MediaVision Blog : Search Engine Marketing

Committing to the wrong key phrases on your site will make it very easy to fail before you even start. For a good key phrase analysis, put yourself in the mind of your audience, and think as if you were the optimal user for your site.

Start simple and use your niche when finding the core phrases that suit your business the best. Every-one has his or her preferred keyword tool, so start there and store up the core phrases for your niche until you have a small handful of focused niche phrases.

Once you have your main target phrases, expand them out into long-tail terms that would be derived from the main target phrase. You can use location based terms, but choose these from the location you’re focusing on, as it’s pointless targeting “Cape Town” if you only sell your service/product in “Johannesburg”. Be descriptive, for example, “silver laptop”, but keep it relevant to what you offer.

When you have decided on all your key phrases, you must fit them into your site. I recommend one page to focus on one core phrase, so it should appear in the META Title, a variant, plural or long-tail version in the description, and then of course in the content. Don’t repeat your core term too many times in a page of content; as you don’t want it looking too spammy or be penalised by the search engines. Use synonyms for your core phrase in the content and description so you cover all the bases. Again, you need to think of what the user is searching for.

Link building campaigns using the main targeted phrases are very important, as links are seen as a “vote” for your site among the search engines, but they are also telling the search engines what your site is about. So, utilising a link to its full potential, you should use your primary phrase in the anchor text directed at a targeted page. Be it an inbound link from another site, or an internal link used as navigation through your site, it must tell the search engines what the page is about.

Refresh the content every so often and play the waiting game to receive domain age, as this will get your site trusted, and if the basics are done correctly, you should in theory reach the top. Once your pages rank well for their core phrases, then use the buddy system and bring up new pages one by one.

Finding the perfect core phrases is extremely important, as it’s the first step of your SEO campaign, and for it to work you must be 110% sure that the basics are done correctly.