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Keywords

Google Insights use for analysis and upcoming trends

Filed Under: Search Engine, SEO

My Google Alert on Joomla SEO just brought me this link to an Google Insights Article that also discussed the use of this new tool in conjunction with the previous mentioned report in Open Source CMS Market shares.

What interested me even more was how these figures where on a regional level, so I did some comparisons between Worldwide, USA, UK and the Netherlands.

The outcome did somehow surprise me…

Below the graphics for the Worldwide search, showing clearly the search for Joomla as the biggest one…

Now for the Dutch searchers, Joomla is also looking great with extreem high search levels.

 

When it comes to the UK, you see that Joomla and WordPress are almost level, with WordPress here as the rising star.

But here is the really BIG surprise, Joomla is loosing big time to WordPress when it comes to the United States.

So where does this big difference come from? Are there more Bloggers in the US?
Is WordPress so much more popular in the US for use as a CMS as well?
Is the installed base of WordPress bigger in the US, and are there more questions on using WordPress?

But that is just one way to look at this tool….

Most interesting are the screens just below the Worldwide search, that will show you the regions that are the biggest searchers on that specific keyword.
Which is great information if you need to target a certain region for your SEO Customer.

Also the results below that field, which gives you related searches, but also Rising searches… which means that this is a tool to use in the future to see what keywords are hot and what you should be writing about!

I like the tool! How about you? can you work with this information or are you skeptical about the numbers shown?

Setting up a Joomla 1.5 website The Case Study

Filed Under: Featured

I am currently in the process of building a new website for my own pleasure, and I thought I would tell you about to process involved in setting up a search engine optimized website with Joomla 1.5.x

You might thinks, well that should not take long… just grab a copy of the new Joomla version, install it en you are ready to got, that easy.

But that would be just a tiny little to simple… there is just more to do BEFORE you install Joomla (or any other CMS for that matter)

In the next weeks or so you can read here about how to get started once you have gotten an Idea to create a website about.
You will be reading about:

  • Domain name selection
  • Keyword research
  • Getting into the mind of your visitors
  • Setting Up a website structure that is easy to use, good for your visitors and search engines
  • Choosing a hosting company
  • Choosing your template and layout
  • Installing and fine-tuning Joomla SEO Components
  • Writing Content and what to write Search Engine Optimized content
  • Tracking visitors
  • Promoting your website

As you can see there is a lot to cover and at the end I (and maybe you to) should have a website that is doing well in the Search Engines and is also great for your visitors.

What I am nog going to tell you, is what the sites URL is, just to keep things clean in the process.
Some of the things I am going to tell you will see at the end of the serie, but by then it should not have a large effect on the visitors number.

Warning! Don’t expect a high frequency of posts about this project, since some thing really taken time, however once a week I guess there should be an update on the project.

P.s. most of the things will also be applicable to a Joomla 1.0.x website.

How to Optimize your Joomla site with Keywords

Filed Under: Joomla Seo

If you have read several topics on Search Engine Optimization, you will find that the term “Keywords” is used to indicate several different items of SEO.

Like:

  • Metatag keywords
  • Search keywords
  • Targeted keywords

And the latter is what I am going to give you some extra inside information on, and it will show you how easy it is if you really want to boost your sites ranking for your mayor keyword that you are targetting.

Optimizing your site structure

First things first… do your keyword research and find the topics related to your website main topic.

Then reorganize your site structure to reflect that relations.

So if you would create a website about, well lets say eheh… Joomla! then you know it will be very difficult to rank for the search term Joomla! itself.
But there are a lot of keywords related to Joomla, like Templates, Components, Modules, Plugins, Mambots.
See how these terms kan create a cluster of keywords?

Here is an image of elliance infographics that shows it all:

keyword clustering for better rankings and SEO

And the best part is… Joomla will actually force you in to structure it the right way, if you do you keywords research!

You see, where may people think of the rigid structure of Joomla for placing content is a bad thing, it is actually a great thing for SEO.
In Joomla you have to set up a structure in Section, Categories and Items which is pretty simple as you can read on Understanding the Joomla structure

But clustering you keywords in categories within the a section is the best keyword cluster you can create!

In a more diffecult term this is called LSI, Latent Semantical Indexing which is covered in Joomla and LSI for SEO

So if you really want your site to rock in the search engines, get your keywords together, create categories for them and start writing your content items accordingly…

Oh, one more thing… if you are going to restructure you Joomla site, make sure you 301 redirect your old URLs to the new ones!

Placing your Keywords in Joomla!

To get your keywords into your Joomla! articles you need to open the Metatags section on the left of you article writing screen:

Placing Joomla Keywords

You will most likely see a screen with lesser options, as this screen is taken from a website that allready has the Joomlatwork.com SEF Patch installed, which I highly recommend.

You will have a field called Meta Tag Keywords and that is where you place your keywords. Make sure those keywords are also in the text of the article and keep them limited to a maximum of 10.
Also be aware the Google doesn’t use these Meta keywords to index your pages but other search engines still use them.

There is a place for Keywords in your Global configuration screen, my advice… don’t use that option…

Global Configuration Metadata Settings
Joomla! will use that data on every article where you don’t use the Meta Data fields in your articles and thus giving the search engines the same values over and over again.

You can check if this happens with your website by searching Google with the term “site:www.example.com” ( without the ” ” and replace example.com with your own domain name)


How Search Engines Help finding Keywords

Filed Under: Optimization, Search Engine, Search Engines, SEO, SEO Optimization

You now how to find keywords for your website, right? You know about Google external ad tool, WordTracker, trillian and seobook.

But there are more easily and very targeted keyword suggestions to be found.
The Search Engines themselves will show you what they think are the most relevant keywords…
It is like looking into their database and finding what they think is relevant for you visitors.

You just have to now how and where to look.
I did some research for a new page of a new site to check out the Singer Anastacia

Google Suggests

First Google, as this is one of the biggest engines, their you can use Google Suggests to find extra keywords.
You just type in you target keyword and you instantly get a drop-down box that shows you related search suggestions.

Google suggestions for Keyword Anastacia

Yahoo homepage

You have to use the search box on the Homepage of Yahoo to get the next items to show.

here it works the same way as with Google Suggests, just type in you search word and you get a related items drop-down box.

Yahoo search and keyword suggestions

Live.com Search

Microsoft’s Search engine Live.com also has suggestions for your keywords, but the just show up after you did the search.

In the results page you will find a nice listing on the right hand sidebar.
And they throw in some songs suggestions to take into you list..
Live.com search and keyword suggestions

Ask.com Suggestions

Yes, you can find the best suggestions on Ask…
They give you a complete left sidebar with all kind off suggestions, even other related items…
You can find extra words to target in the “narrow your search” items.
Find other artists to include in extra pages to build somewhat of a themed site with “Related Names”
Find extra keywords in the “Expand your Search” items.

Aks Keywords and Related search sidebar

Af course you will have your own favorite, but for my the Ask results pages was on of the best to use…
You could try the more.. link as well….

Ask and More related searches

Naturally you have to combine the results from all the resources you can get to come to what you think are the best keywords to target, but that’s what makes it so nice to do Search Engine Optimization.. finding new ways to get relevant visitors to your websites!

Joomla Related Items Extended Module

Filed Under: Joomla Modules, Seo Basics

In Joomla there is a special module called Related Items.

 

What is does is showing content items that are related to the topic your are reading.
It does this based on the words you placed in the field "Keywords" within the Meta Info tab..

 

But it has one flaw, you get a complete listing of ALL articles related and that might just be a bit to much.

 

The Related Items Extended version

There is a module released by http://tomh.gdi.cz/ which is called The Related Items XTD.

 

It consists of one Mambot (Plugin) and a Module, both are easy to install.
Besides that there is also a special documentation download.

 

It has a lot of parameters, but luckily you can leave the most part alone.
Just fill in the top section to your own preferences and you should be fine.

 

SEO part of this module:
It gives search engine robots and visitors to your site extra pages to look at.
Titles are link with text included (internal linking)

 

You get more page views from you visitors….

Find the Right Bing, Yahoo and Google Keywords for your website

Filed Under: Seo Basics, SEO for Your Website

Target the right keywords to get more traffic

One of the most important things to do if you want more traffic is to look at what people really are searching for.

That is why it is really important to find the most relevant keywords for your website.

Here is how to do good research for these keywords.

There are several ways to learn about how people search the web for the topic of your website.

One of them is to do online research on what people use as a real search term if they are looking for a product, service or problem.

Keyword search example

For instance, you have a website to promote your website hosting company.
So you build your site, using the main keyword “Webhosting service” but visitors would not find you in the numbers you need.

You start researching Keywords and find out that people aren’t looking for “Webhosting service” that much….
Instead, they look for “website hosting”, “webspace” and “domain hosting”, so you start targeting these keywords and your traffic goes up..

Just to give you an idea about how you think people should find your website, and what they really use as search terms = keywords!

But how do you find out about these “real search terms”.

I will give you three possibility’s, two free tools, and one commercial.

Overture Good Keyword Selector tool

The first one is from Overture which is the main database for search engines like Yahoo.
Update: Overture is long gone, so I selected another link to provide you with good keywords.
So they have a good base for bringing in results for this tool:

http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

https://goodkeywords.com/webapp/

You should start with this page, just to find some basic stuff you can use later on in your quest.

Pro:
It is Free.
Con:
You just get the results from last month.
The results are limited to the search engines that use Overture as a database engine.

Google Keyword Selector tool

We all know by now that Google has a large portion of the search engine market.
So if it were possible to use a tool from them, that should give us more realistic results.

Because Google wants there AdWords advertiser to do well by targeting the right keywords, they created this little tool.

https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner

And we can use it as well :-)….great for creating your keyword list.
If you use the tool, make sure you select “Keyword popularity” and if you get the results sort them on “Search volume”.
You can then click on “add” to place the keywords you want in the right-hand sidebar.
You can then download them as an Excel CSV file.

Pro:
it is Free to use
You can create your keyword list very easy
Con:
It is limited to Google search results and season influences.
Research of several keywords after each other will give you an error that you might use a program to utilize the tool and that you have to wait a period of time before you can use the tool again.

WordTracker Keyword Research Tool

This tool isn’t free, you have to pay to use it.
But you can get a Trail first to see if it works….
But you won’t get access to the really good stuff of WordTracker.

And it does, it will give you the best results of these three options!

And you don’t have to buy a Year subscription, you can buy a month, a week, or just a day….at very reasonable prices…

At the time a write this, a day at the WordTracker wonderful world of Keyword finding, will set you back a whopping …. $8.11…

Try to imagine what the results will bring in, money-wise if you are able to get more traffic…..
How does that compare with your $8,11 investment?

What do you get for this BIG amount of money?

They do have some limits on a Day account:
The daily standard usage limits for WordTracker are:

1500 keyword searches
350 lateral searches
250 competition searches

These limits are for searches you perform, not for results returned.
So if you search on 1 keyword and receive 500 results these only counts as 1 search, this way you can cover a lot of ground on just one day!.

Pro:
Large database with relevant results
One day will give you value for your money
Con:
You have to pay for the results.

Is Google Custom Search Engine a new SEO Tool or Threat

Filed Under: Joomla, Joomla Seo, Optimization, SEO, Webdesign

Google has brought us webmasters a new and exicting tool !

Google Custom Search Engine, with this option you can promote some websites you think should be better found because of the content they have on a the specific subject of your website.

You think they don’t get enough results on that special search term, but you know there content is of high quality and they should be in the top results……

Well, now you can help those website to get into the top, on your own search engine that is…

The process of creating and implementing the Google Custom Search Engine is pretty simpel, leave it to Google to make it work that way.

I even placed it in my pathos-seo.com Joomla website without any problems
And there is also a Tutorial on How to Integrate Google CSE Custom Search Engine in Joomla

So, a new cool feature..
But what is in it for Google?

  1. They get to Us with a new feature we can use, so we give them credit for it , so they create some Goodwill.
  2. Google gets an extra platform from us to place their Adwords Adsense promotionel links, that brings (us* and) them more money….
  3. We provide them with highly rated websites on specifick keywords….they analyse their database and find there are some websites with authority that people put into the sites section of there custom search eninge…social networking on a new level…
  4. The database gives better search results, that benefit us all.

So if your website is stored in the favorites sites section of a Custom Search Engine, does that boost you ranking?
If so, how many links do you need?

How much weight does it get in the long run, and do our Search Engine Optimization technics still bring the same results?

Is it a new factor we should look at as a Blessing, a Tool or a Threat?

* If you have an adsense account and set the right option in your control panel.