Keyword Analysis will help you to make sense of your keyword research. You have diligently researched keywords for your business but how do you know which are the most appropriate keywords for your website optimisation? This Keyword Analysis Tutorial will help you to choose the best keywords for every single page of your website.

Keyword Analysis

Keyword Analysis Tutorial is a natural follow on from the Keyword Research Guide. If you haven’t produced your Keyword Reports for your website optimisation, then I would recommend reading the Keyword Research Guide first and then coming back here. That guide is all about finding keywords for your website. Keyword Analysis Tutorial will help you to choose the best keywords to optimise your website from your Master Keyword Report.

Master Keyword Report

The Master Keyword Report lists all of the keywords that are related to your website and business. Whether you have used Wordtracker or Google Adwords to obtain your keywords, the reports these produce are not really in a useful format. If you have followed my Keyword Report Guide and produced your Master Keyword Report, then you should have a spreadsheet with tabs for each of your main single keywords which contain all of your 2 and 3 keyword phrases. This is in a much better format. For Free SEO Expert, my SEO tab contains the following keywords:

Keywords (Global Monthly Searches)
SEO (5,000,000)
SEO Keywords (60,000)
SEO Keyword Research (26,000)
SEO Keyword Research Tools (9,000)
SEO Expert (32,000)
SEO Expert London (12,000)
Professional SEO Expert (5,000)

Choosing the Right Keywords

The report above tells me that SEO is hugely popular with millions of people searching for this keyword every month. However, how useful is someone searching for SEO to your business? It is such a broad term. Searchers could be looking for Free SEO, SEO Books, SEO Consultant, SEO Jobs, etc. Do you offer all of these services? If not, then SEO is too-broad a term for your website. This is the question you have to ask yourself.

Next look at SEO Keyword Research Tools. The number of searchers for this keyword phrase is a fraction of those for SEO, but look how targeted it is. If this is exactly what your business does, and someone types in these keywords and visits your website, then they are more likely to convert into a customer. This is the goal of choosing the right keywords – getting targeted visitors to your website who are likely to convert into customers.

Applying this principle to all of your website pages will help you to get an idea of which keywords to use. Remember, you are not just optimising your home page. Every single page of your website should be optimised for a different keyword phrase.

Keyword Popularity

Now we would all love to appear number 1 on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) for the keywords we choose. However, everyone else wants to do this too. It is therefore down to the search engines to decide where they think you should rank. Keyword Analysis Tutorial is about choosing the right keywords for your website. You can then check out other Free SEO Expert articles that will help to get you there.

You have to look at how competitive it is for the keywords you choose. You have to look at your keyword popularity. It is no good appearing on page 8 for competitive keywords because no one is going to find you. Also it is no good appearing on the first page for keywords that no one is searching on. You want to choose keywords that are popular and competitive, but also give you a chance of appearing within the first 3 pages of SERPs. If you can appear within the first 3 pages, you are then in a position to improve and move to that number 1 position.

Keyword Analysis Tools

To my Master Keyword Report I add columns for the following Analysis Tools. For Keywords that I am interested in, I put them through the following 3 Keyword Analysis Tools to help me to decide if they are suitable for the page I am optimising for. As you work through your keywords you will discover 2 things. You will soon realise how long this is going to take and will probably wonder if it is all necessary. The second thing is it will become easier and you will realise you don’t have to do them all! Just analyse the keywords you are interested in and compare the results.

Google Insights for Search

Insights for Search is a great free tool for comparing search volumes for keywords over time ranges or locations. The results do not represent absolute searches, but the power comes when comparing similar search terms to see which are more popular. I would compare Online Marketing, Internet Marketing and Web Marketing and then go for the keywords that are searched on more.

Google, Yahoo and Bing Suggest

All of the search engines offer suggestion options when you type your keywords into their search box. If my keywords exist on the search engine suggestions, then I will choose that over similar keywords that do not.

Search Engine Results Pages

This is the big one but for me is the most important. I create 3 new columns, one for each page of SERPs, Page 1, Page 2 and Page 3. I then split each of these columns into 2 more columns. Each of these columns is to record the number of websites on that page whose Pagerank falls into a range. If my website is Pagerank 1, then the two Pagerank ranges I look for are PR0-PR2 and PR3-PR4. If my Pagerank is higher, then my ranges are higher. The idea here is to see how difficult it will be to join the websites within the top 3 pages for my keywords.

If my website is PR1 and all of the websites are PR4 or higher for all 3 SERPs, then my website just isn’t going to appear. I am wasting my time. As soon as I start seeing even just 1 or a few websites within my lower range, on one or more pages, then I know I have a chance of ranking here. Follow this Keyword Analysis tutorial for each of your keywords in turn, and your website will have an excellent chance of ranking just where you want it to.

Free SEO Expert

Use Firefox with add-on Quake. This will allow you to see all the Pageranks and just as importantly, the number of backlinks for every website at a glance without actually visiting them.

Keyword Research is the single most important thing you can do for your business if you want to be successful on search engines today. This Keyword Research Guide describes how I find the best keywords for new businesses and how I have found them for Free SEO Expert. This guide is all about finding your keywords. Analysing them will be left for my next article!

Keyword Research

Many people think that obtaining backlinks to your website is the single most important thing you can do. I don’t believe this is true. Getting the right keywords for your business is THE most important thing you can do for your website and ultimately your business. Keywords are the foundation of SEO success in every sense of the word and this includes On-page Optimisation, Social Marketing, Pay Per Click, Link Building … everything. All of these SEO processes use your keywords. If you are using the wrong ones, you are wasting your time.

Research your Business and Services/Products

Before you know what to look for, you have to know what you are looking for. If you haven´t already, you need to research your business and the services or products you offer. If you are the owner of your business then this should be pretty easy. Make sure you know everything about your business and what you do. What the business is good at and what are its strengths. You have to be clear about the Message your website is saying, its Unique Value Position, geographic scope, potential customers and its Goals. Only by knowing what you´re looking for will you be able to find it in your keyword research.

Brainstorm for Keywords – Colleagues, Customers, Strangers

Come up with as many keywords as you can in as many ways as you can. Take a page in your notebook or spreadsheet and start writing down keywords you think are related to your business. Don´t be shy and don´t worry about getting it right, just write down everything. Ask your employees to do the same, your family, kids, even strangers on the street. We all think we know what is best for our business, myself included, but we’re wrong. We have to be flexible and listen to others. If your business is going to succeed, it is the ‘others’ who will become your customers!

Research Competitors

Believe me, you’ll have plenty. Type in some of the keywords into a search engine you hope to be found for and just look at them all. They all want to beat you to that number 1 position believe me, but you have one advantage over them. You are finding the absolute best keywords for your website, which I can guarantee many of your competition, have not. Look at your competitors, their websites, how their Titles are constructed, the Headings they use, what the content says. These should tell you the keywords they are optimising for. Compare them to yours. Are their keywords ordered differently? Remember, choose keywords that searchers are likely to type in to search engines and remember the order of your keywords make a difference. Searchers are typically lazy and don’t want to type in long words and ones that are difficult to spell.

Thesaurus Guide

Check out a thesaurus for different ways of saying the same thing. It may well throw up some surprising words that are just perfect for your website. Your may want to check out the Visual Thesaurus. This will probably hold your interest slightly longer than thumbing the Thesaurus book at home. Don’t get bored and think it is not important. It is important and if done right, you only have to do keyword research once. You don´t want to have to do this Keyword Research Guide all over again do you? Just visialise that image of your competition on those SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) and how you too can be there, above them all!

Refine your Keywords

From all the keywords you have collected, split them into single keywords, double keywords and 3-keyword phrases. All of your double keywords should contain one of your single keywords and the same for the 3-keyword phrases. Use a spreadsheet and align them under one another so that they naturally flow. The idea is to get 5-10, and no more than a dozen single keywords with which to use on your favourite keyword research tool.

Online
Online Marketing
Online Marketing Articles
SEO
SEO Keywords
SEO Keyword Research
SEO Keyword Research Tools

Wordtracker Keyword Tool

Next thing you need to do is to find out if any of these phrases are actually searched on, and also how many people are searching for them. Wordtracker is one such keyword research tool I have used in the past and recommend. You can find out all about how to use Wordtracker from my Wordtracker Keyword Tool guide.

Google AdWords Keyword Tool

Google Adwords offer their own research tool which many Search Engine Optimisers use. To use their tool you have to open a Google Adwords account which at present costs £10. Well worth the money and you can find out all about it from my Google Adwords Keyword Tool Tutorial.

Master Keyword Report

If you have been following this Keyword Research Guide and not simply jumped here through curiosity, then you should now have on your computer many Keyword Reports for all your single keywords and double-keyword phrases.

The next thing is to produce a Master Keyword Report that details all the keyword phrases you think are related to your business, but this time in a format that is actually useful. Whether you have performed your keyword research using Wordtracker or Google Adwords, your lists of keywords are not in a useful format.

What I do is create a spreadsheet tab for each single keyword researched and on that spreadsheet I list each keyword phrase by copying and pasting each in turn from my Keyword Lists and ordering them in the following format:

Keywords (Global Monthly Searches)
SEO (5,000,000)
SEO Keywords (60,000)
SEO Keyword Research (26,000)
SEO Keyword Research Tools (9,000)
SEO Expert (32,000)
SEO Expert London (12,000)
Professional SEO Expert (5,000)

This allows me to see at a glance how competitive my phrases are. As the phrases get longer, the number of searches on the Internet gets progressively less, as would be expected. I group similar keywords together, including plurals. This for me is now a useful format. As you work through your keyword list, remove redundant phrases as you find them.

Do this for each single keyword in your research lists. This is not for the faint hearted because it will feel like it is going to take forever. But, take regular breaks, don’t give up and eventually you will end up with a great looking Master Keyword Report and within that report are some fantastic keyword phrases for your business.

SEO Expert Tip

Don’t underestimate the power of Keyword Research. Take a few days from your busy schedule and follow this Keyword Research Guide. Do it once, do it right and don’t look back.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool Tutorial is an introduction for using Google Adwords for deep keyword research and finding the best keywords for your business. Analysing the results obtained from your keyword research however is not the focus of this article, but will be covered in a later article.

Google Adwords

Google offers an excellent Keyword Tool which comes free when you take out a Google Adwords account. Adwords is Google’s Pay Per Click program which you may wish to consider using for instant traffic to your website. The minimum cost of opening an account is £10, which for the tools that are available to you is well worth the money.

What you may wish to consider is to register for a Google Account first and verify your website. For SEO purposes, this is something you should do anyway. Within a couple of months of verifying my account, Google had sent me a coupon worth £75 of free Adwords credit to try to tempt me into taking out an account. If keyword research is something you plan to do in a few months, this may be worth a try.

Keyword Research Tool

Create an account, pay your money and you should soon end up at the Home tab of Google Adwords. Click on the Opportunities tab, scroll down and click on Keyword Tool on the left hand side. I use this tool like I do when using Wordtracker, to produce spreadsheets of keyword phrases that are on my computer for me to reference at my leisure. Check out my Wordtracker Keyword Tool article. When using the tool, Google offers many alternatives to the keywords you choose. These are great for finding alternative keywords that are related to your business. To keep on top of the hundreds of keywords you will be producing and to stop yourself getting a real headache, I would recommend being as organised as you can. When I search for keywords I start on searching for single keywords, then from these reports, I find double-keyword phrases, and finally, 3-keyword phrases which I will use for my On-Page Optimisation.

Keyword Reports

First off I would recommend clicking on Views and then Customise Columns on the right hand side. Select All Columns and then Save. This displays all the data that is available from Google Adwords. Next click Relevance just to the left and then Global Monthly Searches. This displays the results in popularity of searches with the most popular being shown at the top. Clicking Advanced Options on the left allows you to change your local location along with other settings, but you will probably be leaving these at their default.

Keyword Selection

With a list of your top single keywords to hand, one at a time, type the keyword into the Word or Phrase box and click Search. After a few seconds, keyword phrases related to your keyword will be displayed in order of popularity. Scroll down and on the left under Contains will be displayed headings of keywords related to the one you typed, along with related recommendations. I turn off everything except the keyword I have typed in. If there are any I feel I would not have thought of, I would make a note of the keyword/phrase for later use. Unselect All and select your keyword. Search through the results, working down the list, checking any that are related to your business. Do not worry about getting it right. Just make sure to leave any that you know are not related to your business. These could include the words jobs, free, books, etc.

Producing the Reports

For some reason Google decides to ignore my selections when I click on to see the next page of results which has been incredibly frustrating until I worked out the way to save my results while also viewing the next page of results. What I do is scroll back up and click the Download and then Download Selected. Change the Format if required, click Download and finally Dismiss. Save the file to your desktop. Now the file is a compressed file that contains the comma delimited file inside. Open this file and before going any further, if there are more keywords on the following page on Google Adwords, then I would recommend viewing them now, selecting the keywords you want and when you get to the bottom of the page, save them to another document and copy and paste the results under the results of the original report. Please let me know if you can find a better way of doing this!

Customising the Reports

When you have all the keywords you need, first thing I do is to remove the Competition column and also any columns that are empty. Next move the Local Monthly Searches which is right at the end to being the third column after Global Monthly Searches, which makes a lot more sense. What this report shows is all the multiple-keywords phrases that are related to the single keyword you were searching for.

Deep Keyword Research

Once you have produced your keyword reports for all the single keywords related to your business, it is best to take a break and clear your head and maybe even sleep on it before working through each of these in turn to find relevant 2-keyword phrases that are related to your business. For each of these 2-keyword phrases in turn, I run the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, which then produces reports of 3+ keyword phrases, and these are going to be the phrases I optimise my website for. So if my top keyword is Marketing, then one of my 2-keyword phrases will be Online Marketing, and from this final report I will use phrases like Online Marketing Articles, and Online Marketing Services. A maximum of 3-keyword phrases is about as far as I would go, unless the keywords include a location such as UK or London, or a qualifier such as Best, Competitive, Free, etc.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool Conclusion

This probably seems like a nightmare task but believe me, choosing the right keywords now will save you from a real headache later. Keywords make and shape your website and the right ones will make all the difference. Anything you do not understand from this Google Adwords Keyword Tool tutorial just let me know and I will help.

Once you get into a flow, there is no reason why it shouldn’t be completed within a couple of days. First search your single Keywords, which really should be no more than 5-10, and then search your double keyword phrases, one at a time, producing reports for each one and naming the report the keywords searched on. Don’t go mad; keep it below 30 reports in total. You are well on your way to producing the perfect keywords for your business.

SEO Expert Tip

Keyword research is critical to the success of your business on the Internet. If you take the time to thoroughly research your keywords now, you will already be one step ahead of most of your competition.

Wordtracker is an excellent application to use for your Keyword Research. The keyword phrases you decide to use to optimise your website are the foundations to high rankings on Search Engines. Wordtracker Keyword Tool will help you to find these keywords.

Wordtracker Keyword Tool

Wordtracker offers a couple of payment plans depending upon how long you wish to use the product. At the time of writing, the annual subscription is £161 and the monthly subscription is £28. Your best choice however is to go for the Free 7-day Trial.

This is excellent as it gives you full access to all the Wordtracker keyword tool options and is even likely to be long enough to get all your Wordtracker keyword research done without paying a penny. If you need longer, simply go for the 1 month payment. If you think £28 is too much to pay for finding keywords for your business, you should seriously rethink whether DIY SEO is for you. Believe me, it is money well worth spent.

So you have your account and logged on for the first time. Even though the menus and options look complicated, just follow this article, and you’ll soon have your lists of keywords. Once your Wordtracker subscription runs out, you will not have access to your online lists so it is important to Export all of your Keyword Projects into spreadsheets for future reference. This article explains how I do my keyword research on the Wordtracker Keyword Tool. The end result is simply to create lists of keywords that I will then use to optimise my website. Analysing these keywords will be tackled in another article.

Wordtracker Projects

Your first screen when you log in is the dashboard. Scroll down to Projects. Wordtracker has created a ‘My First Project’ for you. Either rename this one or create a new one. Call it something obvious like your website or business name. Mine is Free SEO Expert. Next, click on Start Your Keyword Research.

Keyword Research

This is the way I do it. I start by searching for a single keyword. Make a list of all the top-level keywords that relate to your business. Mine would be SEO, Optimisation, Marketing, Promotion, Social, etc. Don’t go mad, 5-10 should do it. Type one of the keywords in the box and also any variations on the keyword. So for Optimisation I would type Optimise, Optimising and Optimisation each on a separate line. Choose either to search in the US or the UK. Click the More Search Options dropdown and check Include Plurals. Next click Search.

Related Keywords Tool

If you are stuck for finding keywords for your business, there is the Related Keyword Tool which appears when you click Show next to the heading. Put in a word related to your business and the tool will show related keywords for you to choose from. It is really easy to get utterly confused with all the different keywords, so the best advice I can give is just try to be as organised as you can. First concentrate on all the single keywords you have, and then move on to the double keyword phrases. Be as specific and as targeted as you can.

Creating Keyword Lists

After pressing Search, below will be a list of all the keyword phrases that contain your chosen keyword in order of search popularity. The first thing you want to do is Select None, otherwise you will find yourself with a list of hundreds even thousands of useless keywords. Now work your way down the list checking any that are relevant. Try not to think too much about it otherwise you’ll take days choosing your keywords. It is better to delete them later than to miss out on important ones now. For me, the maximum keywords in a phrase I choose are 3 unless the phrase is geo-targeted like London or UK.

Once you have got to the bottom of the page, scroll back up and select the Save button under Save Selected. A small box will appear. Select your Project from the drop down and choose an obvious List name. Make the List name the keyword you have searched on. A small confirmation will appear at the bottom right detailing the number of keywords saved to the List.

Click on the next page and do exactly the same and continue until you feel you have all the keywords you need. I generally stop when the Search count gets down to single figures. When you feel you have all the keywords you need, scroll to the top and select your new List name.

Wordtracker Additional Metrics

The following screen displays all the keywords you have chosen. Click Get Additional Metrics. Check the two checkboxes under Metric 4: Google Count (Option) and select the Get Additional Metrics button.

Export your Keywords

Next to the Export option, select All Columns and then the Open button. This then displays all your chosen keywords in your default spreadsheet application. If you do not have a spreadsheet program, you may wish to check out Open Office which will give you a free productivity Suite similar to Microsoft Office. The first thing to do is to remove the KEI, KEI3 and Google Count columns. My Google Count column is empty so get rid of this one too. The reason I remove KEI and KEI3 is that Keyword Research will throw at you so many different statistics you really want to get rid of anything that is likely to confuse you. Keep it simple and just leave the columns Keyword, Searches, In Anchor and Title and Google Count Quoted. Save the document and move on to the next keyword.

Do not go worrying about what all these numbers are. Analysing the numbers will be covered in another article. For now just produce your keyword lists. Click Find keywords at the top of Wordtracker which will take you back to the Find Keywords page. Change that keyword for your next top-level keyword and do it all over again. Wordtracker keyword tool research will have produced a handful of spreadsheets each listing some fantastic keywords that you can use to optimise your website.

Deep Keyword Research

The last step is to look through each of these lists in turn and find the most popular 2-keyword phrases that relate to your business and for each do exactly the same as your top level keywords. The process should be quicker and easier as there will be less resulting keywords to choose from. I would choose Optimisation Service, Optimisation Company, Optimisation Expert, etc. Search for keywords for each of these phrases in turn. Leave all the Wordtracker settings the same. Name the lists you create with the keywords that you are searching for just as you did for the single keywords.

These are the lists you are looking for and these should provide you with 3-keyword phrases that are specific to your business. These are the keyword phrases to optimise your website with. A keyword phrase I could well choose for my home page is Website Optimisation Services which has a count of 91. Each keyword is related to my business and the keyword phrase tells exactly what I do.

Wordtracker Keyword Tool Conclusion

It may seem daunting to go through your keywords like this, but remember you have 7-days free of charge, so take your time. Take a day to produce your top-level keywords and that evening highlight any 2-keyword phrases to search on the following day. The next few days with a clear head work your way through this list.

SEO Expert Tip

This is all you want to use Wordtracker Keyword Tool for. Get those lists on your computer and you can refer to them time and time again as you build your keyword campaign, and not a penny has been spent.

Whether your menu navigation bar is placed to the top, or to the left on your web page, it is the most important thing to get right, but yet so easily the thing that’s got wrong. Let people easily find your content by providing a simple and effective navigation designed to help visitors find your content rather than inhibit them.

Main Navigation

The main navigation is typically placed either to the top of a web page or to the left, which is where visitors expect to see it. Anywhere other than this, and you’re just going to confuse people straight off the bat, which isn’t a good thing. Also, it is there for one purpose only and that is to help visitors find the content they are searching for as quickly and as easy as possible. If it doesn’t do this, then your menu navigation isn’t doing its job right.

The Best Approach

With some early thought as to how you are going to structure your menu hierarchy and content pages, then your main menu navigation SEO should be straight-forward. If you have multiple sub-categories, then use a list-based Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) style to produce a drop-down menu. This allows you to use a text-based navigation system that incorporates your keywords making them easily indexed by search engines. With every change to your menu, always check to ensure there are no broken links.

Navigation to Avoid

Try not to use Flash or JavaScript to display your main navigation as search engines will not be able to read the embedded links within. If you do have to use one of these application, then ensure you also have a text-based navigation system for your users to use and search engines to index. This could be a breadcrumb navigation, or a footer navigation. If you do use Footer navigation, be sure to check out our Footer Links SEO article. Also avoid nice-looking image-based navigation for the same reason. A much better approach is to use your graphic as a background image with your anchor text styled with CSS. Whenever you do use images for links, always include alternative text for your link with Alt Tag SEO.

Breadcrumb Navigation

Breadcrumb navigation is an excellent way to help visitors find their way around your website, especially if you have many sub-categories and many pages of content. Each category and sub-category is represented as a link with their page name as the anchor text. If you design your categories around your keywords, then this results in a keyword-rich menu system. For this page, the breadcrumb navigation would therefore be:
free seo expert > sem > seo > on-page optimising > menu navigation
This allows visitors to easily navigate your menu hierarchy and it is an excellent opportunity to promote all your keywords associated with this particular page.

SEO Expert Tip

Instead of using ‘Home’ for your website home page, try to use your primary keyphrase or the name of your company if it contains keywords.

Displaying a Tag Cloud on your website is a great way to help visitors find their way around your content and directs them exactly to where they want to go. This article explains what Tag Clouds SEO is and why you should use it on every page of your site.

Tag Clouds SEO

There is nothing mysterious about tag clouds. They are simply a collection of different keywords that when clicked display a list of pages that are all related to that particular keyword. If you click on the tag ‘keywords’, you will be presented with all my articles to do with keywords. Tag Clouds SEO offer an easy way for visitors to find the content they are looking for on your website, and another great way to optimise your website with the keywords you wish to be found for.

Tags

A tag is simply a word chosen to be associated with a particular page on your website. Tags are typically single or hyphenated keywords. Wordpress makes it easy for me to add tags and manages them all for me, no matter how many pages of content I have or how many tags I use. A set number of tags are then displayed in my Tag Cloud and depending on how popular they are, determines the size of the tag within the cloud. The more times a tag gets clicked, the larger its font size telling visitors what people are typically looking for.

Why Use a Tag Cloud

If your website contains a lot of content covering many different subjects, then it can be difficult to display your categories and pages in a simple and clear way. If you have what your visitor is looking for, you want them to know its there as quickly as possible. If you give them too long to try to find it themselves, they are going to lose interest and leave. Having a tag cloud on every page is not only eye-catching, but will help them find this information quickly.

Think About Your Tags

It is worth spending some time thinking about your tags before you start assigning them. If you use a different tag for every page, then if you have 100 pages, you are going to have 100 tags. Now that’s a lot of tags and if you’re limiting your tag cloud to 50, then that’s 50 pages that are not referenced. Create your tags so that they can be re-used across pages and where possible use plurals. Your tags should basically be your keywords for that particular page which can be found with Keyword Analysis. Therefore, if you display your tag cloud on every page, then every page is going to contain all of your main keywords which helps to reinforce the theme of your website.

SEO Expert Tip

Create your tags so that you can access every single web page of interest from your tag cloud.

Your website should have links at the bottom of every page that point to the pages you want to promote most. If you don’t implement footer links SEO, you are missing out on a great optimising opportunity. If your website uses images containing the link text as your primary navigation, then you need footer links with optimised anchor text to make the most of your SEO efforts.

Footer Links SEO

Including footer links on your website is a great idea and every successful website will have them. The links here are no different from any other link, except that they appear at the bottom of the page and will typically point to all the main pages on your website. This is a great place to again promote your main keywords and more importantly keyword phrases by linking to the pages you wish to promote most on your website. Footer Links SEO is more than just repeating the menus at the top of the page.

For your Visitors

Footer Links should be created with more than just repeating the same menus that appear in your primary navigation. Not everyone will get to see these links as hopefully everything they need can be found at the top of your page. If they do get here then hopefully it is because your page has kept them so enthralled, that they have actually read it right through to the end. Hopefully it is not because they haven’t found what they’re looking for. Either way, this is your opportunity to grab their attention and make them do something. This is the place to promote the page you want visitors to go with your Call to Action that is easy to read and catches their attention. This includes member registrations, enquiry forms, promotional products, special offers, etc. This may be the last time you get the chance to turn them into a customer so make the most of this opportunity.

For Search Engines

Footer links provide a great opportunity to yet again use those keywords that are so important to getting you visitors from search engines. This is especially true if your main navigation uses graphical images with the text link included in the image. If your Menu Navigation has been created with good thought to your keyword phrases, then the anchor text for the links will most likely be the name of the page. Try to keep it simple and not stuff loads of keywords here making the links difficult to scan. A better way is to include a promotional sentence near the links which includes your main keyword phrases and a call to action. Keep the links the same on all the pages but change the promotional text to read something that is specific to the page being linked to. The links for your footer menu should include the full path to the page including the ‘http://’. Don’t forget to test all the links before putting them live!

SEO Expert Tip

Try to use a separate footer file for your footer menu and include it into all your pages. That way, all of your footer links can be easily managed from the one place.

Sitemap SEO is about generating optimised links to every page on your website. This can be useful for both search engines and visitors who will find it easier to navigate your site. If you can automate the process of creating your sitemap, then it leaves you free to concentrate on more important optimisation techniques.

Sitemap

The sitemap is a page that is created for one purpose – to link to every page in your website. This has several advantages if done correctly for both Search Engine Optimisation and also visitors to your website. If you have a large website with many pages of great content, you need to make it as easy as possible for visitors to find what they’re looking for. Sitemap SEO provides one more great way to help them find their way around your website, both for visitors and search engines.

Keep Your Sitemap Up-to-date

Sometimes the hardest part of maintaining a sitemap is keeping it up-to-date and correct. If your website contains hundreds of pages then ensuring all pages are included and there are no broken links can be a huge task to undertake. The last thing you want to worry about as you create/delete pages and change your link URLs is then to check and change your sitemap to reflect your modifications. For very small websites, this may be an easy task, but as your business grows, having to do this every time you add a page, will become so laborious, you’ll probably end up just ditching it altogether, or worse, leaving it incomplete.

Automate the Process

It is an important file, but not so critical that you should be spending hours checking and changing links every week. If your website is created dynamically or by using a Content Management Systems (CMS) like Wordpress, then you should be able to generate your Sitemap dynamically. This will also mean it is always up-to-date and contains no broken links. If your website is statically created with every page a separate .html file, then as your business expands, it will become a nightmare maintaining all your pages anyway, let alone a sitemap. I fell into this mistake myself many years ago when I started out. Trying to keep consistency across hundreds of static pages was so soul-destroying I eventually I ditched the site altogether and learned from the experience.

Sitemap SEO

Your sitemap should look as simple as possible. If your categories have been logically created, then your pages should already be easy to find within your layout. Make it easy for visitors to quickly view your content by indenting text, highlighting categories, adding bullet points, or any way that helps to make it easier to scan. As your link text, simply use the Title Tag primary keyword of the page, that way your visitor won’t be instantly confused when they click on a link. For the home page, instead of using ‘home’, substitute this for the name of your business. Your Home page is critical because this is your main Landing Page. Finally, for the Links themselves, instead of using relative paths, use the full pathname in all your links – http://freeseoexpert.com/sem/resources/seo/on-page-optimising/sitemap.

SEO Expert Tip

Avoid maintaining your sitemap manually at all costs. If you are unable to create it dynamically, there are programs available that will spider your links and generate a sitemap for you.

Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is the address you see in your browser bar when viewing a web page on the Internet. It will look something like http://freeseoexpert.com . All of your web pages can be optimised to produce Search Engine Friendly URLs which in turn will give your rankings a boost on search engines.

Search Engine Friendly URLs

With careful consideration of your site architecture and page hierarchy, it is possible to create Search Engine Friendly URLs for every one of your pages that are optimised with all of your Keywords. Placing keywords that are directly related to that particular page in the URL helps to define its content and reinforces the theme that flows throughout the whole page.

Avoid Query Strings

Websites that are Content Management System (CMS) driven are typical examples of producing numerical query strings when defining pages. These URLs end with parameters similar to something like /page?id=12&name=urls… Even Wordpress defaults to this, but within the settings it is easy to change the configuration and display the page URLs in any way you like. Search engines really don’t like page URLs displayed with multiple query strings and session IDs, which can even prevent them indexing the page altogether. Find a way of preventing these page names at all costs.

Search-friendly Categories

Take a look at the URL of this page.
http://freeseoexpert.com/sem/seo/on-page-optimising/search-friendly-urls
This URL has been created with keywords that are directly related to this particular page. Keywords aren’t repeated and the link has been created with general keywords getting more and more specific until they are directly related to the content of the page displayed. This is the same for all the pages on this website. I have designed the category structure so that it creates page URLs in this way. When you think about how your website is going to be and more importantly going to grow, spend some time thinking of your category architecture and file hierarchy before you create any pages.

SEO Expert Tip

When you design your website, always consider how your website is going to grow with your business and build that in from the start.

Images used properly can really enhance the look of your web page. However, every image has to be loaded into the browser to display your page properly, slowing execution time. Ensure you have done image optimisation on every one of your images and each contains ALT tag SEO which provides both visitors and search engines a textual representation of your image.

Images

Images used well can make a website look great, but as with everything, there is a price to pay. Every image has to be downloaded by your browser before that page can be displayed properly. This takes time and depending on your visitor’s Internet connection speed, can seriously reduce the speed that your website appears. If it takes too long, they are just going to go elsewhere. For this reason, images should be used sparingly, and then only after they have been optimised to their smallest possible file size.

Image Optimisation

An optimised image is one that has been compressed in file size (Kb) and also physical size. If you are going to use an image, make its physical size the size that it is going to be displayed on the web page. If you are going to display a thumbnail, it is a bit of an overkill to use an image the size of a postcard. This can reduce its file size dramatically thus increasing its download speed. Most images can further be reduced in file size by compressing them. Just pop your image into your favourite image/photo program and if you don’t know how to do it, simply search in the help files for the procedure.

ALT Tag SEO

These tags stand for Alternate Text and offer visitors and search engines a text-representation of the image. As we know, search engines are unable to read images, and so it makes great sense to tell them what the image is. This also has a small optimisation benefit as yet again it offers another opportunity to use your Keywords within your web page. Stuffing these tags full of keywords however is not recommended. Firstly, these tags are displayed by mobile viewers and browsers when the images are unavailable. They also appear when the mouse hovers over an image on certain browsers. Keyword-stuffing ALT tag SEO does nothing to increase the credibility of your website, or trust of your visitors. Just tell them what it is and if your can get your keywords in, great.

SEO Expert Tip

Include an ALT tag SEO and image optimisation for every image on your web page. If there is nothing to say, just leave it looking alt=”".