Search phrase selection

Search phrase selection for your titles is a very important part of SEO. Rob has written an excellent article on Improve your ranking with web page titles. My article gives some more specific help with search phrase selection.


Search Phrase Selection with the DP Keyword Suggestion tool

The tool that I use to help with title selection/search phrase selection is the Digitalpoint Keyword suggestion tool. Don't get this confused with the "Meta keywords" - a totally separate issue, and why I talk about "search phrases".

The lists are generated from the Overture and Wordtracker suggestion tools. Each is different and adds its own value. The Overture tool messes with the orientation, and pluralization of the search phrases - makes most phrases the singular version. Compare this to the Wordtracker results that show both the singular and plural versions, and also treats the orientation of the phrases as unique searches.

Example:

If you try for "Hotels Auckland" Overture shows for the singular "Auckland Hotel" - and "Auckland Hotel" is not actually the most searched for phrase. Search for "Auckland Hotels" (most popular of that phrase) and you will find that the phrase "Auckland Hotel" is not even mentioned on the wordtracker tool, just the phrases "Auckland Hotels", Hotels in Auckland, ... So I use wordtracker results to find the exact orientation and pluralisation of the phrase. The Overture tool often has the greatest numbers of searches, so can be more accurate regards numbers of searches.

Remember that the actual numbers of searches via Google may be several times the number shown on the Overture/Wordtracker tools. The Overture/Wordtracker tools get their numbers from yahoo/msn/... databases.


What phrases have the most searches

Brainstorm. Are there other words that can be used to describe your business category? Which phrases have the most traffic?


Assess the competition

Google for the search phrase and see what the Google PR of the pages are. See how often they have used the search phrase, and where on the page.

• Could you do a better job than the competition with your use of the search phrase on the page?
• Could you get better Google PR.
• Could you get more back links than them?

Decide on a phrase that you stand a chance at ranking for

Better to get top ten for a phrase that has 10 visits per day than 40th for a phrase that gets 1000 per day.


Your main index page

Yes, I specialize in SEO of vBulletin, but one of the first things I do with clients is work on the optimization of their index page. The index page is typically the one that will have the most incoming links, and so will be able to compete for the more competitive search phrases. It is the page that stands to get the most traffic through the highest trafficed search phrases.

What is the search phrase that best describes your site, what is the search phrase that the most people are looking for regarding your specific websites subject matter - check your ideas against the keyword suggestion tool.

Then make sure that you have that main phrase as the first words in your index page title, and also mentioned in the meta description, h1 header tag, and opening paragraph of your page.

This is the start of the process of being able to get your index page listed in the top ten of the search engines.

Always many things to do to get the best ranking for competitive phrases, but I have found that people can get a good improvement just with getting the onpage factors corrected.