1.
Basics of Keyword
Selection for Better
SEO Results
Presented by Chrissanne Long and Craig Hosking
Marketing System Blueprints

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1.
• Time constrained searchers: Tuxedo rental, Valentine flowers,
money sending or payday advances. Target keywords like
“Next day loans”. This searcher is much more highly targeted
& exponentially more likely to buy.

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2.
• Keyword Suggest is your friend: Do not over-concentrate on
one phrase. Mix it up with variations like “websites” & “sites”
or “Las Vegas Show” & “Shows in Vegas”. This will keep
search engines from filtering out your over-optimized page
and also open up some new search queries in the variations
you have used. Specify your URL in the “website content” tab
in Google keyword tool to discover new variations from within
your site.

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• Target profitable customers: using keyword phrases like
“discount shirts” may drive more traffic, but if you cannot
compete with low prices at large companies, these are not the
visitors you want. Targeting phrases like “custom shirts” or
“premium shirts” will attract better visitors and convert on
higher margin items. Think of all the people who only buy
organic food. Finding out what your best customers covet is
essential. By catering to special needs, customers are more
willing to pay a premium.

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• Think outside your site: You meta data and content are
important places for your keywords, but the incoming links
and words websites use in your link are just as important.
Make a concerted effort to have sites linking into yours use
your targeted keyword phrases in the link text.

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• Avoid too much of a good thing: Do not make the mistake of
using the same keyword phrase or anchor text description for
your website in all of your incoming links. Mix it up with
different variation of your keywords so it feels more natural to
search engines.

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• Don’t forget the S: In most business scenarios, plurals will
reach more searchers than singular versions. Many more
people search for “Orlando condos” than “Orlando condo”
right? Try to use both versions, but when it doubt, add the s.

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7.
• Repurpose good material: If you have an article or particular
blog post that ranks well for a certain term, try changing the
title to attract more links or ranking for an additional phrase.
You may be able to make slight changes every other month to
improve rankings for ancillary keywords based on your past
success. No need to reinvent the wheel right?

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• Become a writer: Without enough quality, link worthy
content, it is extremely hard to build a successful site with
high rankings. Try writing industry or product related articles
as often as possible for link bait. Topics could be as simple as
industry news or top 10 lists. People love to link to interesting
industry info.

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9.
• Data mining is your friend: From my past work with one of
the world’s largest producers of data mining software, I cannot
stress enough the need to uncover new keywords from past
visitors. A tool like Google Analytics will tell you what visitors
typed into it to find you. Set a regular time up at least once a
month to mine this data for phrases you may not have
thought of.

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• Use Internal Linking: Most brick and mortar stores know to
keep the most popular items in front, and the low margin
clearance items in the back. Your website is very similar. Use
internal site links to push visitors to your most popular (or
most profitable) products. A site wide link to “Featured
Items” is a great idea.

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• BOGO listings: Use a highly ranking page to link to another
page on that keyword/topic. This may be able to get that 2nd
page ranked for the search term as well. 2 of the 10 listings on
the results page will greatly improve your chances of a click
through vs. your competitors.

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• Put time on your side, plan ahead: If you have a seasonal
product, like jewelry sales, you need to launch your
Valentine’s specific pages aggressively months in advance. It is
going to take time to build up your rankings for those terms,
so it may take several months of work to be in peak position at
the right time ahead of your competitors.

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13.
• Check the News: Look for the hottest stories on your topics
for opportunities to create material on the same subject
matter. You can easily check and track what topics are creating
the most buzz. Check Yahoo! Buzz, Google Trends, and for
retailers check Google Checkout Trends, eBay Pulse or Amazon
top movers. Piggybacking a trend can generate tons of traffic.

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• Let your visitors comment: By allowing customer feedback, or
blog comments, your visitors are actually creating free content
for you. They may also use some keyword combinations you
did not think of, and help bring more long tail search queries
to your site. They may also spell words wrong, which for your
core content is not professional, but for searchers who
misspell words this could help you rank highly for them.

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• Q & A: Searchers often type question queries, so including
words like how, why, what and when to your content can help
you rank for these searches. You also want to have well
defined answers to the main questions your industry visitors
have. This will make you the hub of information and create
great link bait for the millions of online forums discussing
topics.

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• Compare & Review Products: Do you have a large competitor
or a lot of products in your industry that people search for by
product name? How can you rank highly for these product
names or even your competitor’s name? How about creating
detailed product comparisons? This allows you to use their
searchable brand names and product information while
promoting your product’s superior features. You can also
write content on why something doesn’t work to be ranked
for that term (i.e. a search for “Rank #1 for any keyword” is
still looking for SEO services right?). You could also get traffic
from pages with discontinued products, and suggest new
models or comparable products you have in stock.

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• The searcher is in the details: If you are going to sell products
online, you must be sure to list very detailed product
information. Someone searching for a book could search by
the author, title, book topic or ISBN #. Someone searching for
a TV remote could search by the brand, model # or
functionality. Even relevant or comparable product #’s could
help.

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• Content type as keywords: Some searchers are adding their
content type to their queries. For example, optimizing for
“Internet Marketing PDF” or “Internet Marketing wiki” could
rank highly by adding the type of content searched for. Adding
blog, video, or white paper to your keywords could uncover
some hidden traffic.

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19.
• Mine PPC data: If you do paid placement like Google
Adwords, you can allow Google to place your ads on their
AdSense content network and see which sites convert best.
These are the sites you want to content directly to advertise
with & acquire links.

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20.
• Overlapping multiple keyword phrases: If you are a mortgage
broker new to the industry, we are not going to compete for
“mortgage rate”. However, by focusing on “best mortgage
rate deals”, we are targeting “best mortgage rate”, “mortgage
rate deals” and at the same time building age and authority
toward our long-term goal of “mortgage rate”. This is all
happening within 1 term by overlapping several phrases and
making sure it still reads naturally.

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• Use your internal search data: If you do not already have an
Search the site box on your website, install one immediately.
This will enable you to add products/services visitors are
looking for and also uncover additional keywords phrases to
add to your content.

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• Give them something to talk about: By creating content
around a controversial topic, a common frustration in your
industry, or even humorous material, you can create great link
bait and also a ton of user generated content (i.e. blog
comments or product reviews).

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23.
• Keep keyword density in mind: When you are writing your
keyword phrases, be sure to put the keywords next to each
other in sequence, especially in your title tags. Having filler
words like in or and between your keywords can be the
difference between you or your competitor getting the top
ranking.

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• Create online Q & A Forums: Whether it is through your blog,
an FAQ page or a newsgroup, you should answer your
customer’s questions online. This can help in several ways
like: creating keyword rich content, helping to have content
matching long tail search queries, answering future visitors
similar questions. I recommend answering questions from
emails, surveys and even phone calls online.

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• Know your audience: If you have an international business, or
even attract clients from the UK or Canada, you have to make
exceptions for differences in keywords. For example, a real
estate page renting apartments and condos to UK users would
refer to lofts or flats. For multi-lingual sites, use a real
translator, and not translation tools for your keywords.

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• Campaign synergy: Many large companies have different
budgets and teams for print, tv and Internet ads. The
opportunity is that if these teams work together, the sum of
all their work is greater (much greater!) than the individual
parts. For example, many people will get your postcard flyer
or watch your commercial for solar heating. They will then
research these topics and long tail keyword variations online.
If you did not launch your accompanying keyword campaign
already and achieve rankings for these keyword variations,
you could be paying to drive traffic to your more Internet
savvy competitors.

28.
Conclusion
• SEO is more than just what YOU think your customers are
looking for, your job is to try to get into the head of the people
looking for solutions to their problems that you can help solve.
The available information on the web, provided by Google,
Yahoo and Bing can give you some excellent insight to exactly
that. The behavior of the prospective customer can be
accurately predict if the research is done well.
• Reference:
Wall, Aaron (2008). 50 Kick-ass Keyword Strategies. Retrieved
January 15, 2009, from the Wordtracker website:
http://www.wordtracker.com