What Keywords?
Sat, 22 October, 2005 – 2:29 pm
I've often had clients or other people say to me that I can view their statistics and see how people are reaching their web site, in particular which keywords and phrases are being used in the Search Engines. Then I can work on those to improve the rankings. Whilst I can use this information, it's often not in the way they think. Most people seem to infer that you can use the phrases that already find your site to improve your site visitors. Possibly but why? People are already finding your site with these phrases so therefore you really want to work on the phrases that aren't working for you!
Okay so we'll take your statistics. AWStats will inform you which key phrases were used to find your web site with, and also a keyword list. Now if you fancy dipping into your raw logs you'll see which Search Engine referred the visitor with each keyphrase as well. Take your higher ranking phrases (5 visitors or more) - bear in mind some phrases may rank highly but not appear to do so because it's an exact match, ie. a plural version is considered different by AWStats. Find out which Search Engine referred the visitor with this phrase and you should also be able to see which page they clicked on (bear in mind results can often be different as the engines reside on several servers often giving different results especially where Google is concerned). Then check on that phrase in the other Search Engines. Personally I stick to caring about 3 main engines and 1 which I still need to study a little more. The top 3 are Google, Yahoo and MSN, the 4th is Ask Jeeves. Most other engines aren't really worth your time as possibly less than 5% of the internet population use them, and most are powered by the big 4 anyhow. So check on your phrase in these 4 engines and see where you show up, or if you are in the first 50 results. Google can be checked easily by signing up for free to Digital Point which will let you set up a list of phrases and sites using a Google API key (free from Google) to check the rankings as often as you want.
So if you seem to be going well in most Search Engines except one (usually Google) for your phrase then it may need a little tweaking. If it's working well in the other search engines then I would say to ensure it's got enough coverage on a page on your site for Google to pick up on. If your phrases don't seem to be showing up then it could be due to your results being different to the visitor's results. Also bear in mind google.com showing as having sent visitors to you can be a little inaccurate as this encompasses google.com.hk (Hong Kong Google) for example, along with many others. You will however see the real truth in your raw logs.
Once you've checked your phrases you should be able to see which ones have good placings in the SEs. Next you want to know how often these phrases are searched on right? Pop along to Wordtracker, a great keyword checking tool which offers a Free Trial that will give limited but still useful information. Their Prices are pretty reasonable too. I'll do a quick intro to Wordtracker in the next post if you've never used this before. However here you can use the free trial to at least check on your key phrases and get an idea of how many times in 60 days that phrase has been searched on in the SEs of the moment, and also get an analysis of your favourite phrases and how well Wordtracker believes your site would work in the MSN search. Why do this? Well by checking on your own phrases Wordtracker will also list similar phrases and how well they work too. You will often leave there with some interesting results, discovering a little gem on a phrase you never even thought about using as you felt it would be too useless for your site.
So at this point you know the following:
» Which phrases were used by visitors to reach your web site
» The ranking for your web site using each of those phrases in the top 4 Search Engines
» The number of people currently searching on that phrase
» The analysis figure of how well your site will do using that phrase in terms of visitors and competition
» Possibly some new phrases similar in subject and how well they currently do as well
By taking this information you know which phrases to tweak and which to concentrate on. Of course there's no major point concentrating on a phrase if there is far too much competition and too few people searching on it. Why bother tweaking a phrase when only 5 people a month will look for it, on average. Make a list of the best phrases at the top and then run down in a descending order. You can still tweak the lesser used phrases but don't put your effort into those until you believe you've done your best with the others. Also remember those extra new phrases. See which ones are of a benefit to your web site and work those in as well.
Digital Point also provides a key word suggestion tool which uses both Wordtracker and Overture to give you results. This will tell you how many people have searched using the specified keyphrase. Again it can give you an insight into how many people are searching on that phrase, how many of those are already finding you and how many could be. Whilst checking on some phrases today for a new site I also checked on a certain phrase as a friend of mine sells related products on his web site. According to Wordtracker if he can get onto the front page of MSN with that phrase he can expect around 3000+ visitors to his web site. I've passed on the information to him and my tips on what to change and hopefully he'll do this and keep me updated on the progress which of course I will relay here.
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