Every business struggles at one point or another with how to be found by Google. Wading through the overwhelming amount of information online about marketing for search engines could take you weeks.
Below are my notes from the breakout session, “How to get your WordPress website found on Google” presented by Jenny Munn (@JennyMunn) / www.JennyMunn.com from the 2014 Wordcamp.
The foundation of SEO (search engine optimization) is all about keywords (and a rockin’ WordPress website of course). Come to this keyword research clinic and learn how to get more traffic, leads, and sales for your business by using the language of your customers.
4 phases of keyword research:
- Brainstorm keyword possibilities
- Verify keyword your data and add any additional words Google recommends
- Prioritize your keywords and select the best ones for your website
- Assign keywords to pages and posts
SEO is simply improving the discovery of content. Remember, Google ranks web PAGES not web SITES.
Phase 1: Brainstorm Keyword Possibilities
- Open Excel and do a brain dump. List all the words you think your website should rank for in a web search (these are words that someone would search for to find you). Keywords can be key phrases as well.
- Now, add to that list:
- Google autosuggest words
- Poll a partner and add their suggestions
- Poll a customer and add their suggestions
- Check out competitors with Spyfu
- Look in your Google Analytics
- Group similar words together. Don’t forget plurals or synonyms.
Phase 2: Verify keyword data using Google Keyword Planner
Use keyword planner to review your keywords from your brain dump. Concentrate on the ones that are between 100 – 500 searches per month. You want low/medium competition keywords in order to start ranking.
Phase 3: Keyword Prioritization and Selection
Manually review your list and boil down to your top 5-10 keywords. Be sure to look at your competition — who ranks as #1 for the keyword that you want to rank for?
Phase 4: Assign Keywords to Content
Take those final keywords and put them into content – 1 to 2 keywords per page. Always make sure it’s well written, engaging content. Don’t overstuff your keyword into the content.
Use your keywords in:
- H1
- alt tag for images
- meta
- url
Tip: have different pages for your services, instead of one that includes them all so that they rank for their keywords. And don’t forget that UNIQUE content matters!
Jenny was nice enough to share her slides:
