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It always amazes me for the sheer diversity of search phrases that people resort to in order to find my site. Keywords are not just about placing them in your tags, they are the embodiment of text, expressions from within individual pages.
I think this is an important point and often times overlooked, especially to those new site owners and new to SEO. I’d like to share a bit of the data from one site that I work on. I’m going to limit my post to a dynamic, ecommerce site. But some of this can be carried over to other sites. It’s an ecommerce site with hundreds of pages indexed in the major SEs. It’s written in cold fusion, mostly dynamic content with some static pages. The site is three years old.
(numbers are rounded off for easy reading)
The top five keyword phrases referred 38,000 visitors to the site. The rest referred 64,000 visitors. But 47,000 of the referrers to the site came from keyword phrases that were searched for only one time. So while the main keyword phrases are important – 38K referrers – the obscure search phrases add up – to the tune of 64K visitors. And that's leaving out the fact that longer, specific phrases convert better.
So, what is one way to get these people to your site besides the generic “add more content”? Make sure you’re making the most of your product pages and search result pages.
Titles - Use them and abuse them. On your product pages include brand names, model numbers, style, colors, whatever is appropriate. Use very specific words with the most important real estate on your products page. Try using relavent high conversion words like 'buy', 'new', or 'used' in your titles.
Meta Description – This can be great place to distinguish yourself in the SERPS. When searching for longer KW phrases, Google will often show my meta description instead of the ‘ransom note’. Take the time to write a good, generic description that will work for all your products. Use ‘call to action’ words to entice people to click on your link.
Copy – On the product pages, the more detailed description you can write about your products, the better. If you have many competitors selling the same product, find ways to make your descriptions unique in some way. Many of my competitors just use the manufacturer’s description. This is a great start, but adding your own personal knowledge makes it that much better. But keep in mind on this page and the search results page that your calls to action are STILL the most important thing on the page. Never let your copy get in the way of your users finding “Buy Now”.
Anchor text – The second best way to optimize these pages. Instead of “add this product to my cart”, use “add this blue widget to my cart”. It’s not “read more about this item”, it’s “read more about this widget”. This is also a great place to add words like "discount" if they're appropriate, too.
Making these changes increased traffic, and more importantly, sales for this site. The increase wasn’t huge, but the changes took so little time, it was well worth it.
I'm sure there are more ways to take advantage of these pages. I'm looking forward to hearing about your ideas and experiences.: )
Edited for clarity
[edited by: mona at 12:52 am (utc) on Jan. 9, 2006]
Isn't it amazing how common sense each of your points is? I will just expand a bit on a couple.
Your point on the shear number of words/phrases that viewers generate to find a site/answer/product is often overlooked. Most keyword fanatics load up the page with repetitions of the same "money words" ... see the popularity of keyword density analysers, etc.
The use of your money (or declared) keywords are best used in title, headings, and links and not abused. Give them prominence but then fill the content with as many varied product and product use descriptors as possible. Unsung but highly profitable openwords often outsell the vaunted anguished over keywords.
Know applicable adjectives, synonymous nouns, product slang, and study your logs. Then set up a continual product page copy rewrite process - supply the need for "new" content while increasing query matches; increase sales while actually just rearranging the labelling.
We have been able to increase traffic 60% beyond identified kw's.
Top 5 keyword phrases refer less than 10% of the total referrers to site.
People may start their searching with broad terms, but by the time they are ready to buy, most of them know exactly what they want and search for it using terms you'd never be able to predict.
The good news is, since nobody is optimizing for those terms, competition is minimal. And if you have a product that closely matches the search terms they devise, you're likely to come up in the search results for those unexpected terms without even trying.
Getting the most out of your ecommerce site
Geeze, I sure wish this stuff worked on info sites :)
OK, wacky humour aside, here's my contribution. If you start seeing a single search showing up more than once a day, find some excuse to give it a page of its own.
Then watch it breed even more search terms you would never have thought about.
If you start seeing a single search showing up more than once a day, find some excuse to give it a page of its own. Then watch it breed even more search terms you would never have thought about.Yes, this is a great way to use your logs. But you just put a new twist on this for me with this one, ken_b. I've never actually followed up like this, but I'll have to start now.
I'm constantly amazed at how poorly the most searched keywords convert in comparison to the ones that would come up as completely unsearched terms in the services that recommend the best keywords to use.Exactly, jeffb.
...you're likely to come up in the search results for those unexpected terms without even trying.True. But if you do try, you can dominate many of the SERPS for these terms:-)
