Geoffrey Mayne|March 20, 2008|14

Does anyone actually search for that keyword? Except you!

In my time doing SEO, I’ve come across many characters who believe they’ve got the basics of SEO down and one of the greatest advice these people hear is ANCHOR TEXT, put your link under anchor text to help you rank higher for those words in the search engines- that’s pretty basic info you think how could someone mess that up right? WRONG! Now I’ve had clients with keywords like handbags,shoes, purses and watches all in one link which begs the question- Does anyone actually search for that except you? Who in thier right mind goes to google and types in handbags, shoes,purses and watches and then heads over to the keyboard and presses ENTER- that’s right noone.

Basic lesson- This is a sentence- Handbags,purses, lipstick, bags,bentley, shoes and watches.
This is a keyword- Handbags or Gucci Handbags maybe even Brown Gucci Handbags you know words that actual living human beings search for not aliens.

Lesson of the day- Before you start link building please for your sake and mine do keyword research, find out what people are truly searching for before you waste 10,000 links with the anchor text,bags,shoes,purses,lipstick,hotdog,fries,bentley and watches.

Why is Keyword Research so important?
If your site is targeting the wrong keywords, your customers may never find you, resulting in lost income and meaningless rankings, How many people spend 2 months building great links for some words that noone actually searches for, they get to the top of the search engine and can’t understand why their traffic levels haven’t improved. With keyword tools so readily available, there should be no reason why anyone should be in competition crazy keywords but everyday people are fighting each other off to get to the top of some crazy keywords that only they would search for.

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About Geoffrey Mayne

Geoff is our main technical expert, but also dabbles in design and SEO from time to time. Out of work he's a tattoo enthusiast and enjoys frequent visits to the gym, as well as growing a very odd mustache
This entry was posted in Keywords, SEM Knowledge, SEO Knowledge and tagged , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.
  • http://www.kronikmedia.co.uk/web-design.jsp Web Design Company

    Well said. You will be surprised to see how many people get the keywords wrong to start with. Also I think to be realistis in their approach, website owners should really be looking into long tail keyword phrases. 3 word keyphrases are becoming a norm. The internet is exploding with information and thousands of new sites are indexed every week. We as users are also evolving our search techniques. Getting the kwyrods right from the start is the first stpe in a successfull search engine marketing campaign. Google’s keyword volume search tool now prvides us with exact search volumes now a days so that is a great tool to research keyword phrases.

  • http://chatropolis.com Michael Ludwick

    I’ve never been much of an SEO fan. I did pay 1500 dollars once to get the keyword chat in the top 10 for 1 day. The company was thrilled I was less than.

    After 15 years SEO for me is writing good content,providing great service and support and doing it consistently. With search engines changing algorithms almost weekly who would waste time figuring them out. Good content,service and support never go out of style. Google spiders me daily and that’s not because we did any trick.

    Spend1/2 the time you do SEO’ing writing something interesting or educationalist. Archive it and watch the search engines pay attention to you.

    Besides doing what we do better than anyone else we trade links. Tht’s the magic secret. While reading this page you could have been writing something funny,educational or newsworthy for your site.

    SEO is the snake oil of the 21st century. Google will put you where they want and you will have to live with it.

  • http://LearnThis.ca Mike King

    This is a great tip to look more at what a person really searches for that is more specific and less on the general term. I have seen this in keyword tracking from analytics as well as most of the biggest keywords with traffic are very specific to my site.

    Thanks for the tip!

  • http://uninstalltool.wetpaint.com/ Anonymous

    Keyword resource is key “sorry about the pun” but there is no point going after keywords that some much competition that it will take you 5 years to see any thing happen. It is better to have lots of little one that add up to that big number of traffic that you are after to your web site.

  • http://www.unlockiphonehelper.com/ Anonymous

    Great points here you MUST make sure that people are searching for your keywords, other wise you will be doing a lot of work for nothing ,

  • http://www.randomreferral.com Penfold

    The problem I’ve had with researching keywords is how reliable is Google’s keyword tool?

    For one particular phrase I was researching, the Google keyword tool was showing nearly 10,000 searches per month on average and a similar amount in the last month. Then when I came to check this with other keyword tools they showed almost zero searches, which was a more believable result.

  • http://www.amongchina.com.cn/blog Anonymous

    really right,we must do keywords study first,although some clients would not agree with our opinion.we are the professional concultant.just do it!

  • http://www.demtron.com Anonymous

    Choosing good keywords is just as much about long tail searches as short-tail searches. We have had far more targeted traffic and conversions from local search, long-tail phrases, and brand-specific searches. The majority of 1- and 2-word phrases are just not worth going after.

  • http://webtoolsandtips.com Guest

    I appreciate the concept.
    But it is also true that if you are able to get good backlinks for “handbags”, then you will haave fair chances to rank for keywords like “leather handbags” or even “gucci leather handbags”.

  • http://www.webhosting-deals.com/ Guest

    Well said… congrats on that…. I have also came across many of those keywords…

  • fuadi

    yes, i agree with you. Keyword is very important and if we have unique article and good keyword that’s great

  • http://www.shoredutton.co.uk Daniel

    In my opinion good keyword research is the mos important part of SEO.

    Not too long ago, I had a client who insisted that they wanted to be on he first page of google for the keywords ‘ ‘. No matter how much I tried to explain that no-one searches for it, they were adamant.

    Fortunately, it was very easy to do because there was obviously no competition – in fact they are in the number one position for the name of their village – I actually cut my fee because it felt like I was robbing them!

    Three months down the line, even though I’ve shown them they’ve had no hits for the keywords, they are still delighted with the work I did for them!

  • http://www.shoredutton.co.uk Daniel

    The keywords in my previous post should read “their product” “their village” – I put them i angle brackets so I guess the HTML filter cut them out.

  • http://www.ukleisureclothing.co.uk

    I wonder how many out there realise that leather isn’t just from a cow. Many animals from sheep, goat and pig have their skins produced into leather bags and other clothing too! We adour leather bags.