Three Best Tools for Seeing How Your Site Ranks for Critical Keywords

There are three great web tools for looking quickly and easily at how well your site is ranking for keywords you are targetting. Of course, there are many such tools, but these three in particular are commonly overlooked and each can help you assess and improve your site in different but valuable ways. Whether you are working on free SEO or paid PPC ads, these are all worth looking at:

(1) Website Grader is a great site that, as a free service, does a few valuable things all at once. First, it checks your site’s general statistics on Google, Technorati, etc… More importantly, however, it shows you how you rank for keywords you are targetting AND compares that to other sites which YOU define as your competition. The tool also looks for gaps in your page structure or other problems with your site that may be hurting your rankings or keeping you from turning up higher on search results. Of course, as the name suggests, it also creates an overall ‘grade’ for your site based on this combination of factors.

(2) Google Site Related Keywords is a great way to see what Google itself thinks of your site. You simply enter your domain name then wait for Google to browse your site and return what the GoogleBots decide are your top keywords of choice. If you aren’t turning up on search results, this can help explain why. This site, for example, returns top keywords like ‘page rank,’ ‘search engine’ and ‘blog’ – a good sign that I have targetted the right keywords and that Google has a good idea of what this site is about! Google thought this site was about funny and weird humor, which is partly true, while it originally thought this site was about fine art, not street art.

(3) Stealing Competitor Keywords is a great way to get ahead of whatever sites you may be competing with and outranking them on search engines by seeing what they use! As the linked article suggests, it might be best to sign up for a 1-day trial (quite inexpensive) and do a lot of searches in that first day.

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Improving Blogs with SEO (not SMO!) Techniques: Part 1 – Targetting the Right Keyword Phrases and Density

Recently a number of bloggers have been asking us about about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), including bloggers who are successfully using Social Media Optimization (SMO) techniques. This came as something of a surprise, but it seems clear that a lot of bloggers forget to target all audiences possible, which can reduce overall readership potential. We, for example, focus more on SEO than SMO – though a balance is ideal. Further, using SMO techniques targets a relatively limited range of people – with a somewhat limited range of interests. Alternatively, SEO can bring in search traffic from all over the world, and specifically helps bring in people who are interested in the content they searched for that is on your page!

With that in mind, I will be writing a few posts with SEO strategies for bloggers who want to target search traffic. Don’t forget: these don’t have to conflict with SMO, they can be an added bonus! This first set of steps is really easy to follow and a good introduction to SEO for blogs:

(1)  Use the free Overture Keyword Tool to find a search phrase. If your blog is, for example, about ‘race cars’ try putting the words ‘race’ and ‘cars’ in the search box. You’ll notice right away that tons of people search for race cars, of course. Now, getting your site to come up on searches for that phrase is going to be tough (just Google that same set of words to see how many sites you are competing against!).  Pick a few sets of keywords from the results that are a little less high traffic but still have significant search volume and are relevant to your site, like ‘modified race car’ or ‘street race car.’

(2) Use Google and do a search for the phrases you have selected. How relevant are the results? How many results are there? How high are the PageRanks of the top sites (if you have a Google Toolbar installed that shows you automatically? If you find that the top results are highly relevant and detailed, that there are a lot of results or that their PageRanks are all very high, you may want to target a different keyword phrase or string (by inputting your keywrod phrase into Overture and going ‘one level deeper’ to add another keyword to the phrase). If not and you have found something worth targetting, then write a post about 

(3) Your post should contain the keyword phrase or string in the headline (e.g. Cool Modified Race Cars) and should repeat key words or phrases in the body text as often as possible. Also, if possible, encourage people link to that post using the anchor/title text that matches your keywords of choice (e.g. modified race cars).

(4) Check your results for keyword density using a Keyword Density Calculator. Most people suggest shooting for a density of between three and five percent. That can be quite difficult (five percent in this case would mean that your phrase should be 1/20th of the text, which means integrating it into almost every sentence!). Try to mix things up – rearrange the order of the keywords and where they fall in the text. And above all: make sure the content isn’t comprimised while you are going for keyword density!

Once you get the hang of this system it is pretty easy to use. It is also a good way for bloggers who are having writer’s blog to figure out new topics related to their core issues of interest. Best of all, SEO brings in search traffic which can give new life to a blog that has a set readership. Finally, SEO also means that if your SMO strategies every fail you have something to fall back on!