Keyword management - where do i start?
-
Hi all, i am a starting out SEO. I have recently been browsing our keyword rankings report and noticed that we are very low down on some quite key search terms. I therefor want to focus over the next few weeks, on bringing us up the rankings for these specific terms.
Apologies if this is a very basic one, but**,.... I dont know where to start!**
I would be very interested if anyone can give me some advice on a plan of action. What actions should be in my action plan?
For example, if i wanted to improve our rankings on the following:
-
English school in malta
-
Learning english in malta
-
English classes in malta
-
-
Its about 4 or 5 years old. We have one site that i am focussing on at the moment.
-
Great to hear! On to next steps....
For each page that exists on your site, pick a couple keywords or phrases to focus. If you pick "English school in malta", then your page should be one that most people would be glad to find after typing that phrase into a search engine.
Your first focus is to provide great content. A well thought out, well written page is desired. Google the phrase and look at the top 10 sites. You will probably find some great pages, along with some not-so-great pages. Take the good, leave the bad, and try to make your page the best one.
Your page should be clean, clear and well designed. You have probably been on some sites where the information you seek is right in the center of your screen and cleanly laid out. Other sites might jam the info you want halfway down the page with ads and other distractions surrounding the content. Don't make the user search for the information. Display it prominently.
Your site should immediately let users know they found the right page to meet their needs. Use H1 tags to boldly display your page title such as "Top 10 Lists of English Schools in Malta".
Make sure to use a clean page title (the meta tag). Something such as "English school in Malta | ABC College" would be a nice title for your page. A bad title would be "Learn Spanish, French, English and many other language fast and cheap"
Make sure your keyword phrase is used several times on the page. The usage should be completely natural. I usually shoot for about 4 times on a page. More then 6 can be excessive, and two or less may not be enough to indicate to search engines that the phrase is the focus of your page.
If your page is truly great, then let the world know about it. Tell anyone and everyone who might be interested. Contact schools, government agencies and anyone you can think of who comes in contact with people who may have a need for your service. Ask them to review your site and link to it.
The above is a general start. As you progress you may have additional questions in which case just ask.
A final thought....start a Campaign using the SEOmoz tools. This will help you track your progress and move up in rankings.
-
Hi Becky,
As a matter of interest, how old is the domain ?
Do you just have the one or do you have many sites?
Regards,
Chris
-
Thanks Ryan! i have covered off the adwords base and also looked through the begininners guide but i would love some detail on where next....
Thanks!
-
Hi Becky.
Begin by taking a look at Google Adsense keyword tool: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
If we look at your first phrase "English school in malta, Google shows 2900 global monthly searches and high competition.
Your SEO strategy will vary depending on how much resources (time/effort/money) you are willing to put into your site, along with your goals. A great place to get started would be the Beginner's Guide to SEO. It is truly a great guide and will answer many of your questions.
Good luck.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Which keyword to use (plural / singular)
Hi guys. So I'm racking my brain with a question whether I should use plural or singular keyword as a focus keyphrase of my page. The page that I'm optimizing is basically a review page of different websites offering proofreading services. Considering the fact that this is a review and I mention a lot of websites on my page, I decided to rank for a plural keyword that ends with "services". However, this keyword is very unpopular (ahrefs doesn't show any volume for it), while singular "service" has about 100 searches per month. As far as I understand, Google sees both keywords as synonyms, because search results for both keywords are almost identical. Should I change my keyphrase to singular "service" (even though the page mentions a lot of services), or stick with "services" instead? Do I have a chance of ranking for "service" if I stick with "services" in this case? Thank you.
Keyword Research | | AslanBarselinov0 -
Keyword tool suggestions??
Hello, What does everyone use as a good keyword tool for keyword research? I previously used Google's, but would like something better than what its become. Thanks!
Keyword Research | | CHECOM0 -
Keywords/URL
Greetings! I've read previous posts on this topic, but wondering if something has changed recently...On the on-page grading, the following was suggested:Use Keywords in your URL - high importance - easy fix _(In the past it has read difficult fix). _Could it be as easy as creating a new page with the name in the url, then redirecting to it? My site is www.enchantingquotes.com and the keyword that brings in virtually all of business is "wall quotes". I've read in the forum this isn't worth the trouble of trying to do, but the "easy fix" comment has me wondering...?Any help is much appreciated....I'm been trying to recover from a recent unexplained drop in rank. Ugh! (So feel free to analyze my site LOL!) :DA huge thanks for any advise!
Keyword Research | | eqgirl0 -
Do "search keywords" matter?
I've been getting conflicting accounts about this. We aways fill out the Title Tag, Meta Description and Product Tags(<- for internal purposes) but we are concerned about how important the "search keywords" are. We use bigcommerce and they describe their value as this: "the search keywords are optional, but if entered will be used for two things. First, they will be used along with the product name to create meta tags for search engine (I know meta keywords are not important, so is this what they mean?). Second, they will be used to assist people when searching your products. (Also internal, right?)." For all intents and purposes I think it is NOT super important but I wanted to make sure before I let them take a back burner. Thank you for your help in advance!
Keyword Research | | WNL0 -
Where do I go from here with my keyword research?
Hi all. I'm wondering if I can get some assistance on keyword research. I've set out a step-by-step process for myself about how to go about finding a list of keywords we want to optimise our site for. I've used a guide over at http://www.seonick.net/keyword-research to break it down step-by-step. After using Keyword Tool and Ubersuggest to get a list of keyword suggestions with their local monthly search volumes, I now have an Excel file with 1663 suggestions (yikes!). It is at this point where I am not 100% sure of what to do with this data & how to figure out which of these terms we should optimise for. I know not to go purely based on the local monthly search volume because that is not based on organic searches. So how would I go about condensing this into a list of keyword suggestions to target for optimising? Thanks in advance for assistance on this.
Keyword Research | | janc0 -
What is the ideal keyword difficulty percentage?
I am trying to establish my best keywords using the keyword difficulty tool. So if I want to come up with the best keywords, should I use the ones that come in at 50%??
Keyword Research | | mmookie0 -
Any thoughts as to the best keyword tool about today?
I have found similar questions on the forum but is there a best keyword tool to use or is it a case of using a few and cross referecing them?
Keyword Research | | bunac10