SEO - Views, Tips & Rants

Another of our question from Matt Cutts Grabbag series has been created in a video and uploaded today to its official channel. Enjoy!!

We hope we are adding value to your search knowledge.

Hi, this is a special post today, although late but I wanted to do this since a long time. In December 2009 again Matt Cutts (Head of Google's Webspam Team) invited questions for Grab Bag, as usual we submitted our question which was also the 3rd most liked question in the community. For the benefit of our users we are posting the video created by Matt here.

If you have questions, post them here and we will answer them.

I normally do not recommend buy any software, because the search engines provide very good information/tools for keyword research.

Here is what I do:
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a) Make a list of all the keywords you believe your prospective customers might use to find websites related to your business.
b) After step a you might want to also ask your staff members, existing customers etc to look for words that you might have missed.

Before I explain the steps let me give you an idea on the tools(free) that you can use for keyword research & analysis:
1) Google Insights for Search http://www.google.com/insights/search (Free)
2) Google Adwords External Keyword Research Tool http://adwords.google.com (Free)
3) Google Suggest Tool http://www.google.com (Drop down list that appears when you are typing the keywords in the search box) Free
4) Yahoo Suggest Tool http://www.yahoo.com (Drop down list that appears when you are typing the keywords in the search box) Free
5) Bing Suggest Tool http://www.bing.com (Drop down list that appears when you are typing the keywords in the search box) Free
6) Ask.com Suggest Tool http://www.ask.com (Drop down list that appears when you are typing the keywords in the search box) Free
7) Google Webmaster Central http://www.google.com/webmasters (If your website has this already implemented, do not worry if you haven’t) Free
8) Google Analytics http://analytics.google.com (If your website has this already implemented, do not worry if you haven’t) Free
9) Yahoo SiteExplorer http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com (If your website has this already implemented, do not worry if you haven’t) Free

Keyword Analysis Process:
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Step 1) Prepare an Excel file and put the primary keywords, that you want to target column-wise in such a way that each keyword has its own column. Alternatively if you do not want to have a lot of columns you can also create a file for each keyword.
Step 2) Taking 1 keyword at a time; put that keyword in all the tools described above. You will get a list of keywords, take all the keywords that you get from the tools and put it into that keyword column. (Do not worry about duplicates and unrelated keywords at the moment)
Step 3) Repeat this for all the keywords that you have in columns.
Step 4) Taking 1 Keyword Column/File at a time, start removing all the keywords that you believe are not directly related to the page you are targeting
Step 5) Once you are done, sort the list alphabetically and remove all the duplicates now
Step 6) You might want to have a look at the list again, just to make sure that no unrelated keyword is left
Step 7) This is your final list of new keywords, you can then repeat the steps described above for all the keywords/files that you have.

In my experience you will not be left with anything more than 30-40 varieties per keyword/page.

I hope this info helps.

Just finished writing an article, on what to expect out of a SEO Career. Read the entire article at Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - Career Option?

Please note that today's post is really meant for existing SEO's and Business Owners.

Keyword Research? Lots of companies are offering tools for a fixed subscription cost and they provide you with a list of related keywords for your primary term. My question is, do you really need to subscribe to such a service so that you can get hold of the right terms.

Search engines particularly Google have been doing a fairly good job in providing the webmasters with keyword research tools mostly free, so that they can get the right terms.

• Google Insights for Search
• Google Adwords External Keyword Research Tool
• Microsoft adCenter Keyword Research Tool $$
• Google Suggest
• Yahoo Search Assist
• Bing Search Suggestions
• Ask.com Search Suggestions

If you use these tools properly, you will not have to subscribe to any paid service provider and will save a lot of money, some of which you can pass on to your customer!!