I’m sitting outside falling in love with the cool breeze that is gracing Cape Town with its presence, trying to figure out how on earth it’s the end of the weekend already. Although it’s been an incredibly busy week, I can’t understand how we got from Monday to Thursday evening this quickly – don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining, it’s my first full week of work this year so I’m dying to hit the weekend, but wow.
I landed a new client at work, a well known brand in fact and I’ve been tasked with managing all their SEO, so today was spent doing just that. My main focus today was some serious keyword research and a competitor analysis which lead me to a great set of keywords that I’m going to be working with, next step is updating all the meta data across the pages on the website.
Sidenote: SEO lesson:
I don’t want to bore those of you who aren’t into SEO, but seeing that I did everything today, I wanted to share some of my approach with you as it’s an effective approach.
The first step is to create a good basket of keywords, the way I do this is two fold: brand (or Andre coined the phrase ego keywords) and lead keywords. Brand keywords are those ones you want to rank for to be better than your competitor, lead keywords are keywords that actually lead people to your website who then get converted into customers. So, determining brand keywords is often best done by asking your clients what keywords they want to rank for, these keywords are then combined with a list of keywords that you come up with. So, for example, you might be doing SEO for a plumber, some brand keywords would be: best plumber, top plumber and so forth, whereas your lead keywords could be hire plumber cape town, plumbing service cape town and so forth – not the best example, but it exaggerates my point. Once you’ve got this basket of keywords, it’s time for the next step.
Fire up Excel or another spreadsheet program and create a column with all your keywords. Create several more columns:
- Results – the total number of results found in a Google search
- Top – The site that ranks number one for the keyword
- Anchor – How many results ranking have the keyword in the anchor texts, this is done by using inanchor:keyword in Google
- Title – How many results ranking have the keyword in the title, this is done by using intitle:keyword in Google
I also create a column where I put the sum of the results found in (3) and (4), this gives you some kind of strength prediction because title tags and backlinks are two of the big factors for ranking. Now, there are lots of other columns you could create, including more backlink values, page ranks and so forth, but I don’t like to go overboard too much because I get carried away with formula’s. There are lots of tools on the Internet that can assist you with finding out values for other ranking factors and you can add these in. A good column to have is actually the average daily (month/30) searches a keyword might receive.
Once you’ve create your document, it’s fairly easy to look through the columns and note which keywords have fairly high search volumes, but low title/anchor values, if you play around for a little you could sort the columns and isolate several keywords that might be worth targeting.
It’s a cool trick to find some worthwhile keywords to target – it’s worked time and time again for me.
Right, enough SEO talk!
Had a good time last night though, as I arrived home from work I received a message from the Harfield Village gang inviting me over for a wine ‘o clock, now if you remember, it was like 40 degrees in Cape Town, ever had wine in such heat? You have! Ok, then you know how the evening went ;) Was a lot of fun, catching up with friends, reflecting on the new year and just enjoying some down time. We’ve also booked a weekend away to do some camping in early March so I’m looking forward to that – 12 people, lots of tents, two cabins, rock pools and thousands of stars hopefully.. bliss.
So yeh, it’s been a good week both work wise and socially, but I can’t wait to sleep in on Saturday – oh yeh, that reminds me, I’ve got a guy coming to quote on putting a shower in, so perhaps I won’t be sleeping in too late, sigh
Have an awesome Friday everyone!
WOW, srsly. Who gives a fuck? Very few vegetables would want to read about your evening out sipping on wine like a queen and gettin a guy to come over and install your shower. What is that, like some faggy porno scene your trying to set up? God, is this what you marketing tools blog about nowadays? Sure, the SEO keywords method you speak of may be a valid subject and an interest to those who know what SEO is, but all the other little irrelevant details are Fucking sad.
Don’t let the door hit you on the way out. TYFYC.
Is that in-grown penis of yours bothering you again, @chrisqueen?
Well, well, LOOK! An anonymous troll who slags you off for a really nice post, and then is too assholistic to actually use his own name…YAY internet!
Seriously, GTFO you weird troll. Please ask your mum to remove the sand from your vagina before she lets you on the computer again…
What a doos! I suspect this oke’s face be a deep shade of green…..
Lol, what a dick :D Somebody’s having a bad Fri 13th :P
Nobody’s forcing you to read this blog @ChrisQueen.
gotta love trolls :P great tips and info @Chris M
Give us his/her email address used to register that comment and we can add it to some interesting places…
ChrisQueen has landed trying to upset the imod community and actually succeeding. His comment should’ve been removed coz he is causing uproars!
Some great SEO keyword research tips in this article.
@Wiehan – Ag nah, I won’t remove comments unless they touch on religion, racism or so forth. Uproars are fun, he indirectly got everyone talking about the greater good, so it backfired and that’s awesome. Cool re SEO, it’s a great little strat I use :)
Good point and you are a way better person than me coz I would’ve gotten personal and kinda loose it :-) I admire you for keeping the comment as is.
Definitely. You actually gave me some more direction into my keyword research attempts.
A great thing will be is if you can create an infographic of some sort of the entire SEO process that you will be executing during this venture with the well known brand. Will be superb to see how you go about doing SEO things. I learn from the masters you see ;-)
Keep up the good work and I think your short and to the point articles are really useful
I like Jesse’s way of thinking…..yeah!
That guy’s such a fool. Write what you want Chris. It’s your blog. Telling someone what they should write about on their own blog is like telling someone how to arrange the furniture in their own house. Some people seriously need to get a life!
Good Grief. Is this guy toasted?
It’s exactly the “personal” stuff mixed in with the professional stuff that makes imod.co.za one of my favourite blogs, because it has personality.
Keep doing what you do, Chris!
T
Awesome post! Agree with Jamaal, it’s your blog!
Hey @ChrisQueen, here is my care cup, it’s empty!
Hi Chris, what is this Queen on about didnt he/she “get it all this morning”, or is it just having a bad hair day? Hell I know nothing of SEO but so what, that doesnt give a person the right to talk tripe like this person has done. You just carry on mate, for those FRIENDS who appreciate what you do and say.
Thank you to all of you who left comments, your words are appreciated.
THE TROLL IS BACK: http://imod.co.za/index.php/2012/01/15/awesome-weekend-zapata-home-bar/#comment-45408