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| SEO: HOW COMPETITIVE ARE YOUR KEYWORDS? |
In our series, we explain how search engine optimization (SEO) can be used in a targeted manner to make it easier for an internet start-up to be found on the web. Keyword research and website optimization play a crucial role in this.
In the first part of our Search Engine Optimization series, we gave you a general, introductory overview of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and the benefits of investing in search engine optimization. It also covered the potential risks of SEO. In the following, we will now describe the most important rules that you should observe when optimizing your website.
The starting point of all SEO efforts is keyword research. After a detailed search for the terms you primarily want to be found on Google, the website must be revised from an SEO point of view. This step is called on-page optimization.
There is no way around SEO for Internet entrepreneurs, but rush jobs should be avoided as much as possible.
I. KEYWORD RESEARCH
As already mentioned, keyword research is the basis of all SEO measures. If you don't know which keywords you want to rank for on which page of your domain, you won't be able to optimize the pages accordingly. Through detailed keyword research, you not only learn which terms you would like to be found within search engines - you also get to know your customers better.
You understand what your potential customers are really looking for and, ideally, you can expand your business field. So take the time to actively research the best search terms for you.
HOW TO START RESEARCH
But how can you start keyword research and what should be the analysis result? First, let's use a simple example to explain how to do keyword research: Imagine you run an online store for computer accessories. You would certainly have divided your products into categories like "Sound Cards", "Mice", "Scanners", "Hard Drives", "Keyboards" etc.
But what criteria do you use to determine whether a category is "Keyboards" or "Keyboards"? The user knows that keyboards and keyboards are one and the same product - but where are search engines supposed to get this knowledge from?
NAME CATEGORIES
So, some research is needed to determine how to name your categories. To simplify the example, we neglect the singular and plural spellings and assume that there are no other possible keywords that can describe the keyboard category. First, we compare the search volume of the possible keywords "keyboards" (search volume 2400) and "keyboards" (search volume 2900).
For this, we use the Google Keyword tool. Put simply, we can therefore assume that more potential customers will find our site via the keyword "keyboards" than via the keyword "keyboards".
However, it would be short-sighted to only evaluate search terms based on their search volume. Rather, one should think about how "close to conversion" the search term is, ie how likely it is that transactional rather than informational searches are made about the keyword.
For example, even more, sales could be made with the conversion-related search term “buy keyboard” (search volume 210) than with the keyword “keyboards”.
PAGE OPTIMIZATION
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After we have looked at the structure of your website, we will go into the optimization of a single page - for example the category "network cable": In the head of your page, i.e. in the source code between the tags <head> and </head>, give search engines valuable information about the content of the page and whether search engines should index the subpage at all. This information is referred to as metainformation.
Within the title tag (<title>The title tag</title>) stores the name of the page, which is displayed both in the search results and in the top browser line. The optimal length of the title tag is around 65 characters. So keep it short, otherwise, the title in the search results will be automatically shortened and the individual terms that you use in the title of the page will have a lower value when calculating the ranking.
Use the keyword you want the page to rank for. In the "network cable" example, you should mention "network cable" in the title. Since you can use 65 characters, we recommend optimizing the long tail and choosing a meaningful headline - e.g. "Buy network cables online at Shop name" - so the user who visits your site knows directly
An essential technical component of SEO is the development and expansion of information architecture.
DESCRIPTION AND ROBOTS TAG
The description tag (<meta name = “description” content = “description of the content”>) has no meaning from a ranking point of view. However, the description is displayed on search result pages and thus gives the potential visitor a first impression of the content of the page. The description should be around 160 characters.
To optimize the click rate, you should therefore briefly formulate in the description what your visitor can expect. Here, too, use the keywords on which you want to rank, as these are marked in bold in the search results in the corresponding search query and thus make the relevance of your page clear to the searcher.
The robots tag (<meta name ="robots" content="no-/index,no-/follow">) can be used to determine whether a page should be indexed by search engines or not. By default, pages are indexed. However, this can be avoided by specifying "noindex" - this is particularly useful for pages that do not have any unique content or do not have a ranking target (e.g. imprint, data protection declaration).
By specifying "nofollow", search engines are instructed not to follow the links on a page and thus not to inherit the strength of the page. Especially with internal links, the "nofollow" attribute has a rather harmful effect.
CONTENT SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION
In addition to technical optimization, the content of a page - i.e. all the elements that can be found in the body of the page - must also be optimized according to SEO aspects. We are talking here in particular about texts since search engines cannot read the content of Flash animations, audio files, or video content.
Each page that is to rank for one or more keywords should contain the text of around 400 to 500 words. Of course, this text should be unique, i.e. not copied from another website. If you use text that is too short, search engines will probably recognize competing sites as much more relevant to a topic.
To clarify the relevance of the content for a specific keyword, this should of course appear in the text. However, you should not engage in keyword spam and use the search term as often as possible - instead, write for your visitors and use the term around three to five percent in different combinations.
USE RELATED TERMS
In addition to the keyword itself, related terms, i.e. terms from the same subject area, should also appear within the text. This allows search engines to recognize that the text is relevant to a specific group of topics. "Keyboards", "buttons" and other terms certainly appear frequently in texts about "keyboards" - so use such words in your texts as well.
As mentioned in the keyword research section, you should optimize keyword combinations that typically have lower search volume than the main keyword but are easier to optimize. These combinations of several keywords (e.g. “buy keyboards online”) should also appear within the content to achieve good rankings.
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USE HEADINGS
You should use headings to structure the content. The text should be structured by a heading (H1) and one or two subheadings (H2). The headlines should contain keywords or keyword combinations - headlines catch the eye of visitors, which is why search engines also rate the terms contained in the headlines as relevant.
Although search engines cannot use image content, you should use one or two images per subpage and name them keyword.gif or keyword.jpg. You should also use keywords or keyword combinations within the alternative text of the images. The alternative text describes the content of an image from a search engine perspective – it is, therefore, advisable to use relevant terms within the alternative texts.
SEO: Link Marketing
Off-page optimization, ie link building, will be dealt with in the next part of this series. In this context, we explain what search engines understand by a natural link structure and how a "strong" link can be identified.
HOW COMPETITIVE ARE YOUR KEYWORDS?
Also, keywords need to be evaluated based on how competitive/in demand they are. Of course, the assumption is nice to rank well on a keyword with several thousand search queries a day. Unfortunately, the reality usually looks different - especially with new websites, you will initially have to be satisfied with rankings on less competitive keywords since search engines prefer older, naturally grown domains, and these - usually - have significantly more incoming links than new projects.
You can recognize highly competitive keywords by the fact that strong competitors block the top ten search results with strong rankings. In this case, it can take months or even years to achieve top rankings and edge out the competition. So focus on those keywords where you can expect results in a timeframe that is reasonable for you.
Thorough keyword research will also help you get to know your potential customers better.
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II. TECHNICAL AND CONTENT OPTIMIZATION OF THE WEBSITE
In the best case, after the keyword research, we have an overview of all subpages as well as two to three keywords per page on which the corresponding page should rank. We also know which so-called long-tail search queries should be covered by optimizing the website. Using the example of computer accessories, one might expect, for example, that search queries such as “keyboards online”, “keyboards shop”, “keyboards online shop” etc. would also be displayed by on-page optimization.
The long tail is characterized by the fact that the individual search queries have relatively little traffic, but taken together usually generate significantly more traffic than individual top keywords.
Starting from this list, each subpage must now be geared towards optimizing the keywords. In the following, we will present some relevant ranking factors without emphasizing completeness. This would go beyond the scope of this article or our small series. We divide the measures into technical and content search engine optimization.
TECHNICAL OPTIMIZATION
As part of technical search engine optimization, it is ensured that all pages that are optimized for specific keywords can be indexed by search engines. In this context, it should be noted that the website must be in HTML format. Search engines cannot read the content of images, videos, audio files, or Flash animations.
Therefore, you should provide text content on all subpages that should be found in search engines. We explain how the content of the text is to be formatted in connection with content optimization.
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THE PAGE STRUCTURE MAKES THE DIFFERENCE
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Another essential component of technical search engine optimization is the organization of the page structure, i.e. the development and expansion of the information architecture. Both the user and search engines want to see the design of your website "at first glance". Only a structured structure of your internet presence means that all subpages can be visited by the search engine crawlers and are therefore listed in the search engine index.
So divide your products into categories and subcategories. In the above example of a shop for computer accessories, you should create a category for cables, which in turn refers to monitor cables, network cables, etc. The corresponding products are then offered in these subcategories. If you offered all products on the start page, search engines would not be able to determine any hierarchy between the offers and would rate all subpages equally (un)important.
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