Affordable Small Business SEO Reports:

Keywords and Keyword Phrases:

The first step in optimizing any site is to pick keywords or keyword phrases to target. Keywords are the words that searchers type in to the search engines to find your services. We will often use the term keyword to mean both a single keyword and keyword phrases (more than one word strung together). Today the internet is so competitive that targeting a single word is most likely not effective in that a small business typically can't achieve high rankings for such a general, commonly searched term.

For a small business to compete, it will want to pick keywords that are searched consistently but have fewer competitors. Though it may be exciting to see that a phrase is searched thousands of times a day, chances are there are so many competitors trying to optimize to that phrase that you have little chance of cracking the first page of the search results without a very expensive campaign of linking and building your site. For small businesses, it is most efficient to target niche markets through keywords that may not necessarily be searched as often . This gives you a good shot at tweaking your site and making it on that first page.

There can be major differences in popularity and competition between words. For example, the plural of a word can have more popularity or competition than the singular. As an example, "italian greyhound rescue" and "italian greyhounds rescue" have different popularity and competition.

Another way to find a niche is to use a geographic term next to your keyword phrase. Many small businesses can only cater to a local clientele anyway. Wasting effort on general terms that may bring 95% of prospects outside of your service area isn't helpful either. Geographic targeting may be an easier way to get on a first page of search engine results and drive traffic to your site. Again, the goal is to make those first couple of pages. As you probably know yourself from doing your own searches, it is rare that searchers go looking past the first few pages of results.

Working with some knowledge about your market, we can provide you with keywords for which you are more likely to compete via the important keyword research around search volume and competitors.

Let us now explain the columns in the keyword report linked below:

Column 1: This is simply the rank of the words by KEI, which will be explained shortly

Column 2: The report is run for google since that is the most used search engine, but if you'd like it run for another search engine, please specify.

Column 3: This is the KEI value. The KEI uses formulas to compare the number of searches for a keyword with the number of competitors. Basically, look for keywords near the top. The higher the KEI, the more popular your keywords are, and the less competition they have. This means you have a better chance of getting to the top.

Column 4: 24 hour search is the expected number of times this keyword will be searched in the next 24 hours. This is also determined through formulas but is believed in the industry to be generally accurate. Remember, this number is just for google, which accounts for about half of the searches being performed.

Column 5: This is the number of competitors believed to be competing for your keyword. Again, the lower this number the better, but the KEI will do the math for you.

Column 6: This is the keyword that the numbers are associated with.

On Site Optimization:

Now that you have selected a keyword you can begin optimizing your site. The Top 10 Site Report provides you with a way to compare your site to the top 10 sites currently being listed on the results for the keyword you selected. Often times, if you have picked a keyword with a good SEI, you will find these sites are not necessarily optimized to this keyword, but have made the high rankings because they have a similar subject and are a quality site for similar keywords. The Top 10 report looks in great detail about how you can tweak your site to outdo the others. It gives explicit advice and shows statistics for your site and the competitors.

The report looks at the following on site factors and gives advice on how to improve your page:

Document Title: The text between the title tags in the HTML code on your page

Meta Keywords: These fall between the head tags in your HTML code and is the place to put the keywords you would be targeting. You can put several keywords here, so include the keyword you chose for optimization along with some other relevant ones from the list you receive in the Keyword Report. Relevant terms help you here.

Meta Description: This tag is where you describe your webpage

Body Text: This is the text on your web page viewable by people visiting your site.

First sentence of the body text: Since this is how you lead people in to your site, it is important that the first sentence be optimized.

URL: This is the actual url of your site. For example, www.yoursite.com.

H1 Headline Text: This is what is written in the HTML code in the H1 tags

H2 Headline Text: This is what is written in the HTML code in the H2 tags

Same Site Link Texts: This is the text you use in your site to link to other pages within your own site. The other top 10 report focuses exclusively on inbound links from other sites.

Outbound Link Texts: This is the text you use in your links to other sites from your site.

Same Site and Outbound URL's: Examines where you are sending site visitors through your links and if it is relevant.

Inbound Links:

Google itself tells us that it puts a high value on inbound links. Search engines never release exactly what values they give to different factors, so it is only figured out by continual work. Those of us in search engine optimization learn what works and try to help you with our knowledge. The Top 10 Link Report lets you look in great detail at what links are coming in to your site and what links are coming in to those that have the top 10 positions for your keyword. From our experience, Google relies more on the quality of the link than the quantity, so this helps the small business which may not have the time or budget to try to get thousands of links to their site. Links from .gov or .edu sites can be as valuable as a hundred other links.

The Top 10 Link Report goes in depth on the following subjects:

Number of Inbound Links: A count of inbound links going to yours and the top 10 competitors sites and whether they are .edu or .gov links. It also searches for links from DMOZ and the Yahoo Directory. These are directories rather than search engines and are looked upon as the two biggest and most respected directories. Every site should be linked and registered at these sites. If you need help registering, we can do this for you.

Keyword Analysis of Sites Linking to your site: This checks to see if the sites linking to you seem relevant to your content by examining their keywords.

A list of webpages linking to your site and the top 10 sites:This is just a listing of links that you can check yourself and the number of keywords in that pages document text. Often, if a site links to your competitor, they may link to you if you ask.

Link Texts used for these links: This shows what link text is used at the site that links to yours or the top 10 competitors.

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