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Using Keywords

Keyword Lists – Their Proper Care and Feeding

One of your most important marketing assets is your Keyword List. But are you giving your Keyword List the attention it deserves? Is your Keyword List getting a little shaggy around the edges? Are your keywords becoming old and out of date? Is your Keyword List not behaving at its best, possibly due to neglect?

To properly care for your Keyword List you need to understand its different needs and functions. We can divide the list into several broad categories.

1. Master Keyword List – this list has all the keywords that you can come up with for your particular need. All other lists are taken from this Master List.

2. Pay-Per-Click List – this is a subset of the Master List and will vary depending on how you are using PPC and which search engines you are buying positions in.

3. Tag List – this subset of the Master List helps you fill in those Meta Tag fields. Although many search engines are not currently paying much attention to Meta Tags, that could change at any time and the search engines will not let us know if or when they begin watching Meta Tags again. So the safe bet is to still keep these tags properly populated.

4. Web Site List – this is another subset of the Master List and is more targeted than the PPC list. This list also helps you write powerful content on your site. And don’t forget to refer to this list when setting up the Alt tags for your images (you are using Alt tags aren’t you?).

5. Email List – Are you using keywords in your email? You should be. Keywords are not only used to help people find your site in search engines, but they are words people are actively searching for. Your marketing should be addressing their needs, and your keyword list shows you what they are looking for. Just like creating copy on a web page, use the keyword list to target your email campaigns as well.

So how do you go about creating the Master Keyword list? You first have to decide what you need from your keywords. Most likely you will have a product or service that will dictate the broad category for the list. As an example I will use Nikon Camera as my starting point. Maybe I have a site that specializes in information about Nikons, or I have a store that sells Nikon Cameras, or maybe I sell software that would complement a Nikon Camera. These questions and more will begin to focus your keyword search.

Start by building a basic list using this approach, you don’t need to capitalize, leave everything lowercase.

nikon, nikon camera, nikon information, nikon sales, nikon software

Put down the basic keywords that spring into your head when thinking about your subject. This does not need to be an exhaustive list, just a starting point.

We now need to expand on this list by using tools freely available on the internet. My personal favorite is on Overture.com in their Resource Center. They have a valuable little tool called the Keyword Selector Tool. This tool will give you a list of keyword searches on Overture over a one month period. Simply type in your keyword and hit the button. You will get a list of keywords including the keyword you typed in and the number of searches performed on the keyword.

A search for “Nikon” came back with 100 keyword possibilities. Depending on your original keyword search you may have to clean this list up a bit before using it. For instance one of the keywords was “Nikon rifle scopes”, not what I need so I will delete that one. I usually copy the information from this web page and paste it into an Excel spreadsheet where I can manipulate it as I like. Each month you may get a different set of keywords on Overture, so don’t just do this one time and forget it. Keep on checking back to add more keywords to your list.

Another valuable tool is over on Google. (https://adwords.google.com/select/main?cmd=KeywordSandbox)
You can also find this tool in the Tools section of Google Adwords. This is used like the Overture tool, simply type in your keyword and click on Get More Keywords. This search gave me 225 possible keywords, many of which I will clean out. A nice feature of the Adwords tool is that it allows you to download the list as a CSV file for use in Excel or another program.

There are many other sources for keyword lists. A good place to start is on Search Engine Watch at http://searchenginewatch.com/facts/article.php/2156041

Don’t forget specialized sites like eBay. They have a banner ad program named eBay Keywords where you can find suggestions for keywords to use with banner ads on eBay. http://ebay.admarketplace.net

And finally pay attention to the log files for your web site. You will have a list of searches people used to find your site. This is a very targeted list of keywords that were actually successful in driving traffic to your site.

Now that you have a huge list of keywords you are ready to create your Master Keyword List. Place all these keywords into a spreadsheet and clean out the inappropriate keywords (like “Nikon Binoculars”). Then arrange in order from most relevant to least relevant.

You need to weed this Master List down for your PPC campaign. You may find that the keywords near the top of your list are the most expensive and that the ones in the middle may have a better cost to sales ratio.  But the more keywords you can use on PPC, the broader your exposure.

The top 25 should work well for your Meta Tag list. Depending on your needs you may need to remove duplicate words. Try to limit any individual word to 5 uses or less (example: don’t use “nikon” more than 5 times).

The top 10 keywords are your sales words for your web site and email campaigns since these are the most tightly focused keywords in the list.

Don’t forget that the needs of your list will be changing as the market place shifts. Every month or so do a new search for keywords to keep your keyword list up to date. Trim out the words that are either no longer appropriate or effective. Be sure to keep an eye on your log files. Keep your sub-lists current. And give your Keyword List the care and attention it needs to live a long and active life.

And finally, if only 4 people purchase some training off of my site due to the keywords in this article I can get that Nikon Camera that I have been wanting.

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George Peirson is President of How To Gurus. He is the author of over 30 multimedia based tutorial training titles. To see training and other articles by George Peirson visit http://www.howtogurus.com
Article copyright 2010 George Peirson
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Image File Size and Resolution

Hi I just viewed the image size-resolution portion of your cs2 video and I can't figure out

why one of my images is 2900x2900 and the other is
about 2500x2700

the large one is 3.30 MB
and the other is 700 KB

why such a big difference in doc size?

I would like to learn more about this.

Mike

Hi Mike,

Hi Mike,

The two main things that control image file size are image size (size of image on page) and image resolution (number of pixels per inch). My guess is that your 3.30MB file is at 300 pixels per inch and your 700KB file is at 72 pixels per inch.

Also, everything else being equal, the image mode will also impact file size, RGB has 3 data points per pixel and CMYK has 4 data points, so at the same image size and resolution a CMYK image will have a larger file size than a RGB file.

Also different file types will have different file sizes, for example the Photoshop format (PSD) is uncompressed where as the JPEG file format is compressed, so at the same image size and resolution a PSD file will be much larger than a JPEG file. The main file types you will probably be encountering in Photoshop are PSD, BMP, TIF (all uncompressed) and GIF, JPG (JPEG), and PNG (all compressed - much smaller file sizes).

You can see the file type and image mode in the header of the image window, it will show you the file name, the zoom percentage and the image mode. You can see the resolution by going to the Image Menu and clicking on Image Size. The top of the box shows you the image size (usually in Pixels, number of pixels per inch) and the bottom of the box shows you the size on the page and the resolution. The higher the resolution, the more pixels per inch, and the larger the file size. Changing the resolution will not change the size on the page, but it will impact the file size (and quality of the image if you go to a lower resolution). My personal preference is to work on a image in PSD format at 300 pixels per inch, then convert the image to JPG or GIF compressed to a lower resolution for use on our disks or the internet. If I am creating an image for use in print I leave it at 300 pixels per inch.

George Peirson
How To Gurus

For the best computer training please visit
www.howtogurus.com

Using forms on a Yahoo web site

Hi George Peirson,
I bought "How to Gurus" DVD training for Adobe Dreamweaver CS3, and I have been learning a lot from them. Thank you for you good job. I have a question about forms. I didn't't find answer from Yahoo about
what kind of script I can use to my e-mail form. They said, "I am sorry but Yahoo! Web Hosting does not provide assistance for advanced PHP, Perl scripts." Perhaps I didn't't make my self clear to them, but I follow your advise in the DVD to find how they deal with forms. I would like to know if you can help me about this.
Thank you very much,
C.S.


Hi C.S., Yahoo uses their own system for such things as email forms.

Here is where I found it in our Yahoo website (could be slightly different for you depending on the Yahoo service you purchased):

• Go to your Web Hosting Control Panel
• Click on the Create & Update tab
• In the Add-Ons section you should see Visitor Feedback Tools.
• One of the Visitor Feedback Tools is Email Forms
• Use either their Sample Email Form 1 or Sample Email Form 2 to add a form to your web page
• You can then use one of their web tools, like PageBuilder, or you can use Dreamweaver to modify the form by adding or deleting form fields.
• If you use Dreamweaver you will need to set up Dreamweaver to access your Yahoo account.
• By using one of the Sample Forms you will get the correct coding to run the form on your web site, then just edit the form as needed.
• The form software is built into the Yahoo server, so you don't need to worry about that.

George

Q. Do the so called "gurus" who advertise systems that can give you a guarnateed #1 Google position in 1-3 months really work, or are these just bs?

A.
It takes at least 6 months to even show up on Google, usually a year or more to get a good position using all of the tricks. I have never seen a site go to #1 in Google in 1-3 months. Their are some services who advertise fast listing, one to try is ineedhits.com.

As far as what works in my experience:

Most important is your email list, we get most of our email addresses from sales on eBay, Amazon, and our other outlets. With an email list you can do some direct marketing. But even with that our email campaigns are just bonus income, they never come close to the income we get from our regular sales outlets.

Articles are very successful on helping your Google position. But they need to be well written and you need to submit them all over the place. I write several articles a year and submit them to about 20 article distributing sites. The way these work is if the article is interesting enough people will put the article on their site and with the link back to your site at the end of the article it will create those needed back links.

What I have found more successful though is using internal links and making sure you use the correct alt tags in your document. Google seemed to like internal links as much as external links. But, I say seemed to since Google changed their algorithm at the beginning of the year and it is back to square one on figuring out what is going to work this year. Last year I had the #1 position for the search term Photoshop Tutorial Training, our web site home page was optimized for that. As soon as Google did their algorithm update (in the industry called the Google Dance as all the listings shift around) our page position dropped to #20 (bottom of second page). So it looks like the internal links and alt tags are no longer working this year.

Best tricks:

Make sure the code on your site is up to date with good quality content.
Use this service to optimize your site for Google: http://www.ibusinesspromoter.com/ This is the best tool on the market for optimizing your site. What it does is deeply analyse your site compared to the top 5 positions on Google, then gives you a list of recommendations. Up to you to do the actual optimizing.

Write articles and submit them to these main sites:
iSnare.com
ArticleDashboard.com
Ezinearticles.com
GoArticles.com
You can find more by doing a Google search for Article Submission Service or similar search term.

Only optimize for one keyword or keyword set on a page. It is extremely difficult to optimize for more than one keyword set.

Take a very careful look at the sites that are at positions 1-5, whatever they are doing is working. This means carefully examining their content at the code level (Google robots look at the code, not at the page visually). (Use the tool listed above)

Keep in mind that everyone is trying for that #1 position, so it is a race that never ends, no way to guarantee that #1 position (unless you optimize for a keyword no one has thought of, but then again if no one thought of it no one would search for it either).

Don't try to go for #1 position on extreamly popular keywords, I would never try to get #1 position on the keyword "photoshop". Too much work competing against companies like Adobe who have who teams of people who do nothing else but work on their Google position.
Google likes sites that have been around for a while, so get your site up immediately to get the clock started. Sites that have been on Google for a few years will always get a boost in position.
Keep in mind that there are thousands of people trying to do the same thing you are doing, so you need to do it better. If everyone used the same info from the same marketing gurus and aimed at the same keyword, there would still only be one #1 spot on Google. So whatever you do you have to do it better than your competitors.

The more of an exclusive niche you can aim at the better your chances. For me it is much easier to get a good placement for "photoshop tutorial training" than it is to even get listed for "photoshop". And of course Google changes things every year. Last year we had the #1 position for this term, this January we are back to #20 (back to a new round of page optimization).

With all that said, who knows you may get lucky.

Hope all this helps.