After blogging for over three years I have learned a lot of things about search engine marketing and keyword ranking. And one of the things that I have learned is that it really doesn’t take a lot of content to rank for keywords in Google. Granted, there are a lot of contributing factors towards ranking for keywords, but I am finding that the amount of content written doesn’t really hold too much weight in the equation.

Content adds quality to a page. It adds value, and typically, it provides people with what they are looking for. I believe that that is what Google and other search engines seek. They seek, index, and rank pages that they feel will be important to people. In doing so, that makes their search engine favorable because people find what they need. So, in most cases, as a publisher, writing content is what’s needed to achieve ranking. But the question remains, “How much content is needed?” Many publishers feel like a lot is required, when in many cases, it’s not.

A large amount of content isn’t always necessary to achieve ranking. Content is very important, but publishers should be aware that thousands of words on a page isn’t always required to achieve keyword ranking. The point I’m aiming to get across here is that writing content is difficult, takes a lot of time, and requires a lot effort. So, putting in more resources than what’s needed is a waste. With many jobs, it’s the duty of managers to control costs and expenses, to manage payroll and control hours, and oversee that excessive materials are not being used to complete the job.

The same should apply with content writing and search engine ranking. Don’t assume that content is always “King” when it comes to targeting keywords in Google and other search engines. I have learned that the “King” is with identifying alternative keywords and phrases that have low levels of competition with high search counts. The second part is identifying what it will take to rank above the existing competition on the search result page.

When you have it set in your mind that you want rank for certain keywords and phrases, take time to study your competition on the search results page. Ask yourself, “How did they rank for this keyword?” and investigate. Once you discover how your competition achieved their ranking, then you will have a better idea of knowing how much of your own resources you’ll need to use towards ranking above them.

My point is this: The amount of content is only a small factorization in the equation of search engine ranking. Content is much like butter on toast, milk in cereal, or sugar in coffee. Content really only adds flavor to a page. And with keyword ranking, it’s your job to figure out the ingredients needed to make toast, cereal, and coffee. After you do that, then you’ll know exactly how much butter, milk, and suger to add.

As you may already know, I am doing a multiple post series on how to research keywords without buying software. If you haven’t already read the first post, then I recommend doing so. After you read it, I encourage you to stay tuned for the second post in the series coming up in the next few days. In the mean time, I want to offer some advice and guidance on building blogs and websites for profit.

Before I begin, I want to be clear about something. There are multiple reasons why people do keyword research. And as mentioned in my first post, the reason why I do keyword research is so that I can successfully build profitable sites that earn money. So, providing you with tips on building websites for profit go hand in hand with my multiple post series. In other words, it’s kind of pointless to learn how to research keywords unless you can successfully build sites off the topics you have researched.

That said, I have done quite a bit of digging in the SEO Hosting blog archives, and I have come up with a list of articles that will teach you some vitally important skills that you’ll need to learn if you want to be successful with building websites for profit. I have broken them down into two categories: Web Design Tips and Copywriting Tips. It’s important to understand that lacking strong skills in both web design and copywriting negates the whole purpose behind researching keywords.

Years ago, people were able to profit from building low quality sites. However, that is not the case today with the increased levels of competition and new sites being launched, as well as the constant adjustments search engines make towards fighting spam and controlling quality. Below are references to 16 articles previously published on the SEO Hosting blog that will provide you with concrete tips with copywriting and web design.

Copywriting Tips – The content you create has a huge impact on the overall success of your site. Writing the content can be tricky because it has to be written in a way that captures the attention of people, keeps them on the page, and delivers what is expected. It also has to be optimized so that the page can appear in search engines above other competing sites the cover the same topics.

1. The Importance of Research in the Copywriting Process
2. Pros and Cons of the Different Types of Content
3. How to Write Better Headlines
4. How to Improve Your Headlines Instantly
5. Tips for Using Bullet Points in Your Copy
   
6. 23 Copywriting Rules To Live By
7. How to Make Sure You Aren’t Keyword Stuffing
8. 5 Simple Tips for Proofreading Your Copy

Web Design Tips – Just like the content you create, your web design also plays an active role towards the success of your site. The inner workings of a properly coded website fortify the optimizations made to the content you create. It also captures the attention of people with the use of appealing colors, graphics, and styles.

1. The Anatomy of a Website: Which Pages Should Be on Your Website?
2. How To Be a Successful Web Designer
3. 5 Tips for Overcoming Web Designer’s Block
4. Tell-Tale Signs Your Homepage Sucks
5. Don’t Let These 8 Web Design Mistakes Kill Your Website
6. 23 Web Design Rules to Follow
7. How To Increase The Performance of Your Website
8. 8 Essential Website Maintenance Tasks

I believe that if you are serious about learning how to research keywords, then you will have a strong interest in developing, enhancing, or strengthening your copywriting and web design skills. I encourage you to read the articles referenced above. They will provide you with the highest level of advice and guidance.

Additionally, I invite you to ask questions and voice your concerns with past experiences. And lastly, I want to remind you to stay tuned, because in the next day or so I will publish my second article in the multiple post series that teaches you how to research keywords without buying software.

My head literally had only hit the pillow for about 30 seconds before I re-realized this thought again. Second place is truly the first loser. And I came to realize that more than ever just a few moments ago. My son lost is cell phone in the snow last week and it stopped working. What I should do is probably punish him and not purchase a new phone, but because I am a common idiot father, I am going to replace his phone with something even better.

So, I logged into my AT&T account and like always, they offer an array of free add-on phones for my family plan. Many of these phones were actually pretty cool. One of the phones that I thought was nice was the Motorola Karma. I can get this phone free. But at any rate, in the process of reviewing these various phones, I decided to jump over to YouTube to see if there were any reviews.

Here’s the part where I re-realized that “second place is the first loser.” When I was doing my searches for these various phones, I felt very strong at clicking the first result. What’s crazy about this situation is that many hours later — once again, head crashed on pillow only 30 seconds — I was able to fully understand the power of ranking #1 for something.

In the case with the YouTube videos, I was clearly able to see the view count of each video on the search result page. In a few cases, the second and third result had more views and in fact seemed even more relevant than the #1 listing. Yet, what did I do? You guessed it… I clicked on the first result and watched that video. Reflecting back on why I did this, I remember saying to myself, “Well… if YouTube thinks this one should be #1, then that’s the video I need to watch to get the best review of this particular phone.”

Was that true? Well, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is the fact that I clicked on the #1 result, and so do most people. So ultimately, the key to success is ranking #1. And this helps another point I have made many times before in the past. And that it is better to rank #1 for a keyword that only gets 100 hits per day than to rank on page two for a keyword that gets 10,000. No one looks at page two on Google. Not many people even look at the bottom first ten results.

Ranking #1 is the key. So that being said… when it comes to doing keyword research, or targeting various phrases, etc… remember to choose keywords, titles, and phrases that you feel you have the most chance at ranking number #1. Anything below that are simply losers…

In this article we’re going to help answer the question: What is ALLINTITLE search. As you may know,  in my last article I explained about advanced and basic search operators in Google. I then explained how understanding these operators can help you have a better understanding of SEO. In this article we’re going to further this lesson by showing you some specific examples of search engine optimization and how these efforts are visible in the search results.

Most programs such as WordPress automatically generate dynamic HTML pages, so unfortunately, many bloggers don’t understand the elements that make up a web page. It’s very important for bloggers to know and understand HTML. If you don’t know HTML, don’t worry, it’s very simple to learn. But again, it is something that you should totally learn.

Doing so, quite honestly, will give you a huge boost towards understanding SEO. That said, one of the first elements we’ll look at is the HTML <title> tag.

Here is a basic example:

<html>
<head>
<title>The Title of Your Webpage</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Your content goes here.</p>
</body>
</html>

In my previous article, I exaplained about the ALLINTITLE search operator. The ALLINTITLE operator is just that, it looks for the keywords you’re searching for all in the title of a webpage and only returns results that match. Earlier last week, I wrote an article titled, SEO Tools For The iPhone. The source code in my dymanic HTML file had matching HTML <title> tag.

It looks like this:

<title>SEO Tools For The iPhone</title>

If you do an ALLINTITLE search for [seo tools for the iphone] you’ll see that the article I wrote is ranked #1 in Google. In fact, the search is so specific, Google only returns 5 results total. One of the results was created by Gerald after submitting the article into Mixx. So with that said, you can probably now see the importance of creating excellent web page titles. Here is a screen shot:

If you’re a blogger, the HTML <title> tags are created automatically and mirror your post title. So you’re probably wondering what does this mean for SEO? Well, not many people use advanced search operators such as the ALLINTITLE search. So it’s important that your content rank well for the keywords you target. the HTML <title> tag holds weight towards keyword ranking.

Repeating the same search in Google without the ALLINTITLE operator, you’ll see that the same article still ranks #1. Only difference is that instead of ranking #1 out of five listings, it ranks #1 out of 5 million. There are other elements in this article hold some SEO weight and assist in the overall success of the article ranking #1 in Google. Here is a screen shot:

Stick around for my next article and I’ll discuss them in further detail. In the mean time, now that you know about the ALLINTITLE search operator, can you guess what the ALLINURL and the ALLINBODY operators do? My next article will show you how these elements enhance your optimization further. Also, I may touch on article writing and keyword density. If you should have any questions, feel free to use the contact form below.

Google is quite powerful and amazingly accurate when it comes to helping people find things. However, not many people know that Google can be used in different ways to drill down even deeper towards finding information. These are called Advanced Search Operators.

You might not realize this but, performing a simple search for a keyword phrase or topic is an example of a Basic Search Operator. The part that may impress you is that even the basic search operators do quite advanced things. The advanced search operators, well using them can produce even more impressive results.

All in all, it’s quite important to learn the operators and commands. Doing so will allow you to find more accurate information. But there’s a bonus. If you’re learning about SEO, understanding many of the Basic and Advanced search operators can help you learn quite a bit about search engine optimization.

Let’s take a look at a few of them and see how they work, and also let’s see how they can tie into your SEO.

The Site Specific Search

The site specific search allows users to search for results from only one site. For SEO, knowing how to do this can come in handy because you can easily find pages on a friend’s site that contain relevant keywords that you may want linking back to your site. Having links that point back to your site or a page within your site can increase the chances of improving your ranking and visibility.

example keyword phrase site:examplesite.com

The above will return pages on examplesite.com that contain the [example keyword phrase].

Another way to make excellent use of the site specific search operator is to filter results by domain name. For example, many people believe that receiving backlinks from .GOV domain names is the best quality. One way of finding relevant pages to try to get your link added within a .GOV domain would be to search for only .GOV results.

example keyword phrase site:.gov

The above will return pages on all .GOV domains in the index with the [example keyword phrase]. From there you can contain site authors, webmasters, and blog owners and try to get your link added. You’d be amazed to discover that sending hand written emails is quite an effective way towards landing very handcrafted and high quality backlinks.

The “All In” Search Operators

The allin search operators are fun. It reminds me of when I flip through the TV channels late at night and I catch a glimpse of the high stakes poker channel, when the players say, “All In!” and the audience gets excited.

The allin search operator gets me excited too because this command is one of the more useful commands for SEO. Let me explain them and show you how knowing how to use them, and most importantly, show you how to review the results produced. The allin operators are as follows:

allinanchor:, allintext:, allintitle:, allinurl:

I use these operators when I am doing keyword research. When I do keyword research, I use programs such as Google AdWords Keyword Tool, Google Wonder Wheel, and a few other paid programs to find keywords that have the potential to turn a profit for me by attaining a superior organic ranking. The process can be split into two parts.

The first is determining if certain keywords yield a high amount of potential profit and traffic. The second part is determining if I can rank organically for the keyword phrases. Using the allin search operators is one of the tools I use to determine part two. In my next article I am going to give you some excellent examples of how to use the allin search operators and how it ties into SEO. Also, we’ll continue with more lessons on organic search engine ranking so be sure to stay tuned.

In my previous article about teaching how to research and target keywords, I explained about the importance of targeting keywords that generate qualified traffic. Now that you have an understanding of why it’s important to rank for relevant keywords as opposed to focusing on scoring tons of traffic, let’s take a closer look at two programs offered by Google that can help you drill down and find keywords that you can rank for on your site.

Keep in mind, it’s important for you to have some kind of web publishing system on your site, such as a blog, and someone who is able to write and publish content on it. For more details about this, I suggest reading my article that explains why a blog is important for SEO. That said, the two programs that we’ll take a closer look at are called Google AdWords Keyword Tool and Google Wonder Wheel.

As mentioned prior, the Google Wonder Wheel an amazing and free service that allows you to easily drill down into discovering relevant longtail keywords based off very popular and competitive ones. It’s handy to use this program so that you can gather a list of keywords that will potentially be used.

The next program, Google AdWords Keyword Tool, is used to further research the list of keywords generated from Google Wonder Wheel. Using this program, you can get a general idea of the amount of traffic and level of competition a keyword has.

Using Google AdWords Keyword Tool gives you the ability to screen your preliminary list of keywords so that you can remove ones that prove to be too competitive or receive far less traffic than desired. Also, Google AdWords Keyword Tool works as a micro keyword finder as well. Just like Google Wonder Wheel, you’ll find that the keyword tool does a great job generating relevant keywords as well.

Stay tuned because in the next few days I will continue explaining more about researching and targeting keywords for search engine marketing. Next, I will show you how to study the search results page to determine whether it’s possible to easily rank on it.

Learning how to research and target keywords for search engine marketing is a valuable skill to learn. Ranking for certain keywords and phrases in search engines can deliver more traffic to your site than you can shake a stick at. But also, it isn’t always about the quantity of traffic.

In most cases, it’s about the quality of the traffic. And that is one of the most common things I believe people mistake about SEM and even SEO. In my opinion, I would rather have 100 super qualified visitors to my site per month rather than 10,000 unqualified visitors. That said, of course you can easily rank for many different keywords and phrases; however, if you own a site that sells kitchen appliances in Dallas Texas. Is there really any reason to try to rank for the search term, kitchen appliances in Alaska?

In other words, it’s relatively easy to rank for keywords and phrases that yield a lot of traffic. But, this is useless traffic that only puts a burden on your server and consumes your bandwidth. Not only is this traffic not going to convert, but eventually search engines will catch on to the misuse of keyword targeting and derank the listings and possibly the entire site.

The best thing a site owner can do is pick out relevant keywords and phrases that will deliver high quality traffic and qualified leads towards conversion or call to action. With that, here is a simple process you can follow that will help you drill down towards finding keywords that’ll work for you.

The first thing I do is write down ten primary keywords, such as: Cars, Doctor, Computer, House, Keyboard, Bed, Door, Plants, etc. Once I have a list of primary keywords that are relevant to the topic of my site, I then start researching sub-topics, or as many people call it, Longtail Keyword Phrases. There’s quite a few programs that can help you do this. One is a program I have been using for a couple years called Google AdWords Keyword Tool. The other is a newer program, also offered by Google, called Google Wonder Wheel. Using both, will in fact, help you quite a bit.

In my next article I will show you how to use both of these programs to find keywords to use towards targeting qualified traffic to your site. If you haven’t already done so, I suggest subscribing to my RSS feed so that you won’t miss my next article. Also, I suggest subscribing to the main RSS Feed so that you don’t miss articles written by my fellow writers here on SEOHosting.com.

Discover Google Wonder Wheel and How This Program Can Help You With Keyword Research

I make money on the Internet by creating blogs and websites that target profitable keywords in search engines. Knowing and having a general to moderate understanding of search engine optimization, search engine marketing, and keyword analysis is crucial towards the success of my business. One of the reasons why I enjoy writing here is because I can share my experience and knowledge about search engines with you.

In my business, I need quite a few things to happen in order for it to remain successful. One of most important things I need is to have material to write about. Not only that, but the material I write about needs to trigger profitable advertisements within my pages.

There are many programs available that will give you a general idea of how much certain keywords and phrases pay; however, one thing most of these programs lack are writing prompts. It’s one thing to think of a keyword or phrase to write about, but it’s it’s a complete different ball game when a publisher, such as myself, has writer’s block.

That is where Google Wonder Wheel kicks in. This is an amazing and free service offered by Google that allows you to easily drill down into discovering relevant longtail keywords based off very popular and competitive ones.

If I were to write an article geared towards targeting the keyword phrase, “apple computers” it would take a lot of resources, backlinks, money, and time to successfully get top ranking for that phrase in Google. In my business, I go after longtail keywords. And using Google Wonder Wheel is a perfect tool that allows me to discover these keywords.

Using Google Wonder Wheel, I can do a search for “apple computers” and then narrow my results to “apple laptops”. From there, I can narrow my search even more and click on “used apple laptops”. Now the keywords are getting much less competitive and easier to gain top ranking. In my experience, I tend to take things just a little deeper. In this case, I will click on “used apple laptops” and mark this keyword for consideration.

Once I have a keyword marked, I will then begin conducting research to see if this particular keyword has traffic. Secondly, I want to know if AdWords advertisers are placing decent bids, and last I want to check and check the level of competition in the organic rankings. If all checks out well, then I move on writing content geared towards targeting the chosen keyword phrase.

What are some ways that Google Wonder Wheel can be incorporated into your online business?

So you just started a business website or a blog and now you’ve heard all the hype about ranking #1 in Google and how much traffic you can get for free. You’ve read a few articles, wasted a few hundred dollars on some eBooks and video tutorials, but still you can’t seem get your site to rank for the keywords you want. This leads to seeking advice and help with SEO.

Search engine optimization is the process of making your website or blog friendly and optimized for search engines. But, today, there is so much involved with SEO, at times it can even be mind blowing for those have experience. How do you get help with SEO if you need it? Well, there is a site called SEO Consultants.

SEO Consultants serves as a nationwide directory listing of search engine consultants. The site is very simple to use. Simply choose your country, state, and specify a few optional filters, and then you will be returned with a listing of SEO Consultants near you.

If you happen to be an SEO Consultant, I recommend getting listed in this directory. They rank #1 for the term SEO Consultant. And, I am sure they get a lot of traffic that can convert into profitable leads for your SEO business.

Getting listed in their directory isn’t cheap. The cost is $200 dollars to get your business reviewed by their staff. They have very strict standards and getting listed isn’t easy. But, if you are successful with getting listed in their directory, I am sure they pay offs will be huge. On their Submit URL page they mention this:

“As of 2009-07-10 we have 107 active members and 897 prospective members who have been declined since our initial launch on 2002-06-01.”

I think the $200 submission / review fee and hardcore standards make their directory listing a valuable resource to consumers. Only the best of the best are listed in this directory, and it only took me a few minutes to realize that. Consumers can place trust in the companies listed within. Getting your SEO business listed is something you might want to aim for and consider in the future.

By the way, I did send them an email prior to writing this and asked the staff if they would honor a special discount to readers on SEOHosting.com blog. I’ll update this post and do a follow up if they reply back honoring a discount to their submission fee.

In the business of search engine marketing, choosing the correct keywords to target is crucial towards the overall success in your online business. The folks who use Pay Per Click services, such as the Google AdWords program, their overall success depends on bidding on the right keywords. For search engine marketers who target organic keywords, the same process is involved; however, instead of bidding for keywords are you rolling the dice on whether you can rank for the keywords you target. Both aspects of search engine marketing have their pro’s and con’s and both equally have their share of stresses.

In my business of search engine marketing, I don’t fool around too much with Pay Per Click. I focus on organic search. The two primary reasons why I focus on organic search versus pay per click is because I am very good at it and secondly I have something to show for my work after it is done. With Pay Per Click, once your campaign money expires so does your listings in the search engines. With organic search, I have an endless amount of free traffic for as long as my keywords continue to be ranked in the search engine.

With all that said, I want to show you an example of how I choose keywords to target in the organic search section of search engines, mainly Google.

I have used quite a few tools in the past to help me do keyword research. Over time, the Google AdWords Keyword Tool has grown on me. It is my favorite tool to use and it is free. In the examples in this article, I will be using this tool. If you have never used the Google AdWords keyword tool for researching keywords, you should give it a try. I think you’ll enjoy it. Let’s roll through a few examples of how I find keywords to target.

Nike

Nike is a very popular brand of shoes. It is very unlikely that I would be successful ranking well in Google for the search term: Nike. Granted, it could be done, but it would take a ton of work in order to pull it off. Needless to say, the amount of time and energy I would have to invest towards ranking for the term Nike I could instead use that towards ranking for about 20 other keyword phrases instead.

Google AdWords Keyword Tool Results For Nike:

[Click to view full size]

Looking at the above screen shot you will see that Nike generates over 13 million searches in Google each month. Ranking #1 on the Nike page in Google would be a total dream. Like I said, anything is possible, but with the amount of time and energy needed to do so, it might not be worth it. Instead, I use my time and energy to rank for longtail keywords.

Longtail keywords are keyword phrases that have a much lower level of competition while also having a decent amount of monthly searches. Longtail keywords are also keyword phrases that are much easier to rank well in Google.

Longtail Keywords For Nike

Here are some examples of longtail Nike keywords that I would target.

• Nike Shoe Sales
• Nike Shoes on Sale
• Nike Shoe Deals
• Nike Shoe Clearance
• Kids Nike Shoes
• Mens Nike Shoes
• Nike Baseball Cleats
• Nike Football Cleats

I would write blog posts using these keyword phrases as post titles. From there, I would make sure that the first paragraph of the post included the title phrase, and then I would make sure the entire article include proper alt text and images all with the post title name. Once the content is indexed, it is very likely that the page will rank well. If it doesn’t then you will have to do a little link building, no big deal. The point is that the amount of time and energy invested into ranking for longtail keywords are much less than trying to go for primary keywords. Also, most all attempts to aim for mainstream keywords end in failure.

One of the main reasons why I target longtail keywords over mainstream keywords is because I feel it is better to rank on the top ten for a keyword phrase that has only 1000 searches per month compared to ranking on the second page (results 11 through 20) for a keyword phrase that receives 10,000. Not very many people investigate the links on page two.

I hope that you enjoyed reading this article. What are some other ways you research longtail keywords? Share your thoughts in the comments below.