Optimising Domains and Keywords

Exploring the Many Tactics of SEO

The most important thing to understand about SEO is that there are many individual signals that work together to make a whole picture. There are signals that are on the site, in the links, and on the Internet that will all add-up to how well your site performs in the search engine result pages (SERPs).

optimising a website is not about tricks and secrets. Instead, it is about maintaining best practices in coding, marketing and development so that your site finds greater visibility, reaching a greater audience.

optimising Your Domains

In the first part of this guide, we covered how easy it can be to register a domain name. Taking this one step further, optimising your domain purchases can be straightforward and strategically motivated.

The key is to understand what kinds of bonuses might be had in a specific domain purchase. While it is true, the search engines may weigh these attributes differently and it may change with the algorithms, the following have all been attributes of a domain that might be strategically leveraged:

• Age – perhaps one of the stronger signals to search engines. If a domain was registered many years ago, it has a tendency to be viewed in a more positive way than a newer domain. Hard to prove, but generally acknowledged in SEO communities.
• Keywords – if there are keywords in the domain that make an exact or partial match to the terms used in a search query, it can often work as a plus. It is generally believed that relative keywords in the domain are a positive signal to the search engines.
• Brand – if there is a connection to a brand name, these domains could receive some residual traffic from searches on the brand. Consumers and search engines alike might be inclined to visit a site connected to a brand name. Similarly, if the domain name is unique enough to be brandable, it can become an asset you can leverage.
• Memorable – a simple concept, having a domain that is easily remembered and easy to type is a plus. Complicating domains is not a wise move – keep it as short and simple as possible.

The goal in a strategic domain purchase would be to align as many of these elements as you can, and pay as little as you can for the resulting domain.

This also creates a potential list of negative elements, or things in a domain that will not usually help your online strategies:

• Using numbers in place of letters – don’t replace “for” with “4” and expect that it will be easy to communicate
• Complex spelling – for example, a word like “amateur” or “calendar” will be prone for misspellings, which may adversely affect your domain’s effectiveness. However, you can also use this idea to perhaps identify strategic misspellings to take advantage of this likely occurrence. One webmaster’s loss might be your gain!
• Using dashes – even though you can insert dashes in-between words of a domain, why would you? Having them will only make the domain harder to type and communicate clearly. While there was some belief that hyphenated domains would offer some type of positive (or at least equal) signal, the general consensus in the SEO communities is that you should avoid dashes and hyphens when possible.

.COM, .NET, .ORG, .BIZ or what?

While domain extensions were originally envisioned to separate and easily segregate types of content offered by websites, this separation has blurred in recent years. Add to this, international modifiers and new options being tested and the potential domain extensions now available are pretty extensive. (Note: some restrictions per country may apply. View this list of requirements by country: http://www.wilmerhale.com/files/upload/domain_registration.pdf and here is a list of domains by country: http://www.101domain.com/country_domain.htm )

The .com extension is generally the most preferred. It is the extension most people would intuitively try first, and the search engines seem to universally treat a .com site with the same respect. Similarly, a .net or .org site will tend to do well in all the major search engines in the US and beyond.

A .com extension will tend to pull in organic searches simply because it is what most people assume a site will be on. However, a .org or a .net can be often had more easily and affordably, and sites using these extensions can be very powerful.

Strategically, many non-developers are ignorant to the power of the .net and .org extensions. If the .com is not available, they may choose to find a different domain. This means that while the .com is surely the most valuable of all domain extensions, there is often a wealth of opportunity in other extensions.

Lesser Domains

When you get into lesser domain extensions, like .biz or .info, you might have to build-up the supporting signals for these sites a little more than you would on a .com, .net or .org site. This is not to say that you cannot get sites using these “lesser” extensions ranked – just that there tends to be more work involved in building signals of trust to these sites.

The different search engines also treat the extensions uniquely, so something that works well in Bing might not do so well in Google. Some extensions don’t work well at all, such as .mobi or .us sites. If you are serious about competing for organic search engine visibility, make sure you are not crippling yourself with a poor domain extension.

If you are strategically looking at domain extensions, sweeping into your possession as many competitive ones as you can get is often a tactic used by successful webmasters. So though you might be planning only one website initially (placed on the .com extension), you might buy the related .net, .org and other extensions as well. If for no other reason, this is often done to keep them from your competition.

Some, you may point into the main domain. This means people who accidentally type in the wrong extension can still be directed seamlessly to your site. You can also do this with common misspellings of a domain – you anticipate the problem, redirect a couple common errors into the main site, and retain your users. For example, if you owned “Calendar.com” you might point “Calender.com” to it as well, or if you had “BusinessBasics.com” you might also point “BuisnessBasics.com” to it.

It is also not uncommon for a main site to be on one extension, and then use the other extensions for individual campaigns, related marketing ideas, or other ways to promote the efforts of the main site. Sometimes a mirror site is launched on a lesser domain and blocked from organic search in an effort to separate and isolate tracking.

The best strategy in SEO is probably to build a single site with more authority opposed to building smaller, laser-focused sites. However, smaller sites that clearly answer user needs can also be effective. Blending these two approaches might also work very well, depending on the competition in your niche.

One way to minimize your developmental risk and find new opportunities is to conduct a little research.

Researching Domains

Determining, or realistically estimating the value of domain is a learned skill on which you can build. It often takes experience, market savvy, and foresight to be able to see or find the potential value in a domain – but all of these “natural” tendencies will be supported by some “mechanical” data that anyone can research.

• Exact match: What are the specific search phrases crucial to your industry/site? If your targeted users would be searching for “Ohio bed stores” is ohiobedstores.com, .net or .org available? Purchasing exact match search phrases as domain names may be one strong way to take advantage of online opportunities.
• Keywords: The keyword research you might apply to domain purchases is pretty encompassing. There are so many different ways people talk about ideas, products, services, and offers that there are virtually unlimited opportunities for webmasters to find a place where they can carve out a domain specific to their offers. Using tools like SEOBook’s Keyword Research Tool (http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/) you can plug in a potential keyphrase get a wealth of information on the competitive nature of your potential keyword as well as seeing possible alternatives.
• Availability: Once you have determined which domain(s) you want to buy, you want to see if they are available. A word of warning: although many domain registrars offer a means to search for domain availability, some people believe that on some sites (like GoDaddy) these “inquisitive” searches are monitored – so you could be inadvertently tipping-off a competitor to your best domain ideas by using these sites to search for new options. To avoid this, you might instead try a site like: http://www.whois.net/ . This site will still show you whether or not a domain has been registered, but it is less commonly used for research and likely safer to your strategies.

The above tactics are used for researching and determining new domains to establish. However, in strategic domain purchases you will often be reviewing existing sites, auctions, and domains that may be parked or forwarded. Using the specifics that make a domain valuable to you (age, keywords, brandable, memorable) as criteria, finding an existing domain is a smart way to get a quick leg-up the competition.

Buying Existing or Retired Sites

Let’s say you research a valuable domain and find a site on it. Rather than starting over with a newly modified domain search for one that is not owned, you may want to look a little more deeply at the site you found for your desired keyphrase.

In many cases, people will have a site that is simply sitting there, ignored. Or, perhaps they have an underdeveloped resource and are not using the domain to reach as far as you believe it could – you see they are leaving “money on the table.” In cases like these, you may be able to reach out, and offer to buy the site from the existing owner (note: to find the domain owner, refer to http://www.whois.net/).

What Creates the Value in a Domain?

Prices for web properties can range all over the map. Criteria for moving the price one way or the other would be things like equity in the existing domain name (age, memorable, branding, keywords), code structure complexity, established traffic patterns, link profiles, and even income (ads, sales, leads, etc.).

The value you see in a domain you’d like to buy will of course drive the price negotiations. To properly value a domain is not easy, as there are many different market conditions and externalities to consider. But be aware – what you think the domain is worth, and what the owner may feel it is worth might be very different things.

In most cases, unless you are buying and flipping domains for a profit, you should consider the available resources you’ll have to develop your domain. Creating a valuable site and getting the most out of your domain will take at a minimum, investments of time, money, marketing and technology. How much are you ready to invest once you own the domain? How much of your total budget can you devote to the domain purchasing process?

In reality, purchasing a valuable domain is one of the smartest ways to direct a large part of your online marketing budget. Consider that even a weak site on a strong domain will receive some amount of traffic while a strong site on a really weak domain might have to work twice as hard to reach some degree of success.

When approaching an owner to purchase a domain, the current condition of the site (if there is one) could be a factor in negotiating. One strategy is to find sites in competitive niches that have been parked or neglected, and offering the owner something to “take it off their hands.”

Remember that in most typical cases, the value of the domain is actually whatever is felt as fair by both the buyer and the seller. In domain acquisitions, the market will rule. Value is as value does.

Most SEO experts agree that a strong domain is a wise investment. Make sure you are estimating the return you expect to receive from your efforts and the resources needed. Any purchasing decision should be guided by achieving a strong ROI (return on investment).

Auctions

Expiring, parked, and other domains of value are often put up for auction. Auctions can allow you to find great domains and get them for a fraction of the true market value. Or, they might be valuable domains that are only available in an auction. Sometimes, auctions are a good way to get a competitive jump into an established marketplace.

Domaintools.com and Sedo.com are currently two of the more popular auction sites.

If you take the qualities of a domain that suggest trust and authority – age, links in, subject matter – you can see how purchasing an established domain can allow you a leg-up on the competition.

When your site launches, if you are putting it on an aged and established domain with the proper forwarding you can often harness some great search engine benefits.

The skill of identifying a strategically valuable domain and winning its auction is almost like an art form. However, because of the sheer volume of purchased and available domains that occur, there are many bargains on strategic names every day, won by auction.

You might develop a site and then strategically comb the auctions to find a solidly related domain in your established niche on which to launch it. Or, you might watch the auction sites for a new opportunity and take advantage of the head-start and benefits offered by an aged, established domain when you’re entering a brand new niche.

Either way, when you are serious about being competitive on the web, domain auctions are going to be well worth your time as a “get ahead” type of strategy to explore.

Brief Introduction to the 301 redirect

If you are considering purchasing an established domain, you will want to become familiar with the 301 redirect.

A 301is a status code, universally recognized as a permanent redirect – telling the search engines and future visitors “the page content (or site) that was originally here can now be found here.” This is a strong statement to make with your code, so 301 redirects need to be handled with care and precision.

You often use a 301 redirect on a page-by-page basis. For example, if you had a page named “store.html” and a site revamp renames it “shop.php” a 301 redirect can allow at least some of the equity built-up in the original location to be passed to the new one.

Wikipedia offers this helpful definition, which includes many potential uses of a redirect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL_redirection

If you buy a strategically advantageous domain, a 301 is used to push the equity it has acquired to your desired location. This might be done on a global level, but doing it page-by-page makes a stronger approach, when possible.

A word of warning: even with a properly executed 301 redirect, sometimes you can’t pass on the equity of one property to another. This is most common if you switch niches – for example, if you purchased a decent domain about pet care and started using it to promote real estate, you may very easily lose the equity built by the pet care site. However, if you bought the pet care site and put up a site that highlighted a different aspect of pet care, your chances for getting it to stick increase.

The actual syntax you’ll use to properly code your 301 redirects will vary based on the coding language creating the website. Here are a couple resources for you to find out how to code a 301 in many code languages:

• http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=93633
• http://www.stevenhargrove.com/redirect-web-pages/

Keywords

Selecting properly targeted keywords is one of the most competitively challenging and rewarding things you can do for your website.

Keywords are the actual link between user intent and your site – so proper keyword research and understanding becomes the crux of all organic optimisation.

One way to see the value keywords have in your site is to review your existing analytics reports, tracing which keywords led to conversions. However, for a new site this is obviously not possible. Luckily, there are some keyword tools available that make researching competitive and potentially valuable keywords a much easier process.

You can get started with these simple steps:

Step One: Create the List

Start a list of all words you’d consider to be related to your site. Make it as inclusive as possible – you want to open your mind to many potential related words as a starting point. Research will help you pare it down and analytics will later tell you the true value, but initially, you want to create a list of all the keywords you can think of, and get them entered in a manageable format (like an Excel spread sheet or database). A master keyword list for a website should become a perpetual work-in-progress, especially in more competitive markets.

Step Two: Put Yourself in Their Shoes

To refine and expand your keyword research, you want to put yourself in the place of one of your potential users. What are users going to actually type in as a question, where your site holds the best answer? Since you’ll quickly find this is almost impossible to guess, you’ll soon want to look to keyword research tools for confirmation.

Step Three: Use SEOBook’s Keyword Research Tool (http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/)

SEOBook’s Keyword Research Tool is a free tool to see more about the strategic value in the keywords you are selecting for your site. The research done using this tool can help to eliminate guesswork, and give your strategies more depth and penetration.

Using your master keyword list, enter each one uniquely to see potential search volumes. You may be surprised at the results – and opportunity – you find.

For example, if you enter in “business loans” as your term, the keyword tool shows you that twice as many searches occur on the term “small business loans.” This means a win for capturing “small business loans” could help you much more than a similar win for “business loans.”

It also illustrates that there may a difference between what you think people are searching for, and what they are actually typing in as searches. Closing this gap using supporting data (eliminate guessing) is a crucial component of keyword research and identifying opportunity.

Additional considerations in keyword research would involve looking at news and trends, related searches, and long tail potential around a specific keyword. The traffic pulled by these variations will help you see potential opportunities to cater specific content to the phrases and keywords with the most organic strength.

Competitive Analysis

Another smart way to get ahead with keyword research is to take a look at what your competitors are doing.

Using free tools like SpyFu(http://spyfu.com ), SEODigger (http://seodigger.com ) and parent SEMRush (http://semrush.com) and the flexible SEO for Firefox plugin (http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/seo-for-firefox.html ) you can get a glimpse into what your competitors are doing. These tools will help you see why a site is ranking, and offer insight into which keywords are their strongest.

Identifying strong keywords working well on your competitors’ sites can help you to make sure your own efforts are targeted on keywords likely to produce. You may also identify unfilled opportunities, particularly true for long-tail or regionally based keywords.

In addition, you can see where competitors might be receiving some of their link strength, which also has keyword considerations (think: anchor text). Identifying competitors’ link sources and keywords will help you to get started, or stay actively in the game.

PPC testing

Pay-per click advertising is another smart way that many SEOs test the power of specific keywords. By bidding on keywords being considered for potential organic keyword development, you can see more clearly how users will respond.

Basically, you simply test the effectiveness of specific keywords by buying traffic for them, and seeing how the users interact with your site. You also look for volume – if you get a lot of clicks from a particular keyword it may indicate a good opportunity. If there is little or no activity, it would suggest that the targeted keyword does not receive as much type-in traffic, and you might be better off going after something more strategic.

One important thing in using PPC to test the waters is to manage your expenditures. Spending a moderate to high amount (relatively speaking) will give you better snapshots of predictable behavior, yet these same budgets can easily get out-of-hand.

Short tests with controlled budgets may not produce as definitive or obvious an answer for you, but it should be enough to show you whether or not you could expect organically sustainable traffic and conversions from your keyword choice.

The skill of managing a PPC campaign correctly is an effective one for an internet marketer to learn. You need to understand how to write ads, improve your site relevancy and manage keywords and budgets. It can be very profitable and a sustainable way to increase business, depending on your business model.

If you are unfamiliar or new to PPC advertising, you can find both beginner and expert PPC training at http://training.ppcblog.com/

Longtail Targeting and Related Terms

The longtail keywords associated with your topic can be a great way to make progress with your website. Likewise, terms related to the main keywords you select can add strength to your overall approach.

The search engines continue to become more cognizant of how relative terms connect to big-bucket keywords. For example, if your targeted keyword is “cars” the engines will recognize that “autos” and “automobiles” are also important. These are typically referred to as <a href=“ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic” target=“_blank”>semantic</a> connections.

What this means to you when you are developing content, is that you can use these related words to give more power to the selected keywords. Because the search engines make a semantic connection between “autos” and “cars,” by using the term “autos” in a page targeting “cars” you provide more conceptual depth and relevance. It is an algorithmic win.

Relative keywords can also be used to keep the page focused and on-topic without pushing the limits on using the targeted keyword too often (which often results in a search engine penalty or filter).

The longtail keyphrases occur when your keyword is connected to other words that create a multi-word keyphrase. Using the same example, a long term keyphrase might be “cars for sale in Boston” and this is a phrase you might weave verbatim into the content. When a searcher types in this longer phrase your site has a better chance of appearing than one that does not include the phrase in the copy. If you blend these longtail strategies into your linkbuilding efforts, you can help solidify your competitive edge.

Longtail phrases are typically going to be ones that are easier for you to gain traction than shorter, less specific keywords. “Cars for sale in Boston” is going to be easier to win than “cars for sale” because it is more specific, narrowly/regionally focused and there will be less competition.

There will also be less search traffic on longtail terms, but it can be a lucrative win when measured over time. Don’t underestimate the long-term effects of a strong longtail presence increasing site visits.

A longtail search typically reflects clear-cut, definitive user intent. Because the user knows more specifically what they are searching for (i.e., cars for sale in Boston), a longtail search has a high likelihood of converting. So while the general traffic might be considerably lower than that of a larger bucket keyword, the longtail typically represents solid earning potential.

Relative keywords are pretty easy to research and discover using a thesaurus or synonym suggestion tool. Longtail keyphrases would be targeted using market research, keyword research tools, and even the search engines themselves. Once your site has been live for a while, you can also review your analytics to see incoming longtail and relative keyphrases that you might be able to optimise more aggressively.

With a collection of competitive keywords selected, you will be ready to blend them into your site optimisation efforts, starting with your site development.