DLearn SEO Keyword Research in 2018 – [with video]

by Tyler Rice

Created Sept. 03, 2018

Keyword Research is the foundation to any custom SEO strategy.

Having a solid keyword list will allow you to rank for the correct phrases to bring in higher converting customers.

Remember, search engine optimization is more than simply bringing in more traffic to a website. It is about bringing in the right customers that are more likely to result in a sale.

Think of keywords as a GPS.

They allow you to understand where you start and tell you where to go. Therefore, ranking for the correct keywords can make or break a website.

Take this example.

If you are a company selling custom guitars, chances are your site is not going to rank high for the term “guitar”.

This is because there is too much competition and high authority sites are already ranking for this general term. Even if you were ranked high for the term “guitar”, what percentage of those customers would lead to a sale?

Now if you were to rank for the phrase “custom mahogany acoustic guitar”, that would be a much more specific term and could be a consumer that might have interest in your product. While this specific phrase is going to draw less traffic than a broader term, it will be this traffic that is more likely to convert and lead to a sale. It is more focused and relevant to the services offered by the business.

This search query is a more concrete term and is known as a long-tail keyword. The phrase “long-tail” can be understood by a simple distribution graph. While search terms such as Facebook, Wikipedia, or CNN might include a large number of searches, these broad keywords only account for 10 to 15 percent of all searches made worldwide.

The remaining 75-80% of searches fall into the long-tail of keyword searches. These long-tail keywords are the three to five keyword phrases that are very specific to what the user is trying to find.

When a user is searching with these many words, it is likely they know exactly what they are looking for or at the very least, they are in the middle of the sales funnel. Let’s look back at the searcher buying cycle to help illustrate this. With this term, a user may not even be in the awareness stage of the sales funnel.

Once again, the awareness stage is when a searcher is seeking information about a solution to their needs or becomes aware of a problem to solve. So, does the term, “guitar” even have a place in the buying cycle for our custom guitar business?

Think of all the possible reasons a person might type the term “guitar” into a search engine.

It could be someone wanting to learn history of guitars. Perhaps it is a user simply looking to surf the web for guitar players. Or maybe, it could be me looking for a commercial use photo of a guitar for this article.

There is no way of knowing any sort of motive behind this broad term.

When searching the web, users have common patterns that lead them to a purchase. Let’s look at this in detail. First, the user becomes aware of your product. This step could also be a user becoming conscious of a need that they were previously unaware of. Next is the research phase. The user seeks information about the product or searches on how to fulfill their newly acquired need. Then, the consumer enters the comparison stage.

At this point, the user is seeking alternatives to a product or service. During this stage, a searcher could be comparing reviews, features, pricing, or any other factors that could influence their purchase decision.

Finally, the consumer enters the purchase stage. They found the correct solution and are ready to pull out their credit card to complete the transaction. Now, let’s look at this process with a consumer buying a laptop computer. First, the consumer looks up laptops for sale and realizes they need a computer powerful enough to run their work applications including Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.

Next, with having a clear idea of what specifications they need for their new laptop, they search for additional information on the Dell Inspiron FHD Laptop.

Then, after learning all about the Dell laptop, the searcher compares other computers with the same specifications. The customer makes sure to consider the highest rated reviews and the price of each comparable laptop.

Finally, after hours of researching and comparing products, the user purchases a ProStar laptop due to the high reviews and affordable price.

While this is the standard process of how a user searches for products online, keep in mind that a user can leave the buying cycle at any point. Perhaps the searcher realized that they needed a larger hard drive for their laptop after reading reviews during the comparison stage.

That could set them back to the awareness stage now that they are aware of new needs. Or maybe, during the comparison stage, the searcher realizes that they cannot afford a computer to support their current needs at this time. A customer can also enter the buying cycle at any point. Maybe they are already aware of what they need and are ready to research the product online.

Or perhaps after comparing products in an electronics store, they go online to purchase the product at the lower cost.

Take note of how each of these searches in the buying cycle become more and more specific as they continue down the funnel. Therefore, targeting long-tail keywords is crucial to business success.

When you target relevant long-tail keywords that are specific to your business then you are targeting the consumers that are most likely to lead to a sale. These are the customers we want to optimize our content for.

Now, if you were working for a rafting adventure company in Buena Vista, Colorado, you wouldn’t want to try and rank for the term “whitewater rafting” as there would be too much competition and you would spend an arm and a leg trying to rank for that term. Instead, you could optimize webpages for long-tail keyword terms such as, “Buena Vista Whitewater Rafting” or perhaps, “Adventure Trips on the Arkansas River”.

The same goes for other places that use many local search terms. If your company was in Durango, Colorado, you might try to aim for a term like “whitewater rafting in Durango“.

It is phrases like this that will bring in your high converting customers and it will be much easier to help rank for these terms that have the least competition. Now that we have a clear understanding of targeting long-tail keywords, let’s look at how to begin the keyword research process.

There are numerous tools available on the internet to aid in keyword research. Feel free to explore the web and find the best tools that work for you. While there are many advanced keyword research programs that you can pay for, there are also a handful of free tools that are excellent for beginning your SEO work.

Throughout this course, we will use some of our favorite free and paid tools for keyword research. First, let’s look at the free keyword planner from Google using our whitewater rafting example. Navigate to the Google keyword planner tool by simply typing in the term into the Google search engine. After signing into a google account, you will arrive at the beginning screen.

Here, you can add a keyword phrase and gain hundreds or thousands of ideas that are similar along with search volume data and how competitive the phrase is.

There are many filters you can use to customize your search. There are also options to target the search data based on location, language, and negative keywords. Adding a negative keyword will omit that term from the results.

For example, if you were searching for similar terms to “adventure trip in Buena Vista” you might want to omit the keyword “Climbing” if you do not offer any climbing services. Let’s begin by adding the term, “white water rafting Arkansas river Colorado”.

Since our targeting can include tourists from around the world, we keep the targeting to “All locations”. After clicking on “Get Ideas” we enter the main area for the keyword planning tool. At the top of the results, we can see the monthly trend in phrases related to our search term. With whitewater rafting, it is no surprise that the trends peak during the summer. Moving forward, we see the average monthly searches for our specified term. Our term, “White water rafting arkansas river Colorado” shows an average monthly search volume of 320 with a low competition value. Like mentioned previously, the more specific the long-tail keywords are, the lower the competition.

This means that it will be much easier to rank for these terms than a more general term with high competition. Now, let’s find the long-tail keywords that are relevant to the whitewater rafting business and add them to our list of keywords.

You can easily do this by clicking on the “Add to Plan” button to the right of each suggested keyword.

Keep in mind that some of these phrases will be more relevant to your business and you can list them by importance once you are organizing your list of keywords. We can add terms such as “Best rafting in Colorado” to our list but it would be wise to place importance on the more specific phrases including, “Buena Vista Rafting” or “Browns Canyon rafting” since browns canyon is the most popular rafting section in Buena Vista, Colorado.

While we will be using the suggested keywords from our first term, it is important to use various terms and refreshing the page to come up with other ideas. For example, by typing in the term “Buena vista adventure” into the main search term area and clicking “Get Ideas” you can find the term “Buena Vista combo tours” which you might not have thought of with just the single phrase.

Keep in mind that you can have hundreds to thousands of terms for your keyword research list depending on the size of the business. Once you have your relevant keywords, you can download the plan directly from the keyword planner screen.

This can be exported to an Excel file, copied to your clipboard, or uploaded to google drive. This free tool is an excellent start to any keyword research plan, but it is good practice to use multiple tools and other people to help build this list.

Not only will this help you gather many ideas, but each program has different methods for obtaining search volume data. Let’s look at a tool offered by MOZ.

With a free account, you can search up to 20 terms a month or you can upgrade to a paid account which allows you to search up to a thousand queries a month.

Once you navigate to the Keyword Explorer tool, enter your search term in the keywords box.

Once you click search, the results will show in seconds and will include relevant keyword suggestions along with monthly volume in seconds. This tool gives up much more relevant terms than the Google keyword planner due to the algorithmic sorting by relevancy.

Like the previous tool, you can export this list of keywords into an excel or other spreadsheet style software. Another great and often overlooked tool is simply using Google!

In a previous section, we discussed the elements that make up the Google search engine and the query refinement suggestions at the bottom of the results.

As mentioned before, this area shows searches related to the current term that you are using. With the advanced technology that is used to come up with these suggestions, this area might include some of the best phrases relevant to your keyword.

Let’s look at this by using the example phrase, “Buena Vista rafting”. When looking at the query refinement suggestions, we see some excellent keyword matches relevant to the term we used. With using just three keyword research tools, we were able to come up with an extensive list of terms to use for the rafting company in your SEO strategy.

Awesome! Let’s see how we can compile these keywords into a spreadsheet to organize our terms.

Keep in mind that this example is a method that we like to use when organizing our keyword list but feel free to compile your list of terms however suits you best.

For our Buena Vista Rafting company, we have compiled a list of 112 keywords. Included in this data from the Google keyword planner is the average monthly searches and the competition value.

Remember, the lower the competition value, the easier it will be to rank high on search engines for that term. With our list, we decide to manually include a rank of importance on a three-point scale with one being the most important, and three being the least important.

Notice that our rank of importance is based upon how specific the search term is for our business. So, now that we have created a solid list of keywords for our SEO strategy, what’s next? Well, from here we can try to group similar keywords together to rank for certain pages listed on a website. Rather than try to rank for as many terms as you can to one page, you can strategically group keywords to rank for certain pages.

For example, let’s look at the common rafting sections that include “Browns Canyon”, “The Numbers”, or “Arkansas River”. We could group all the terms that include the keyword, “Browns Canyon” and use those terms for a page that is focused on rafting that section of the river.

So, we include all those terms to the Browns Canyon Rafting page. We can include the same for terms that include “The Numbers” or “Arkansas River”. Now, let’s use the leftover terms that include the keywords, “Buena Vista”, “Whitewater”, and “Rafting” and use those terms for our homepage.

Since we have added our keywords to four different pages on the website, let’s use the sort function to group them together.

This gives us a clear idea of which keywords to add to each specific page to the website. Now that we have an understanding of the keyword research process, let’s dive into the world of on-page search engine optimization. Let’s go through the steps to come up with an extensive list of keywords for any business.

First, grab a cup of coffee, find a quiet place to think, and begin to brainstorm. During this brainstorming process, feel free to bring in other external sources to help bring keywords to the list. This could be from a business owner, employee, potential or previous customers.

Page Speed & SEO for Local Small Business

by Tyler Rice

Created May 19, 2018

When talking about page speed, we are talking about the time that it takes to load a webpage, also known as “page load time”. Google has indicated that page speed IS in fact a ranking factor for search engine results.

Not only does a slow loading time for your pages make for a poor user-experience, but it can also affect the amount of time search engine spiders can crawl through and index your site.

So, what are some of the ways that we can improve upon page loading speed? Before we dive into these areas, let’s look at two important tools for evaluating page speed.

The first is a tool offered by Google, called “PageSpeed Insights”. This tool will show you the evaluated speed and technical optimization on a score of 1 – 100.

Following the evaluated score, there are some statistics about the speed of the page followed by some suggestions for optimization and the techniques that are already present on the page.

Let’s look at another popular page speed tool located at tools.pingdom.com.

After entering a website into the tool, we see an overall summary of the performance of the website. Following the summary, we can see an extensive list of performance indicators with grades and suggestions for each section.

Both tools provide an excellent way to keep track of the progress when making changes to improve website loading speed. You don’t have to be limited to just these two speed tools. There are also many alternative page speed tools that can be used.

When working on page speed optimization, it is common to frequently update and record each test to see which methods improve the speed of the site.

Now that we have covered two excellent tools for page speed, let’s go over some of the recommendations.

First, let’s cover how to optimize a site for redirect chains.

A redirect chain is when there are multiple 301 redirects between the initial URL and the destination URL.

This is usually seen in two common instances which are from third-party applications such as advertising platforms and when a site is redirecting from having an HTTPS or WWW in front of the domain name. These instances can cause site-wide redirect issues that might not have been obvious without a page speed tool.

For example, if the website redirects are not set up properly, a user might click on the website through a link that has the H-T-T-P protocol and the W-W-W before the web address. This could then direct a user to an address with the H-T-T-P-S protocol with the W-W-W before the site which then redirects to the H-T-T-P-S protocol without the WWW in front of the site.

The correct redirect would simply be to cut out the middleman of the chain so the HTTP protocol with WWW could redirect to the HTTPS version without the WWW.

So, how does this affect SEO? Well for starters, you can imagine that it takes slightly longer to pass through two redirects rather than one. Also, if you have a link to your website that must pass through multiple redirects, some of that linking power might be lost in the process.

On top of that, a Google bot might have difficulty crawling through a link if it encounters too many redirects and may give up crawling before it ends up at the final destination.

How these redirects are addressed and fixed can be done with multiple methods depending on the website platform being used. This is a process that might be better left to the web developer of a site or can be achieved using plugins on a platform such as WordPress.

Now that we have covered redirects, let’s look at compression and how to leverage it for page speed.

As covered previously, compressing images in a crucial part of an SEO strategy and should be done in a photo editing software before they are uploaded to a website. But beyond image compression, you can apply methods to compress the files on a website to reduce the size of the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files.

This can be done with the software application “Gzip”, or with other various plugins to simplify the process. Just keep in mind when using certain plugins for technical SEO, it is good practice to update the speed tests to see if one method helped more with page speed versus another method.

In the same realm as file compression, it is good practice to minify the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code.

Optimizing the code could include removing unnecessary spaces and commas or could include removing code comments and code that is no longer being used on the site. With many of the insights offered by Google, they have a list of resources that you could research to help you with optimizing these areas and we recommend checking them out when working on the technical SEO of a site. Feel free to follow the link below to find more information on these resources.

Next, let’s look at browser caching.

The browser cache is a location on your computer that temporarily stores files downloaded by your browser to quickly display websites. Since computers are saving many files on the web right from the browser, webpages can load up much more quickly by having these files already saved from a previous visit.

Setting a specific time for how long you want the information to be cached can help improve sitewide loading times for users. Unless a website changes design on a frequent basis, this expiry date can be set up to 6 months or even a year.

Next, we cover Render-Blocking JavaScript.

Render-blocking JavaScript is when the HTML of a site references a blocking external Javascript file in the <header> section of the website before the main content begins. This means that the browser must pass through these JavaScript files before they can move on to downloading and displaying the main content.

While working with JavaScript would be more along the lines of work for a web developer, it is something that should be kept in mind when trying to find the best methods for making a page optimized for loading speed.

Finally, another good consideration for page speed is the server response time.

When a user visits a website from a browser on their computer, that browser is sending a request to the web server that the site is located at. The amount of time it takes the web server to respond to the request is the server response time.

As recommended by Google, you should reduce your server response time under 200 milliseconds.

So, how would you go about improving the server response times?

Depending on your hosting provider, you could pay more money to improve the quality of your server.

Usually, the first economical choice when choosing a hosting provider for a website is to choose a shared hosting package.

But depending on the amount of resources a page uses and the traffic that it receives, a site could be found to have low server response times and needs to be upgraded.

To upgrade from a shared hosting account would be accept a package that offers a VPS (also known as a virtual private server) or a dedicated server (which is your own machine for hosting).

If you are not ready to pay and upgrade for the increased quality of hosting, there are other ways you could optimized the server response time.

The other factors that can affect server response time include the amount of traffic a website receives, the resources that are being used by the site, and the web server software.

Upgrading your server hosting might be the best option to accommodate increased website traffic. A server can only properly serve a certain amount of people until needing to upgrade the capacity of the account. If your website has been slowed down by a large number of traffic each day, then it might be time to switch to a VPS or dedicated server.

The server response time can also be affected by the usage of resources on each page of the site. A page might be calling upon multiple CSS and JavaScript files to display correctly. So, how could you reduce the resources that a page uses?

First, you could combine external CSS files. Many times, with website builders, there will be multiple CSS files that are used to stylize a website. A website only needs one CSS files so combining all the CSS files into one location can improve the server loading time. While a bit more technical, the same can be done with JavaScript files to reduce the external resources to one file.

Another option would be to defer images. Deferred images are downloaded after the initial page load. This would be a viable solution for images that are located further down a page, so they can be downloaded after the uses arrives at the site.

This can be done through a process called “lazy-loading” or through your own JavaScript code. The “lazy-loading” technique can be done with various plug-ins available for popular website builders like Word Press.

There are also other techniques that can be used to decrease the page loading speed but the techniques we covered will prove to make the largest difference.

Now that we have gone over page speed, let’s look at proper techniques that go into optimizing or avoiding duplicate content.

Searcher Intent – Search Engine Keywords & Phrases

by Tyler Rice

Date Created | July 7, 2018

There are Three Basic Queries Made by Search Engine Users

The basic goal of a human using a search engine is to find relevant information with a specific set of keywords or phrases.

These phrases are then entered as a search query into a search engine such as Google or Bing.

Some people search in the form of a question but most searchers use simple phrases and word combinations. This leaves the search engine to figure out the intent of the searcher.

Understand Your Audience

When creating an SEO strategy, it is crucial to understand not only your target audience but to understand the psychology behind their search queries.

Therefore, it is important to know how they use keywords and phrases to formulate their thoughts.

An effective SEO strategist will know how their target audience uses the search functions to find their business.

As a result, a strategist will apply multiple techniques to cover the keywords and phrases they use.

There are three types of queries used when it comes to searcher intent:

• Navigational queries
• Transactional queries
• Informational queries

Navigational Queries

Navigational queries are when a searcher has the intent on arriving at a specific website.

This could be due to the fact that the user does not know the exact URL of the website, or just finds it easier to type it directly into the search engine.

Therefore, the average traffic value of these searches is high since they lead to the great conversion rates.

Although, many of the searchers are already aware of the brand and a large percentage of these users do not represent new customers for a business.

Consequently, these queries offer an opportunity for another brand to steal customers away from the brand being searched for but the conversion rates of these opportunities are low.

Informational Queries

Informational Queries include the largest range of searches made with over 80% of all searches.

These searches are mainly non-transactional but can include the research a user makes when deciding on a transaction.

Of course, the searches could be anything from searching the weather, first-aid treatment, researching a historical moment, training a puppy, and much more.

The possibilities are really endless when it comes to informational queries and can include just about anything on a user’s mind.

While the searcher may not be ready to make a purchase on an informational query, the value of having the users sent to your website for valuable information can lead to conversions at a later date.

Therefore, having your brand show up with the information they are looking for provides great value when they are ready to make the final purchase.

Transactional Queries

Transactional Queries not only include a user ready to make a payment for a product or service, but they include transactions such as signing up for a free trial on Netflix, creating an Instagram account, or finding the best local Greek restaurant.

Ultimately, while these transactions make up a small portion of all searches, the value of them are extremely high since they lead to a final sale.

Searches by Query Length

When any search is being made, it is important to understand how the user is using phrases and how many keywords they use when searching for a particular business.

The graph listed below shows a number of words used on average for any given search query.

Also, this graph shows us that most of the searches are made with the least amount of words possible, meaning as SEO strategists, we need to make sure that the right pages show up with the least amount of effort made by a user.

Average Search Made by a User

Now, think about how the average user searches on a certain decision such as buying a new guitar.

The user could start by searching the phrase, “new acoustic guitar” to find that there are endless options and styles to choose from.

The user could then search for, “types of acoustic guitars” to find out which styles they have to choose from and which one they like the best. Then, the user then decides to search for, “Dreadnought guitars for sale”.

After seeing the different brands, the user decides that they want a Breedlove guitar and searches, “Discount Breedlove Guitar” to find a more narrow list of guitars to choose from among various sites.

So, within an hours time, this user went through 4 different searches to finally arrive at the destination they were looking for from the beginning.

This kind of searcher behavior is common and needs to be taken into account when trying to optimize a website for specific keywords.

Remember, knowing your target audience and how they search is a basic necessity when working on search engine optimization efforts.

Learn how to effectively target your target audiences with our free detailed customer segment worksheet below.

SEO Title Tags – Best Practices for your Business

by Tyler Rice

Last updated July 1, 2017

Great title tags are crucial to high ranks in search engines.

Last week, we discussed the first step in implementing search engine optimization for your website.

If you haven’t had a chance to check out the first blog in this series, I would recommend checking it out!

Once you have built a comprehensive list of keyword phrases, it is now time to put those keywords into each title tag of your web pages.

Plugging Keywords into your Website Titles

Each one of your web pages will have a title tag located inside the head tag of your HTML code. This will be the title of the web page that shows up in search engines and at the top of a browser tab.

What is the best way to optimize my title tags?

There are some important tips to keep in mind when creating each title tag.

1.Place your important keywords in the title

Place the most relevant keywords to your business at the beginning of the title for the best optimization. Then consider using the next best keyword phrases to follow.

2. Keep the title short

Google search engine will not show more than the first 60 characters of a title.

If you keep your title below this limit, then you can make sure that your whole title gets displayed correctly. Keep in mind when creating the title to use characters such as “:” or “|” to separate keyword phrases as many other characters are not supported in the title tag.

3. Don’t Overdo it

If you stuff your title with the same keywords, Google can recognize this and dock you in the search engine results. Keep it relevant and pleasing to a user experience.

4. Don’t Duplicate Titles

You want to make sure that each title of your web pages has a unique title to them.

This will help with your click-through rates for each page and will spread your results out on the long-tail of keyword searches.

Refrain from using titles such as “Home” or “About” since Google will see this as possibly having duplicate content on your website.

5. Make sure it looks nice!

Make sure that your title looks good to any potential visitors to your site. No matter how you optimize your title tags, if it is not relevant to a user, then they will not even click your link!

Remember that Google is built for showing the most relevant pages

Always keep in mind that a search engine such as Google strives to bring the best web pages for each search.

If Google feels that your web page is too keyword heavy and not good enough content for a great user experience, then it will dock your site from the top of the search rankings.

Next week, we will dive into the next step of simple SEO which will be discussing meta descriptions and content marketing. We will dive into plugging your keywords into awesome content to not only provide a great user experience but to also rank higher in search engines.

SEO Keywords – Why Keyword Research is Important

by Tyler Rice

Last updated July 1, 2017

Search Engine Optimization does not have to be rocket science…

With some simple steps and research, you can find yourself one step ahead of other businesses in your industry with a competitive edge on knowing your audience.

For example, say you owned a live music venue with having three music venues in town.

Although there are many methods in finding the correct terms and phrases for your target audience, wouldn’t you want to find the best way to market to your customers with a passion for music to drive them to your venue over others?

A simple term such as “live music in Austin” could resonate and be more applicable to your customers than the term “local venues within city limits”.

The same is true with other businesses. You should use the appropriate keywords that align with your products and services, such as roofer keywords if you have a roofing business.  You may also use dentist keywords to promote your dental services. In this way, online users can easily find and click your web pages to find the answers relevant to their queries.

When you have the proper tools and knowledge to drive down to the root of your target market’s searches, then you can find the best way to send the correct message to keep them interested in your business.

Keyword Research

There are many easy and fairly reliable keyword research tools on the internet to provide you with a great foundation of phrases.

If you are looking for a free option, you can use the keyword planner from Google.

https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner

Now Google wants you to sign up for a “paid” advertising campaign with them before using the Keyword Planner tool and will send you to that landing page.

All you have to do to bypass this is to set-up an ad campaign without spending any money on it and putting it on pause.

Once you access the Keyword Planner tool, you will be able to target by location, language, and by a search engine.

You also have the option of adding negative keywords. If you add to the negative keywords, the search inquiry will eliminate any search with that keyword in it.

This tool is an excellent way to get started with great keyword ideas and the competition level behind them.

There are endless amounts of Keyword Planning Tools

I personally like to use the application provided by https://app.wordtracker.com/ which is a paid service. Which tools you decide can be determined by how in-depth you want to build your keyword research but do not in any way feel you are obligated to spend tons of money on a paid service.

I find it quite convenient due to the work I do for clients with SEO on a daily basis with Animas Marketing digital services but that is not the case for most small businesses looking to work SEO themselves.

Which tools you decide on can be determined by how in-depth you want to build your keyword research but do not in any way feel you are obligated to spend tons of money on a paid service.

I find it quite convenient due to the work I do for clients with SEO on a daily basis with Animas Marketing but that is not the case for most small businesses looking to work SEO themselves.

Once again, take note to not only how important and searched a topic is, but also the competition behind any search phrase used.

Once you have a list of all relevant words and phrases you can think of, brainstorm any type of “helper keywords” to go along with them. These words could be related to the location, names, or any other keywords that can be tied to your business specifically.

It is recommended that once you come up with the relevant keywords to your business, bring the list to your team to have them come up with any possible keywords.

After brainstorming with your internal business team, take the list to outside representatives that are not affiliated with your business to get an outside perspective.

With the list, jot it down on a spreadsheet with all of the important metrics that you see as valuable to your business. For example, when using the Wordtracker App, I record three of the metrics that they provide.

Volume

This is simply how many times the phrases have been searched within a certain population.

iAAT

In Anchor And Title is a metric that checks in how many web pages a specific search phrase is included in both a title and anchor text (link.)

Competition

The competition metric can be calculated in multiple ways but in the case that I use it, it is the difference in search volume and web pages that are optimized for that phrase

With the correct metrics matched up with your business goals, you should in no time be able to come up with a lengthy and informative list of phrases that your potential customers might be using to find your business.

Automation with Keyword Research

Ideally, you will want to grow your keyword research to the point of being able to completely automate the process. Once you have nailed down some of the basic keyword tools covered in this article, you can move to more advanced paid keyword research tools that can use marketing automation to your advantage. 

Learn More about SEO

To learn more about the next “simple step” of SEO for the small business, stay tuned for the next blog post for On-Page Search Engine Optimization.

If you have any questions or find this aspect of the business confusing, or just want to get weekly tips on subjects such as this for your small business, send us a message at Animas Marketing.

If you want to learn the essential techniques to get started on your own with SEO, check out our free SEE Guide for Local Business below.