Looking to improve your web
site’s rankings in the top
search engines? Below is a
summary of a conversation I
had recently with a client
on how I achieved a top 10
ranking in the top search
engines for the keyword
phrase “Durham Web Site
Design” for my company’s web
site (www.bushfx.com):
1. Determine Keyword
Phrases
Research and
identify effective keyword
phrases that are relevant to
your web site – you want to
make sure these phrases are
actually being searched for
by potential clients /
customers and do not have a
lot of competition.
When you are
trying to come up with
keyword phrases, multiple
words are usually better and
try to be as specific as
possible. For example, for
my web site design business
it would be too hard to try
to rank for the keyword
phrase “web site design” but
something more specific,
such as “philadelphia web
site design” would be a
better keyword phrase (not
to mention it would bring in
much more targeted web
traffic).
2. Find High Demand Keyword
Phrases
After you
come up with your list of
keyword phrases, you need to
look them up to find out if
they have a high demand or
popularity.
To do this, go to:
http://inventory.overture.com/d/
searchinventory/suggestion/
and type in your list of
keyword phrases. The numbers
associated with each keyword
phrase indicate how many
people searched for that
specific keyword phrase over
the last month. You can also
click on each of the keyword
results to see more related
phrases. You should be able
to get a pretty good idea of
their popularity through
these results pages.
3. Evaluate the
Competition
Next, once
you have your list of high
demand keyword phrases, you
can then go to Google or
Yahoo and type in the
keyword phrase (put
quotation marks at the
beginning and end of the
term to search for that
exact phrase – i.e.
“philadelphia web site
design”). Then, on the
results page in Google you
will see at the top “Page 1
of …” which indicates the
supply or how many websites
contain that keyword phrase.
The goal is
to find keyword phrases that
are in high demand
(high numbers from the
overture.com link) and are
in low supply
(a low number of
results listed in Google).
4. Optimize/ Rewrite
Pages on Your Website
Once your
keyword phrases are
selected, identify which
pages on your site should be
optimized for each specific
keyword phrase(s). Optimize
each page on your website
for these specific keyword
phrases (normally 1 – 3
keyword phrases per page).
This includes writing/
rewriting the page content
to include these keyword
phrases while still
remaining “readable” by site
visitors. The goal here is
not to trick the search
engines but to provide
quality content to your
visitors and the search
engines at the same time.
Launch the new pages,
resubmit to the search
engines and continually
tweak / check your rankings.
While the top search engines
are constantly changing
their results pages, the one
variable that remains
consistent is rewarding web
sites with high rankings
that contain relevant and
original content.
