Trying to get ranked in search engines for a single keyword is just about impossible for the average webmaster and would be a big task for an experienced SEO specialist. You need groups of keywords to form keyphrases.
Yes, good keyphrases, not keywords. Trying to get ranked in search engines for a single keyword is just about impossible for the average webmaster and would be a big task for an experienced SEO specialist. You need groups of keywords to form keyphrases.
Although many users do perform single-word searches the majority of serious searchers will narrow down their query by adding more words to get more accurate results.
Choosing the relevant keyphrases that best describe your website products and/or services, and are most likely to convert to sales or leads, is the single most important stage of optimising your website. Before you do anything you need to get this right, as pretty much any future optimisation work stems from these choices. We often recommend a client uses pay-per-click advertising in the short-medium term to gauge which phrases perform the best in terms of conversion. Using the data gleaned from the PPC campaign allows you to make more informed choices on what phrases to target for SEO.
Google provides a Keyword tool to help you identify search terms for your site, however you need to understand how to use it properly as it is geared towards users that advertise with Google but can be used to help with SEO. Read this tutorial first, then start using Google’s keyword tool while referring back to the tutorial as you go.
Logically group your keyphrases
Once you have identified your list of keyphrases you should then group these logically. Each group will constitute a page you need to write to target those phrases. For very competitive phrases you should make groups of 1 or 2 keyphrases, for less competitive terms between 3-6 keyphrases.
Example Keyphrase Grouping
Say I identify the following search phrases relevant to my website:
- website design
- website design UK
- website designers
- professional website designers
These are very competitive terms, so I should target no more than 1-2 per page of content, however for this example I will group all 4 into one phrase that targets the lot:
Website design by UK professional website designers
This combined phrase targets all 4, although the term website design UK is a little diluted by having the by inserted prior to the UK.
Writing Optimised Content
This combined phrase now forms my page title and my heading 1 on my page. Within the page I will also write a couple of paragraphs of content for each phrase in turn and give each paragraph a level 2 heading using the phrase, eg:
Website design by UK professional website designers [h1 heading]
[paragraph of text to introduce the page with some of these phrases included]
Website design [h2 heading]
[several paragraphs of text about website design]
Website design UK [h2 heading]
[several paragraphs of text about website design UK]
et. al.
I have written another post on placement of phrases here.
There you have it – choosing good keyphrases and logially grouping them into pages is all part of planning a successful website for SEO.
