How Does Google Rank Websites?

The websites that Google ranks on the 1st page of of its search results for any given search term are the ones that they consider to be the most relevant and useful. They determine which websites are the most useful and relevant by using a complex algorithm (mathematical process) which takes into account 200+ different factors.

Google doesn’t let people know what those factors are, however, through a combination of research, testing and experience, a good Google SEO consultant knows what the most important factors are. For example, most SEOs would agree that the following are all important ranking factors…

• Keyword usage
• Site structure
• Site speed
• Time spent on site
• Number of inbound links
• Quality of inbound links

The algorithm is designed and set-up by humans, however, the rankings given to websites are wholly determined by the outcome of the algorithm. There’s no manual intervention by humans to adjust the rankings specific websites are given by the algorithm.

The website ranked in 1st place is the website that the algorithm has given the best score to when taking into account the 200+ factors. Google is constantly reviewing, adjusting and updating its search results, so a website that is ranked 1st today could potentially not even be on the 1st page next week.

If a website stays where it is, rises or falls in the search results is dependent on one overall consideration – how it compares to the websites it is competing with i.e. the other websites who want to rank for the keywords that it wants to rank for.

So, for example, if a website that is ranked on the 4th page for a particular keyword phrase decides to improve its site structure, add new content and seek out new high quality backlinks, whilst the websites on the 1st – 3rd pages of the search results don’t also make improvements, then the website on the 4th page will rise in the rankings.

How much it rises is dependent on the existing authority and quality of the sites above it and how much value Google’s algorithm places on the value of the improvements that have been made to the website. It could rise up just a couple of positions or it could rise straight to the no.1 position.

There’s no magic button that an SEO can press that guarantees a no.1 ranking, however, by paying attention to the factors that the algorithm places value on, and actively working to improve them, they can guarantee to improve your website’s rankings in Google.

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100 SEO Tips For Small Businesses

1. No SEO means no visitors from search engines. If you don’t do it then search engines can’t categorise and rank your site for keywords relevant to your business.
2. Both on-site SEO and off-site SEO are required. You can’t achieve good results doing one without the other.
3. Start doing SEO now. The longer you leave it to start, the further ahead your competitors will be, and the harder it becomes to rank higher than them.
4. Know your competition. Find out what the sites ranking on the 1st page for the keywords that you want to rank for have done, on-site and off-site, to get there.
5. No two websites are the same. An SEO strategy that worked for someone else’s site isn’t guaranteed to work for yours because there are so many variables.
6. SEO doesn’t have to be expensive. You can get big results on a small budget if you invest time in creating good content and building online relationships.
7. SEO results aren’t instant. The results of SEO work done today might not become apparent, and might not be credited by search engines, for weeks, or even months.
8. The newer your website is, the more patient you will need to be. It takes time to build authority and trust, and until you’ve developed both, you shouldn’t expect to outrank older, more established sites.
9. Never consider your website to be finished. If you want your site to continue to rank higher, attract more visitors and make more sales, then you should always be adding to and improving it.
10. Adapt to algorithm updates. To attain and retain good rankings you need to adapt your SEO strategy as search engines evolve over time.
11. You don’t need to submit your website to search engines. They have evolved beyond the point of needing to be directly notified when a new website, or page on a website, is created.
12. Get advice directly from Google. Via their Webmaster Guidelines and Webmaster Help Videos.
13. Don’t risk Google penalties. As they have a significant share of the search market, a penalty from them results in a significant, and often long-term, loss of visitors to your site.
14. You’re ultimately responsible for all of SEO work done on your website. Search engines won’t remove a penalty on the basis that you didn’t do, and didn’t know the specifics of, the SEO work on your site.
15. Set-up and use Google Search Console. To find out, among other things, what keywords your site is ranking for and which other sites are linking to yours.
16. Set-up and use Google Analytics. To find out, among other things, how many visitors your site gets, the keywords they use to find it, and what pages they visit.
17. Set-up a Google+ page for your business. Doing so builds trust with Google and improves rankings for localised keywords.
18. Diversify your traffic sources. Google is a great source of traffic but being 100% reliant on them for visitors puts you in a vulnerable position.
19. Use Pay Per Click in addition to SEO. If you can afford to do both, then do both, as although PPC can be costly, you can get visitors to your site straight away for any keywords that you want.
20. Low quality equals high risk. Low quality backlinks and/or low quality on-site content can easily result in your site being penalised by search engines.
21. Create content primarily for people, not search engines. There’s no point creating content that ranks well if it doesn’t help people, interest them, or persuade them to buy from you.
22. Remove duplicate content. You can be penalised for having the same, or very similar, content on multiple pages of your site.
23. Remove, merge or add to pages with little content on them. Having lots of content-light pages, with short page view times, can result in search engines downgrading all of your site’s keyword rankings.
24. Don’t copy content from other websites. If search engines find that content on your site has been taken from elsewhere they may downgrade rankings for some, or even all, of your webpages.
25. Claim authorship of your content. Linking your Google+ account to your content improves both rankings and click-through-rate.
26. Ensure your content is good enough to be on the 1st page. If your content isn’t better than the content already on the 1st page for a keyword then your site doesn’t deserve to rank there.
27. Make your content engaging for visitors. The more engaging it is, the longer people will stay on your site, and high viewing times signal to search engines that your site deserves good rankings.
28. Create videos. They increase the amount of time that people spend on your site and also allow you to get links from video sharing sites.
29. Create stats/charts/graphs/infographics. People are more likely to share and link to these types of content than plain written content.
30. More content equals more rankings, more visitors and more sales. Search engines reward, and visitors trust more, sites that are filled with lots of pages of good quality content.
31. Add a blog to your website. Doing so makes it quick and simple to add new pages of content to your site.
32. Create content to post on other websites and blogs. People are much more likely to link to you if you provide them with content to use on their site.
33. Balance creating content with marketing content. If you create content without marketing it then people will struggle to find it, and if they can’t find it they can’t link to it or share it.
34. Write a unique, descriptive title for every page. Within 55 characters you need to make the topic of a page clear to both humans and search engines.
35. Write a unique, descriptive meta description for every page. Within 160 characters you need to describe the topic of a page in a way that persuades people to click on your site instead of the other sites listed in the search results.
36. Research keywords before optimising for them. If you choose the wrong keywords, regardless of what you do for on-site and off-site SEO, you’ll get very few visitors and/or visitors who don’t convert into sales.
37. Use Google’s Keyword Tool. It provides a good list of words and phrases related to the keyword ideas that you enter into it.
38. Get keyword ideas from other people. They (customers, suppliers, partners, friends, etc.) see your business differently to you and may associate different words and phrases with it.
39. Target relevant keywords. The more relevant your keywords are, the easier and quicker it is to rank for them, and the higher the percentage of visitors who will become buyers.
40. Target keywords with commercial intent. You want visitors who are ready to spend money rather than those who are just looking for information.
41. Long-tail keywords are a great source of traffic. It’s quicker and cheaper to rank for longer, specific keyword phrases, and more than 40% of searches are comprised of four or more words.
42. Dedicate 1 page of your website to each keyword that you’re targeting. Doing so makes it simpler for search engines to categorise and rank your pages.
43. Add keywords in the right places. They’re less important than they used to be, but you should still include them in urls, page titles, meta descriptions, header tags and image alt tags.
44. Avoid keyword stuffing. You’re much more likely to be penalised than credited if you use a keyword phrase repeatedly on a page.
45. Backlinks affect rankings more than anything else. The number and quality of links pointing to your site will largely determine in what position your site ranks.
46. Don’t set backlink targets. Link building should be a steady, consistent, on-going process, that doesn’t stop when you reach a certain number.
47. Get backlinks from relevant sources. Search engines want to display relevant results for each keyword, and links from relevant pages/sites are a strong signal to them that your site is relevant.
48. Get backlinks from trusted sources. Links from trustworthy sites signal to search engines that your site is trustworthy too.
49. Be prepared to work for high quality backlinks. Generally, the more easily you can acquire a link, the less value it will likely have.
50. Be wary of paying people to link to your website. Buying backlinks can, and does work, however, there’s a definite risk involved if you buy cheap ones and/or from people who openly sell them.
51. Don’t get involved in link networks. The benefit of getting links from networks is low, whereas the risk of being penalised and losing rankings is high.
52. Diversify your backlink profile. Get different types of links from a wide range of IP addresses.
53. Build backlinks to every page of your website that you want to rank. Get people to link to the inner-pages of your site – the ones you want to rank for specific keywords – as well as to the homepage.
54. Existing relationships are an instant source of backlinks. Some of your suppliers, partners and customers will link to your site if you ask them to do so.
55. Get the good backlinks that your competition already has. If someone has already linked to one of your competitors then there’s a reasonable chance that they’ll link to you also if you give them a good reason to.
56. Get some backlinks with your target keywords as the link text. This type of link is important, but should make up less than 25% of your backlink profile.
57. The majority of your backlinks should be branded. A backlink profile without lots of branded links (like ‘Company Name’ and ‘www.companyname.co.uk’) signals to search engines that you’ve been using manipulative link building tactics.
58. Know who’s linking to you. Within Google Search Console, go to ‘Traffic’ and then ‘Links’ to check how many sites are linking to yours and which sites they are.
59. Sign up for Ahrefs or Open Site Explorer. Doing so gives you access to extensive backlink data for your site and also your competitors’ sites.
60. Every page of your website should be linked to from at least one other page. Search engines don’t include pages in their results that aren’t linked to either internally (from another page of the same site) or externally (from another site).
61. Have direct links from your homepage to your most important pages. Doing so passes authority from the homepage to your important pages and improves the rankings of those pages.
62. Add in-content links to other relevant pages on your website. Whilst not as valuable as external links, internal links do still pass authority and signal to search engines what pages to rank for which keywords.
63. Remove unnecessary outbound links. Only link to pages on other sites that you think visitors to your site would find helpful and/or interesting.
64. Link out to relevant websites and blogs. People generally notice if you link to them, and if you link to them, there’s a reasonable chance that they’ll link back to you if you have good site.
65. Leave comments on relevant websites and blogs. Doing so builds trust and relationships with people – both the site owners and visitors to those sites.
66. Interact with bloggers in your industry. The better people with relevant blogs know you (through social sites, forums, email, etc.) the more likely they’ll be to link to your site and to share your content.
67. Contact small businesses with relevant websites. A good relationship, in which you help promote each others’ sites, makes SEO simpler and cheaper for you and for them.
68. Write press releases to share news and opinions. This is a good way to get content on, and links from, sites outside of your industry and circle of connections.
69. Phone people to develop online relationships. Emails can easily be ignored or forgotten, but phone calls not so much.
70. Use your website to build trust and relationships. The more relationships you have, and the more people trust you, the more people will talk about you, link to you, and, ultimately, buy from you.
71. Add your address and phone number to every page of your website. This builds trust and improves rankings if you’re targeting keyword phrases that contain your town/city name.
72. Get listed in industry and local directories. Most directories are worthless, however, there should be at least 10 that are relevant to your area or industry.
73. Ask customers to leave reviews on Google+ and local directories. Positive reviews improve your rankings in Google’s local listings and can be accessed directly from the search results.
74. Be personal in a way that big businesses can’t be. Putting your individuality and  personality across throughout the off-site SEO process (outreach emails, guest posts, Tweets, etc.) makes others more likely to engage with you.
75. Use social websites to promote other people’s content as well as your own. People generally know if you’ve taken action on social sites to help them, and if they see that you’ve helped them, the chances of them helping you out in return are much higher.
76. Add social sharing buttons to your website. The easier you make it for people to share your content, the more likely they will be to do so.
77. Social media isn’t a replacement for SEO. Your social strategy should be part of, or should run alongside, your SEO strategy.
78. Search engines ranks webpages, not websites. Whether or not a page ranks for a particular keyword depends largely on the quality of that individual page, and not the quality of your site as a whole.
79. Small businesses can rank higher than big businesses. It’s not uncommon for a page on a small business’s site to rank higher than a page on the site of a big, national company.
80. Know where you’re ranking. Within Google Search Console, go to ‘Traffic’ and then ‘Search Queries’ to check where your site is ranking for keywords.
81. Aim to be in the top 3, not just the top 10. If your site isn’t ranked in the top 3 positions for a keyword then you’ll only get a small percentage (less than 10%) of the traffic from searches for that keyword.
82. Rankings can be misleading. The number of 1st page rankings you have is irrelevant if those rankings don’t convert to visitor numbers and, ultimately, sales.
83. Don’t worry about PageRank. Sites with a low PR can, and often do, outrank sites with a high PR.
84. Choose between using www or not using www. Ensure that your site is set to load at either www.domainname.co.uk or domainname.co.uk – not both.
85. Adopt a flat website architecture. Any page of your site should be accessible within 3 clicks from your homepage.
86. Use a simple, clear URL structure. People should be able to guess the topic of a page by looking only at its URL.
87. Use header tags. Include variations of your target keyword phrases in a page’s H1 and H2 tags.
88. Use rich snippets. They provide additional data about your site to search engines and can improve the appearance of your site’s listing in search results.
89. Use 301 redirects. If you change the url of a page on your site, but don’t redirect the old url to the new one, any links pointing to the old one will be wasted.
90. Set-up a useful 404 error page. Linking to your best content from your 404 page means that visitors who see it are less likely to leave your site.
91. Optimise your images. Include a page’s target keyword phrase, or variations of it, in the file names and img alt tags of the images on that page.
92. Optimise your website for mobile users. Your site needs to be clear and simple to use for people accessing it using smartphones and tablets.
93. Check browser and screen resolution compatibility. Your site needs to render correctly in every web browser (Chrome, IE, Safari, etc.) and screen resolution (1366×768, 1024×768, 800×600, etc.).
94. Maximise your website’s loading speed. Use Google’s site speed tool and implement the recommendations that they give you.
95. Use a reliable web hosting company. Your site’s keyword rankings will be downgraded if your site is regularly inaccessible.
96. Regularly backup your website. If you lose your site data then you lose your rankings too, as search engines quickly remove sites that won’t load from their results.
97. Keep up-to-date with SEO news and trends. Read sites such as Search Engine Watch, Search Engine Land and SEOmoz.
98. If you don’t know, ask someone. If you have a question, ask it in an online SEO forum or contact an SEO consultant.
99. Ask SEO consultants lots of questions. If you’re going to hire someone, you’ll be taking less of a risk if you know a lot about them and their strategies.
100. Engage with your SEO consultant. The more you know about SEO, and the more a consultant knows about your business, the better the results will be.

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Learn About Assessing The Level Of Competition For A Keyword

Each keyword that you want your business’s website to rank for is effectively a competition that you enter into, and you need to be sure that you’re participating in competitions that you have a good chance of winning. Before being able to assess the level of competition for a keyword, you first need to know who your competitors are. A lot of people wrongly place a lot of weight on the number of search results that a search engine displays in response to a particular keyword search. They think, for example, that if they want to rank their website for ‘mortgage calculator’, and Google shows 60 million results for that search term, then they have 60 million competitors.

In some ways that’s not wrong, as they would need to outrank around 60 million webpages in order to rank first for that keyword, however, not all of those pages are actually trying to rank for the phrase ‘mortgage calculator’. Google isn’t saying that 60 million website owners want to rank for that search term, just that 60 million pages have that phrase included somewhere on it. The vast majority of those 60 million pages will actually either not be trying to rank for ‘mortgage calculator’. They will be either trying to rank for a different keyword phrase or not be trying to rank for anything at all.

It’s not actually possible to find out exactly how many website owners are trying to rank their site specifically for a keyword – not without individually reviewing each of the pages returned in the search results for that keyword anyway. It doesn’t matter though. What matters is who is currently ranking on the first page of results for that keyword. The 10 sites on the first page are the ones that you will ultimately have to dislodge if you want your business’s website to rank first. Those 10 sites are your real competition for a keyword.

If you don’t think you can beat those 10 sites on the first page then there’s no point in trying to rank for the keyword in the first place, as if you’re not at least on the first page then there’s not much chance that your site will get clicked on, or even seen, by people searching for that keyword anyway. Therefore, when conducting keyword competition analysis, only concern yourself with the websites that are currently ranked on the first page for a keyword. Arguably, you should even go as far as to only concern yourself with the websites ranked in the top 3, as that’s where you really want your site to be ranked.

So, having established who the real competitors for a keyword are, how can you assess the strength of those competitors and whether it’s realistic for you to attempt to rank your website for that keyword? These are the factors that you need to consider when assessing competitors:

Page title – A page’s title is the blue, underlined clickable link that Google displays for each website in its search results. It’s elementary SEO to put the keyword in the title of the webpage that you’re trying to rank. If there are sites ranked on the first page that don’t have the keyword anywhere in the page title then it’s a good indication of a low level of competition.

On-page tags – Having the keyword, or close variations of it, in a page’s header and image alt tags show that a competitor has gone a step further in optimising the page for a particular keyword. If they’ve done that they have probably invested money in SEO in the past, or are currently doing so. Having the keyword in on-page tags doesn’t make a competitor strong though, it just means that they aren’t weak.

Content – If your competitors have good content on the particular urls shown in the search results for a keyword, not just in terms of length, but in terms of quality and authority, then that contributes towards a higher level of competition. If you want to rank well in the long term then your aim should be to have the content on the page that you want to rank to be equal to or better than the content on the webpages of your top 10 competitors.

PageRank – PageRank (PR for short) is a score of between 1 and 10 that Google gives to every webpage on the internet which estimates the importance and authority of that page. It’s not as big a factor as you would think in terms of rankings though, as rankings are concerned with relevance as much as importance and authority. A webpage with a PR of 1 can rank higher for a keyword than a webpage with a PR of 4, if Google considers the PR1 page to be more relevant. That’s actually not an uncommon scenario, so don’t think your webpage with a low PR can’t rank higher that 10 webpages with a high PR. Still, if the sites on the first page generally have a PR of 4 or more, then you should consider the level of competition to be high.

Backlinks – This is the most important factor in determining the strength of your competitors. It’s also the most difficult factor to assess. It’s not a straight forward case of whoever has the most backlinks ranks highest, but rather a combination of the number of backlinks, where those backlinks come from and what text is used to form those backlinks. If competitors have lots of backlinks from different websites, backlinks on pages with a PageRank of 2 or more and with the text used for the backlinks being the keyword, or a variation of it, that you’re trying to rank for, then consider the competition to be very high.

To fully assess the above factors, you need access to a specialist suite of tools, with ahrefs.com being recommended. The more thorough you are, the better, as if you misjudge the level of competition for a keyword that you want to rank for and try to rank for a keyword with a very high level of competition when you don’t have a high level budget, then you’ll never rank for it and you’ll never see a return from the money you invest in trying to rank for it. Only 10 sites can be displayed on the first page of results, so if you have a small budget to spend on SEO then it’s unrealistic to expect your company’s website to rank well for high competition keywords, at least in the short-term.

A good analogy is a non-league football team trying to win the FA Cup. Playing against teams with better players and more money stacks the odds heavily against them. It’s not impossible for them to win the cup, however, the nearer to the final they get, the harder it becomes as the quality of the opposition improves. They might well be able to beat some stronger opponents as they progress, but to ask them to win the whole competition is asking too much. They can punch above their weight and get some good results, but to win things they need to compete in competitions that give them a realistic chance of success.

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On-Site SEO

On-site optimisation refers to the process of making your website appeal to both search engines and users. It reviews and improves both the public face of your website and the behind the scenes coding and technical set-up that only search engines see.

A search engine evaluates a website differently to a human visitor. A search engine can’t evaluate how nicely your website is designed, how well your content is written or how much value your products/services provide. It has to judge a website from a technical point of view.

On-site optimisation is the foundation on which the off-site optimisation process builds upon. Without it, off-site optimisation efforts can go largely to waste. The process is wide ranging, and will vary slightly from website to website, but these are some of the main factors that form the on-site optimisation process:

• Add keywords to urls, title tags, meta descriptions, header tags and alt tags.
• Ensure each page has a unique and descriptive title and description.
• Assign existing, or create new, pages for each keyword.
• Improve content to match/better content on competitor websites.
• Assess existing and potential keyword targets.
• Remove, merge or add to pages that have little useful content on them.
• Check the site loads properly in different web browsers and screen resolutions.
• Analyse inbound link profile.
• Ensure call to actions are located in prominent positions.
• Link to important pages from the homepage and/or main navigation area.
• Improve the readability and formatting of written content.
• Check for and fix broken links.
• Add structured data mark-up code.
• Claim authorship of content.
• Fix duplicate content issues.
• Add in-content links where appropriate.
• Remove unnecessary outbound links.
• Create a user-friendly 404 error page.
• Assess and improve page loading times.
• Add social media sharing buttons.
• Create and submit an XML sitemap.
• Set-up Google Analytics and Search Console.

Some of these factors only ever need to be dealt with once, whereas others need to be regularly reviewed to see what further improvements can be made. Unless a professional SEO consultant has worked on your website, it’s highly unlikely that your website will be at all optimised for search engines, as on-site optimisation is something that web design companies rarely pay any attention to.

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Off-site optimisation is the process of promoting your website across the web. The purpose is to build brand awareness, improve rankings in search engines and attract visitors from 3rd party websites.

It’s an on-going process – not a one-off, set and forget one. The best approach to off-site SEO depends on the industry you operate in and your budget, but your overall strategy should consist of several of the following methods:

Outreach

Contact companies and bloggers with relevant (but non-competing) websites. Ask them to link to your best content.

Content Marketing

Contact companies and bloggers with relevant (but non-competing) websites. Publish content on their websites which links back to your website.

Press Releases

Write press releases to share news and opinions about developments in your industry. Distribute them via online channels and include links back to your website.

Directories

Get listed in good quality, manually reviewed business directories and local directories. Include links back to your website.

Pay Per Click

Use Google Adwords and Facebook Advertising to gain instant new visitors. Constantly review and adjust ads to improve click through rates and reduce the cost per click.

Network Sites

Create a network of websites that branch into sub-industries of your own. Provide useful information and link to relevant websites (including your own).

Video Marketing

Create videos that provide information and advice about your industry. Brand the videos and upload them to video sharing websites.

Comment Marketing

Comment on articles on relevant websites and blogs. Leave insightful comments and include links back to your website.

Forum Marketing

Be an active member of forums relevant to your industry. Answer questions and show yourself to be knowledgeable and authoritative.

Facebook

Create content, on your own website and on a Facebook page, that appeals to Facebook users. Encourage people to ‘like’ your content and share it with their friends and family.

Banner Advertising

Create image adverts to display on relevant 3rd party websites. Regularly change the websites advertised on to expose your brand to new audiences.

Link Exchanges

Contact companies in relevant industries and link to each other’s websites. Only link to other websites that provide value to your own customer base.

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Learn About Choosing Keywords For Yor Website Ranking Highly

Learn About Choosing Keywords For Yor Website Ranking Highly

Choosing keywords (which can be single words or multiple word phrases) to rank your website for is a critical stage in the SEO process. Choose the “right” keywords and, so long as the on-site and off-site optimisation processes are carried out correctly, your website will rank well, in a reasonable timeframe, and will attract the right type of visitors i.e. those who buy from you.

However, choose the “wrong” keywords and, no matter how perfectly the on-site optimisation and off-site optimisation processes are carried out, your website will never be a success. You’ll get very few visitors and/or visitors who don’t convert into sales. So, what factors contribute to making keywords the “right” keywords for your website to target?

Relevance – The keywords that you target should be highly relevant to the products or services that you provide. The more relevant the keywords are, the easier and quicker it will be to rank for those keywords, and the higher the percentage of visitors who will become buyers.

Commercial intent – You should target keywords that catch people at the right stage of the buying cycle. The further along someone is in the cycle, the more chance there is of making a sale. You want visitors who are ready to spend money rather than those who are just looking for information.

Search volume – Target keywords that people are actively searching for. The more people there are searching for a keyword phrase, the more visitors you will get when you rank well for that keyword phrase. There are tools that can be used to find approximate search numbers for keywords.

Competitiveness – To keep costs down, and to rank quickly, you need to choose keywords that aren’t being actively targeted by big brands and/or long established websites. The metrics of the 10 websites currently ranking on the 1st page for a keyword phrase need to be assessed to determine whether your website can compete with them.

An Example A travel agent, www.africanholidayofalifetime.co.uk (note: this is not a real website) sells luxury holidays to Africa. They have £500 a month to spend on SEO and they want to increase visitor numbers to, and sales from, their website. These are some keywords that they might be considering:

africa – This keyword is too broad. People searching for this could be interested in any aspect of Africa – history, geography, weather, etc. The percentage of people searching for this keyword who want to book a luxury holiday in Africa is very low (less than 1%). The websites currently ranking on the 1st page for this keyword would also be extremely difficult to compete with.

holidays – This keyword is still too broad. It gets a lot of searches but it isn’t as relevant to their website as it should ideally be. People searching for this keyword could be looking for a holiday anywhere in the world and they are as likely to want a cheap holiday as they are to want a luxury holiday. There’s also a very high level of competition for this keyword, which would make it very expensive to rank for it.

luxury holidays – This keyword is much better than the one above. It’s still quite broad, as there’s no reference to location in the keyword, however, the searcher is specifically looking for a luxury holiday, which the client does sell. Competition for this keyword is still relatively high. For £500 a month, there’s very little chance of ranking well for this keyword.

luxury africa holidays – This is a good keyword phrase to rank for. The search volume is relatively good and the client’s website is directly relevant to the keywords being searched for. The competition is at an acceptable level and high rankings should be possible for £500 a month. The only potential issue is the stage of the buying cycle – are these searchers just browsing or are they ready to make a purchase?

book luxury kenya holiday – This is a perfect keyword phrase for the client. The searcher knows what type of holiday they want (luxury), where they want it (Kenya) and they want to book it now. Competition for this keyword is low and for £500 a month high rankings can definitely be achieved  The search volume is lower than for the above keywords, but there are still a sufficient amount of people searching for this phrase to make it worthwhile ranking for.

i want to book a luxury holiday to kenya in March in 2014 – This keyword is highly relevant. The searcher knows exactly what they want and they are ready to spend money. A high ranking for this keyword could be achieved quickly and at a low cost, however, there is no point ranking for it as no-one is searching for that exact keyword phrase.

Business owners tend to get drawn towards trying to rank for the broad, general keywords in their industry that get the highest number of searches. This inevitably ends in disappointment as they don’t end up reaching the 1st page for the keywords and the visitors that they do manage to get are at the browsing stage of the buying cycle rather than the buying stage.

Rather than targeting a couple of generic keywords, a better approach is to target multiple, specific keyword phrases. Research has shown that more than 40% of all searches done online are comprised of four or more words. Therefore, not only is it quicker and cheaper to rank for longer, specific keyword phrases, but you can still get lots of visitors to your website by doing so. 

Read This: Google Adwords Tool Complete Training

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Note: For SEO, keyword and keyword phrase are used interchangeably. A keyword can be just a single word, but it can also be a phrase or combination of 2+ words.

Choosing keywords is an essential stage in the SEO process. Select the wrong ones and, regardless of what you do in terms of on-site optimisation and off-site optimisation, you may never see a return on your investment in SEO. As well as choosing good keywords though, you need to choose the right number of them.

You shouldn’t only target 1 keyword, even if you have a very small budget or think that 1 keyword covers everything that you do or sell. This is a mistake because unless it’s a highly searched for keyword, and if it is then the competition to rank well for it will be fierce and getting your site in the top positions for it very difficult, then ranking for that 1 keyword won’t attract enough visitors to your site.

You also shouldn’t target lots and lots of keywords – 30, 50, 100, etc. – as the more keywords you target, the less resources you can assign to working on each of them, and the harder it becomes to rank well for any of them. Whilst you do ultimately want to rank for many keywords, to start off you need to be focused and realistic, especially if you don’t have a big budget for SEO or lots of time available to create content and promote your site.

So, how many keywords should you target then? The exact number will depend on your budget and your timeframe for results, however, primarily targeting about 5 keywords (each with a monthly search volume of 100+) to start with is recommended for most small businesses. To some businesses, that might not seem a lot, but targeting 5 keywords doesn’t mean that your website will only rank for 5 keywords and get traffic from 5 keywords.

This is because a keyword phrase with the same words in a different order, or with more or less “stop words” (a, the, for, etc.), counts as one keyword. For example, if 1 of your keywords is ‘mortgage advice’, as well as ranking for that exact phrase, it’s highly likely that your site will also naturally rank for ‘advice mortgage’, ‘advice on mortgage’, ‘advice for mortgages’, etc.

Additionally, and using the same example, if you create a good quality, content rich page to target ‘mortgage advice’, you’ll naturally rank for lots of long-tail keywords (strings of 4 or more words) that you’ve used within that content. So, if within the content you write the phrase ’where is the best place to get reliable mortgage advice from’, then your site will probably naturally rank in Google for that keyword phrase too.

Very specific long-tail keyword phrases don’t show up in any keyword research tools, and they may only get searched for once every 2-3 months, but they’re very important because it’s estimated that 40% of searches online consist of phrases made up of 4 or more words. Therefore, although the individual search volumes for very long-tail keywords might seem trivial, the combined total of them is far from it.

So, with a 5 keyword starting point, the scope for…

…rankings and attracting traffic is actually quite wide. You’ll find that a good percentage of traffic to your business’s website will come from searches for keywords that you hadn’t specifically targeted but which you naturally rank for. Those more specific searches tend to convert to sales better as well, because the people searching for them have a clearer idea of what they’re looking for.

When you’re getting good results for your initial keyword selections, you can then divert some attention and resources to targeting new ones. If you take this approach – doing keyword research and selection should be done in stages – you don’t have to wait so long to see results and you have more data to work with (from Google Analytics and Google Search Console) before making decisions on additional keywords.
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Read This: Choosing Key Words For Your Website Ranking

What are High Quality and Low Quality Backlinks and Domain Autority & There Benefits

Learn About Assessing The Level Of Competition For A Keyword

Learn About How Many Keywords Should You Target To Your Website?

Learn About Of-Site Search Engine Optimisation | Of-Site SEO

Learn About on-site Search Engine optimisation | On-Site SEO

Learn About Choosing Keywords For Yor Website Ranking Highly