What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of creating, formatting, and promoting web pages in a manner that ensures that they are ranked highly for chosen keyword phases after a user performs a web search.
Developing A Search Engine Optimization Strategy For WordPress Sites is All About…
- Keyword Research
- Competitive Analysis
- Configuring Your WordPress Site for SEO
- On-site Content Optimization
- Link Building and Online Promotion
- Understanding Website Analytics
SEO simply is…finding ways to help people find you online
Effective SEO Starts With Keyword Research
Basic grunt research is the foundation of every successful SEO Strategy
- Invest the time to determine the best target keywords for your market
- Carefully analyze your competitors’ sites
- Compare search criteria
- Navigation Patterns
- Information and product offerings
- Look for broad, exact, and long-tail phrase matches
Half-hearted keyword research will sabotage every other aspect of your SEO strategy.
Keyword Research and Selection
Keyword research is foundational to a successful search engine optimization and marketing campaign.
It is step one in any process that involves optimizing and marketing your website through the search engines.
Accurate keyword research and selection is vital to your online marketing efforts.
Your choice of keywords will determine:
- the navigation structure of your site
- search engine optimization strategies
- sponsored ad campaigns
- link building campaigns
- press releases
- all other aspects of your online marketing
Many site owners skip detailed keyword research because they either do not understand its importance; or, it is time consuming to do keyword research properly; or, they just have no idea where to start, and more importantly, where to stop the keyword research process.
The Great Keyword Research Myth
If I can attain any number one ranking, visitors will come to my site and buy my product or service.
Keyword Research Reality
Site visitors will take action ONLY if your number one ranked search term is actively searched, and is relevant to your site or page to which it leads.
If your keywords are not properly researched —all the top rankings in the world won’t drive or keep targeted site traffic.
All search terms are not created equal.
SEO that delivers a lot of traffic to your site is not as helpful as a keyword-driven, marketing strategy that delivers relevant traffic to your site.
There are three types of queries someone might type into a search engine
- Informational queries – searching for information from general to specific
- Navigational queries – searching for a specific site or page
- Transactional queries – searching with an intent to purchase
You probably don’t want to spend time optimizing an informational blog for a transactional query and you probably don’t want people typing informational queries that land inside your shopping cart.
All three types of queries are important and each could ultimately lead to a sale. Someone finding helpful information on your site may very well come back later and buy something.
The important thing to understand is that what a person types into a search engine reveals something about their intent and that based on the searcher’s intent you’d want different pages of your site ranking for different queries.
Big numbers do not always mean BIG BUCKS
Sites that generate smaller amounts of targeted traffic often see a better return on investment than sites that generate larger amounts of untargeted traffic.
Keyword Research Pitfalls
Identifying and selecting the correct keyword phrases to optimize and promote your site is critical. Keyword research is time consuming and sometimes confusing, and it is easy to get hung up on the wrong keywords. If can be frustrating to flush hours of work when you realize that your research has lead you down the wrong path and everyone who has don keyword research knows it is tempting to go with incomplete data and get to the fun stuff.
If keyword research is not performed with the right focus, in the precise subject areas, the result is a muddle of targeted phrases, but no clear picture of the actual value of those phrases or their ability to drive targeted traffic.
You must consider how much keyword research will cost in time, talent and treasure, versus potential reward. Like all aspects of your business model, you need to consider the return on investment (ROI) and balance your research effort to how much targeted traffic it will deliver to your WordPress site. Additionally, you need to track the new sales conversion rate, to measure the actual effect of your keyword research campaign to your website-based business.
Note: The primary reference for this section of “Developing a SEO Strategy for Your WordPress Website’ is Stoney G. deGeyter’s eBook, ‘Keyword Research and Selection, The Definitive Guide to Gathering, Sorting and Organizing Your Keywords into a High-Performance SEO Campaign.’ You can download this handy eBook reference at: http://www.polepositionmarketing.com/emp-media/download/keyword-research.pdf
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