Google of the keyword “MBA” is 5’000,000 while the volume of searches of the keyword “executive MBA” is just 135,000. If you’d manage to get top listings for the keyword “MBA” you would be in a very good position to capture a big slice of the traffic generated by these 5’000,000 searches, much more than if you manage to get first position with the keyword “135,000” where your potential visits are just 135,000. If you have an Adwords Account, you can use the “Keyword Tool” to estimate monthly traffic of a given keyword you’re analyzing. Another useful tool you can use to find relations of search volume and trends to help you decide which keywords to choose in your keyword strategy is Google Trends (www.google.com/trends)

- Keyword relevance: It’s not just the volume of searches what matters but also how relevant it is to your website. Let’s say you could hire the best SEO consultant in the world and he/she would manage to get you number one ranking for the most searched keyword in Internet. Is that something you really want (driving tons of irrelevant traffic to your site)? Would the visits that having first position for this keyword really convert in sales for your business? Of course not. This is an extreme example but the reasoning still applies: If you sell “Peruvian Gold Jewelry” Would you choose to position your site with the keyword “Jewelry”? Maybe not a good idea since your website only sells Peruvian Jewelry. Try to position your site with a keyword that is too general, like “Jewelry” in our example and you’ll end up receiving thousands Low quality visits, meaning by low quality visits that don’t end up in conversions and have a high bounce rate.

- Competition for the keyword: Not only the search volume and relevance of the keyword are important in which keywords to choose but also the competition you’ll find for it makes a big difference. If you want to be top ranked for the keyword “tailor made Bolivian kitchen appliances” it will be very easy; guess how many companies exist in this industry and how many websites would try to compete for this keyword. Compare that to trying to compete for position number one in “Free Downloads”, where tens of thousands of websites worldwide are trying daily to get ranked on first page. It’s not the same to try to get number one rank for a keyword with only 4 companies competing that number one rank for a keyword with 1 million sites competing… Remember, regardless of how many companies compete for top positions, Google’s first page of results will always have only 10 available spots to show.

- “Goal Conversion” keyword: You can use Google’s Goal Conversion tracking code to actually measure with which keywords your customers are buying from your store. For example, if you had 12 articles sold last month, this tracking system can tell you with which keywords each of these 12 customers who bought from you got to your website. This information should also be used to decide with which keywords you want to position your website.

Your keyword strategy consists in balancing these four criteria to choose wisely with which keywords you want to position your site. Remember:

· Search volume: Don’t go for too general keywords but when narrowing them down, always look that the keyword you choose has monthly volume of searches that is worth the effort.

· Relevance: Other things being equal, always try to go for keywords closely related to what you actually sell. Don’t try to position your site with words that are somehow related, or more or less close. Go for what you sell.

· Competition: Very competitive keywords will require a much bigger and continuous effort. Think on your available resources and in the importance of the keyword for your business before deciding to go for a keyword with lots of competition.

· Goal Conversion: Always use this data to decide with which keywords you need to position your site. At the end, this is the only 100% sure way to measure if a keyword is generating sales or achieving your website’s goals.

Copyright MBA Internet Marketing Manager

How Google analyzes the top keywords on your website

Google recently filed a patent application that deals with the keywords that Google finds on your web pages.

Google's new patent filing describes a way for website owners to view the top phrases that Google assigned to their website. The patent shows that Google finds the most important keywords on a website with a phrase-based indexing system and it describes a method that could allow website owners to add additional related keywords.

How does Google find the top keywords of your website?

All major search engines index web pages based on the individual words that they find on the page. If certain words and phrases appear together on the same page, search engines assign a topic that is related to these words to the page.

For example, the words "Paris" and "Hilton" are associated with a woman instead of a city and a hotel, the words "Tiger" and "Woods" are associated with golf.

Google's patent application indicates that Google might plan to tell you what they believe are the top keywords for your website and let you suggest changes to these phrases.

How can Google find the relation between words?

Google has billions of web pages in its index. If Google finds that many web pages contain both the word "Paris" and the word "Hilton" then Google might assume that these keywords are related. The other words on these pages could give Google a hint that this special word combination is about a woman.

Words that frequently appear very close to each other could get a tighter connection. Google has a lot of algorithms that allow them to calculate the relation between different words.

What does this mean for your website?

Google does not allow you to suggest your keywords through a form yet. That means that you must use other methods to tell Google for which keywords you want to be listed on Google's result pages. That's why search engine optimization is so important.

Here are some things that you can do to show search engines that your site is relevant to a special topic:

• Use a meaningful site architecture

Use a logical system to organize your website content. Create content sections that deal with different parts of your main topic and make sure that everything that is related to your topic is mentioned on your web pages.

Make sure that your web pages are put in the right categories on your website and that it's easy to find the different categories.

• Create web pages that use different relevant search terms

If you want to get high rankings for the keyword "shoes" then it's not enough to mention the keyword "shoes" on your website.

You must also use related keywords such as "sneakers", "boots", "sandals", "footwear", etc. to show Google that your website is relevant to the general topic.

• Find out why other pages rank higher than yours

If you ever asked yourself why another page has been ranked higher than yours although you perfectly optimized your pages for your search terms then you should analyze the inbound links of the top ranked pages.

The number and the authority of inbound links are important. However, it's also important that the links come from semantically and topically related pages.

Don't focus on a single keyword when optimizing your pages. Modern search engine algorithms require you to create a website that has been optimized for many different but related search terms.

Optimize different pages of your website for different but related keywords to get the best possible rankings in Google and other important search engines.

Copyright by Axandra.com. Web site promotion software

MBA Internet Marketing Manager

how to get high rankings at Google with natural links

Some years ago, it was enough to get many inbound links to get high rankings on Google. It didn't matter from where these links came as long as there were many links that pointed to your website.

As Google and other search engines continually improve the way they rank web pages, getting the right links is crucial if you want to be listed on the first search result page.

Unnatural links can be bad for your Google rankings

Google is able to detect unnatural linking patterns. That is why the following type of links don't work:

Link farms and automated linking systems

Some online services promise hundreds of links in a short time with no work involved. All you have to do is to put some code on your website or to join a system that will help you to get links from other sites quickly and easily.

These automated linking systems don't work and Google can detect them. Actually, Google thinks that you're spamming if you participate in such a system and they might penalize your website by lowering its position in the search results.

Paid links

Google's anti-spam guru Matt Cutts has made clear that Google considers paid links spam. If you don't want to lose your rankings on Google, you should be very careful when buying links.

Natural links have a positive effect on your Google rankings

Natural links are links that make sense to your website visitors. For example, if you have a website about Linux, a totally unrelated link to a car parts website would look strange.

The links that point to your website should be from related websites and from sources that would "naturally" link to you, i.e. Internet directories, social bookmarking services, blogs, etc. The more related websites link to your site, the higher your website will rank on Google's result pages.

How to get the best links to your website

There are a few things that you can do to get as many good links as possible to your website.

1. Create a linkworthy website

If your website is only a collection of affiliate links then you cannot expect that other webmasters will link to your site. Create a website with good content. You might also consider creating web pages whose sole purpose is to get inbound links. This could be "How to" articles, top 10 lists or even a controversial statement.

The more interesting your web pages are, the easier it is to get links from other websites.

2. Contact related websites and blogs

Contact related websites and point them to the interesting content on your site. Do you have an article on your website that solves a specific problem?

Contact websites that also deal with that topic or bloggers who have written about that topic and tell them about your article. Chances are that these websites will link to your site. Our link builder can help you to find and contact related websites and blogs.

3. Submit your website to related Internet directories

Internet directories are an easy way to get inbound links. However, only submit your website to Internet directories that are relevant to your website and only submit your website to the right category.

A link from the right directory and the right category to your website can have a positive impact on your Google rankings. The semi-automatic submitter can help you to submit your website to relevant directories.

4. Make it easy to add your website to social bookmark services

Add a bookmark link to your website so that it is easy for your website visitors to bookmark your site.

5. Get links to different pages of your website and vary your link texts

Most links go to the home page of a website. It usually helps to get direct links to the web page that you want to promote on search engines. The websites that link to your website should use different but related texts to link to your site. If all web pages use exactly the same text to link to your site, this will look unnatural.

Getting the right kind of backlinks is very important if you want to get high rankings on Google and other search engines. First of all, create interesting and linkworthy web pages and optimize the content of these pages for search engines.

Make sure that your web pages are user-friendly and interesting. If you then get the right kind of links to your website your rankings will increase.

"Copyright by Axandra.com. Web site promotion software."

MBA Internet Marketing Manager

How the age of your and other people's websites affects your rankings

High rankings on all major search engines are influenced by the number of web pages that link to a web page and by the quality of the web pages that link to a page.

Links from popular and trusted web pages have a bigger impact on the search engine rankings of a web page than links from less popular and trusted pages.

A new patent application with the name "Ranking Domains Using Domain Maturity" indicates that there is another factor that helps search engines to determine the quality of a web page.

How the new method can be used to detect high quality links

Here's the abstract of the new patent application:

• "Ranking domains for search engines is provided herein. To rank a domain, contributing domains associated with the domain are identified. Additionally, the maturity of each of the contributing domains is determined. A rank for the domain is then determined based at least in part on the maturity of each of the contributing domains. The domain rankings may then be used to order results for search queries."

The patent applications indicates that newer domains are more likely to be spam or part of a link system that tries to game search engine algorithms.

Web pages that have links from older domains may be ranked higher than other domains in the search results.

Why do search engines think that new domains are likely to be spam?

Domain names are cheap and some domain name registrars even offer free domain registration and trial periods.

Spammers can easily take advantage of these offers to build a network of websites that link to each other (a so-called link farm).

The new patent describes how search engines can use the age of websites to specify the value of their links. For example, links from websites that are several years old could have a high effect on the search engine positions of the ranked sites while links from newly created websites might not have any effect at all.

The age of the websites that link to a web page is not the only factor that influences the position of your website in the search result pages.

Actually, that are several dozen factors that decide whether your website will get top positions on Google or not. Having them all in place makes the difference between a successful website and a website that no one visits.

"Copyright by Axandra.com. Web site promotion software."

MBA Internet Marketing Manager

Does Google use the bounce rate affect search rankings?

Does Google use the bounce rate of a web page to specify the position of that page in the search results? What does this mean for your website rankings and what can you do to get a better bounce rate?

What is the bounce rate?

There are two definitions: the bounce rate of your website is the percentage of visitors who see just one page of your website or the percentage of visitors who stay on your site for a small amount of time (only a few seconds).

The bounce rate helps you to measure the quality of traffic that your website gets and it also helps you to find out where your web pages could be improved.

Google's definition of the bounce rate

The Google Analytics documentation defines the bounce rate as follows:

"Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits (i.e. visits in which the person left your site from the entrance page). Bounce rate is a measure of visit quality and a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance (landing) pages aren't relevant to your visitors."

This Google definition already indicates that Google thinks that web pages with a high bounce rate aren't relevant to website visitors. If your web pages have a high bounce rate for a search term, Google might lower the rankings of your website for that search term.

Does Google use the bounce rate as a ranking factor?

Google has the ability to collect the bounce rate with the Google toolbar and Google Analytics. In addition, Google can measure the time between visits to their search engine by the same user and they can use the Google Chrome browser to measure the complete surfing behavior of users.

Last month, a webmaster performed a test that showed a significant ranking change as a result of a significant bounce rate change. The test is not very conclusive but chances are that Google really uses the bounce rate as a ranking factor.

The bounce rate alone might not be used by Google but combined with other factors, it could have an effect on the rankings. For example, Google could measure how many people start a new search for the same topic after visiting your web page. That would be an indicator that your website is not suitable for the chosen keyword.

What can you do to lower the bounce rate of your web pages?

A high bounce rate is usually a sign of a low quality web page. This means that your web page either doesn't offer what the visitor is searching for or the usability of your web page isn't good.

If you improved the contents and the usability of your web pages, you might lower your bounce rate from 75% to 65%. This would lead to a remarkable 40% increase in conversions (35 out of 100 visitors now stay on your website instead of 25 out of 100 visitors).

In addition to improving the usability of your web pages, you can lower your bounce rate by tailoring your landing pages to the keywords and ads that you run. If your landing pages offer the information that the searchers are looking for then you will get a lower bounce rate.

Lowering the bounce rate of your web pages has two major benefits: it's likely that you will get more visitors from search engines and you will get a higher conversion rate. The only exceptions to the scenario above are one page websites and web pages that offer very compelling content on a single web page (for example Wikipedia pages).

Search engines use many more ranking factors than just the bounce rate. If you want to get high rankings on Google and other search engines, you should make sure that your web pages offer all elements that are necessary to get high rankings.

"Copyright Axandra.com - Web site promotion software"

The content of this article has been provided by Axandra’s Newsletter, a very cool SEO Newsletter that I recommend you to subscribe to.

MBA Internet Marketing Manager