Keywords (again!)

1. 69

   lucieanneposted 14 years ago

   Hi all
   You must think I'm really slow, but I'm really not getting this keyword thing. OK -I understand that I have to do keyword research to get more traffic, and I've checked out some really informative hubs on the subject but.... when I've researched the keywords what do I do then? Do I download them, and if so whats next? Do I have to copy and paste them into my text? Or does google do it? I'm not getting much traffic to my hubs from outside HP and I've shared them on FB and twitter. I haven't got a website or a blog so what do you think I should do, just keep writing? I've tried the learning centre and FAQs and I can't find an answer to my questions. Sorry for being so dumb, but I'm still waiting for the penny to drop.

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2. 71

   Cagsilposted 14 years ago

   Hey Lucieanne,
   
   Waynet discusses keywords with Ohma in the link I provided below. It might be more helpful.
   
   http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/43012

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   1. 87

      IzzyMposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      Thanks Cags but that was all about backlinking and its the correct usage of keywords. That's what I am struggling with and I think lucieanne is too.

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3. 87

   IzzyMposted 14 years ago

   If its any help to you lucianne, I don't think the penny has dropped either for me.
   No I don't think you download anything.
   You look at the keywords in Google keywords tool and you pick ones that pay well, or so I thought.
   Then you write an article around them.
   Hmmm...
   You need to include this keyword or keyword phrase throughout the body of your text for Google spiders to find. Headers, URLs, title and body of text should all include the keyword.
   I've read anywhere between 2 and 3% of your total text should of your keyword repeated.
   Or it might be more.
   Up until today I think I mentioned the keyword 2 or 3 times in the whole article apart from URL and title and that's not enough.
   Use your keyword instead of 'it'.
   Another school of thought is that your keyword does not need to pay well, it is just a highly searched keyword. Write an article around that and sprinkle the word or phrase all the way through your text for the google spiders to find.
   Write a good, informative article and you will gain backlinks, so they say. Hmm...still waiting.
   Backlink your article yourself.
   It's just a huge learning curve and some people seem to understand it straight away and others like me struggle, yet the concept seems simple enough.
   I am now tweaking hubs to include more references to those all-important keywords.

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   1. 69

      lucieanneposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      so are the most popular ones the ones to avoid, or the other way round?

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      1. 0

         kara_michelleposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         Deleted
         1. 69

            lucieanneposted 14 years agoin reply to this

            Yes I'm beginning to get the picture now. Thanks everyone.

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            1. 87

               IzzyMposted 14 years agoin reply to this

               I'm sort of beginning too, so I reckon we should keep this thread going. I've written articles that contained several keywords, but each only once or twice. In a 1000 word article that's a really low percentage. Google spiders can't read - they only see that low number, then likely ignore the hub. Anyyone care to elaborate on the recommended minimum and maximum number of the times the same keyword should be repeated throughout the body of the text?

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   2. 65

      Mishaposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      Izzy, you are almost there. You have all the major pieces, you need to connect them.
      
      One correction - you don't need to stuff your hub with your keyword(s). 2-4 instances aside from the title and tags is enough. May be one of those in a capsule title. May be one of those bolded or italicized. One extra in a picture capture. That's it. The rest is backlinks.

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4. 71

   Cagsilposted 14 years ago

   Hey Izzy,
   
   Here is what I gave the link for.
   
   #
   
       waynet
       2264 posts
       HubPages Elite
       Joined: 3 years ago
       Hubs: 546
       Followers: 1081
   
       Ohma wrote:
   
       The whole backlinking thing is just confusing me. I have blogs websites use social networks and still can not get any traffic.
   
   The secret is in keyword research, the better that you do this, the better that you'll be able to create anchor text links in choice places that will better your search engine rankings.
   
   Backlinking is a time consuming process, but even 15 minutes a day, can give you some results in time....
   Posted 24 hours ago
   
       * reply
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   #
   Ohma profile image95
   
       Ohma
       3149 posts
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       Followers: 229
   
       waynet wrote:
   
       you'll be able to create anchor text links in choice places that will better your search engine rankings.
   
   What exactly is this and where do you do it.
   Posted 24 hours ago
   
       * reply
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   #
   waynet profile image
   
   100
   
       waynet
       2264 posts
       HubPages Elite
       Joined: 3 years ago
       Hubs: 546
       Followers: 1081
   
       Ohma wrote:
   
       What exactly is this and where do you do it.
   
   Anchored text links are the keywords that you research, they could be three to four word phrases and for best results you put them within an article or hubpage, the keyword anchored text link will match relevancy with your article!

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5. 73

   Research Analystposted 14 years ago

   You can also read the hub on:
   How to Use Your Keyword Data To Dive More Traffic
   By Paul Edmondson
   
   and Misha wrote a hub called Google Keyword Tool Redefined and some great hubs on backlinking and for keyword research, he recommends reading Peter Hoggan http://hubpages.com/hub/seo-keyword-research.

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   1. 69

      lucieanneposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      the hub recommended above has answered all my questions - thanks for the info

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6. 58

   TerryGlposted 14 years ago

   I should not be telling you this. If anyone finds out I told you then act dumb because I don't want to get into trouble.
   
   You want to find a holy grail keyword?
   
   Then use Alexa.com
   
   http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/hubpages.com#
   
   The top queries driving traffic to hubpages.com from search engines.
   
   Query     Percent of Search Traffic
   1     hubpages     0.45%
   2     new iphone 2010 0.22%
   3     hub pages     0.17%
   4     mafia wars cheats     0.16%
   5     gmail.com     0.14%
   6     yahoomail.com     0.13%
   7     www.gmail.com     0.11%
   8     ps3 mkv     0.10%
   9     iphone 2010     0.10%
   10     funny facebook status     0.09%
   
   You see, if you find a website doing well, you can actually see what keywords are working for them. Just submit them to Alexa and use the search analytics and you now have a list of keywords you can use.
   
   As you can see from the above shot from Hubpages, that new iphone 2010 is the most popular followed by mafia wars cheats. So all you have to do, find a good site, see what is working for them and throw up a decent and informative hubpage.
   
   This tip is from the top shelf, write next to my 25 year old Bundaberg Rum liquor bottle, so treat it with care.

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7. 80

   Aficionadaposted 14 years ago

   Okay, one more time for those of us in the Slow Group or the middle-aged decades or both....
   
   I think I am catching on to keywords, but every time I think I understand, I read something that tells me I've understood all  wrong.  So I want to summarize what I think I understand and ask some of you please to respond and let me know whether I've got it or not.
   
   When I do my research for keywords (and one place I can do that is with Google AdWords), I can go in a couple of different directions.  I can either choose keywords that are popular search terms that "everyone" uses (millions of searches each month), and which theoretically should send a lot of traffic my way.  But, because everyone uses those terms, the existing websites that are already using them will already be on the first pages of Google search results when someone searches using those terms, and my new site will probably get lost on the back pages. 
   
   [However, if anyone ever does find me, they will instantly spot the high quality of my Hub and will tell all of their friends about it and then create organic external links to that Hub and to all of my other Hubs.  Sigh.  Not.]
   
   Another possibility would be to look primarily at the advertisers' competition (the blue or partly blue rectangle in Google AdWords) for that keyword/keyphrase.  The more blue (the more competition) there is, the more likely an advertiser is to want to place an ad on my site or page; then if enough people visit my page and click on that ad, the amount I might eventually receive would be higher from that ad than from an ad that was placed as a result of a less competitive keyword.  In this case, if I haven't factored in the searchers' use of the keyword, I might be looking at the possibility of a higher amount for each click, but the probability of low traffic resulting from that keyword.
   
   But the ideal (?) combination would be to find keywords that combine the best of both of the above approaches - high popularity, but not so high that my article would likely never show up on an early search page; and as competitive among advertisers as I can find within my "acceptable" range of popularity of that word. [I'm not sure I've phrased that last very well.]
   
   So, for example, if a given concept has
             one keyword that gets 3,000,000 searches per month with high advertiser competition, and
             a similar but different word that gets 1,000 searches per month with high advertiser competition and
             yet another word that gets 200,000 searches per month with medium-to-high advertiser competition (3/4 of the blue rectangle),
   
   it would likely be in my best interest to go for the third option?
   
   Then, there's also the utopian dream of finding a niche topic that hardly anyone else has written about, but that is getting ready to take off.  But, everyone also says there are hardly any more niches available to find, and it would probably take some sort of expensive software just to locate one.  Still, this might be where the "trend" button on AdWords could possibly be helpful - to find the next GERD or mesothelioma to write about. That is, if I see a keyword that has limited search competition and high advertiser competition now, and then if I click on the button for analyzing trends and notice that that word is very popular in Bangladesh, I might decide to write an article geared towards my topic but with a focus that would be specifically slanted towards Bangladesh - if I could do the research that would make it factual, credible, and useful.
   
   But, back to actual keywords:  I know... it's not just the keywords I choose, but where and how I use them that will really matter; and the real traffic will come through backlinks.  I'll try to work on using backlinks after I've become more comfortable with the keyword factor.
   
   Am I starting to get it now?

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   1. 96

      wildernessposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      I hope you're right in the method of choosing keywords.  I, too, have come to the conclusion that lower competition coupled with still high numbers of searches is the place to be.
      
      However, my understanding of the "blue rectangle" is different - I thought it was a rough graph of how many posts (blogs, ads, hubs - anything at all) use that keyword, probably for the same reason I want to.  Maybe someone who really knows can tell us.

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   2. 60

      kephriraposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      You can't really tell the competition for organic (non-paid) search results from adwords. You can tell that from just doing a search for that term and looking at the PR of the sites on the first page and whether they have the search term you are targetting in their page title and things like that (ie if they are doing all the things that people are telling you that you should do to rank well for that term).

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   3. 84

      Marisa Wrightposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      No probably about it.  It will! 
      
      
      
      Not quite.  If competition from advertisers is high, that tells you there's a lot of interest.  It tells you nothing about the likely value. You need to add the CPC column to see that.
      
      
      ... a term with moderate searches and a high CPC.
      
      
      
      I'm sure you picked Bangladesh at random - but remember you also need to think about number of people in a country who are online and have disposable income.  That's why most marketers target the US, UK and Europe, where people still have some money to spend (Australians do too, but our population is very small).
      
      These two things were the most helpful to me when trying to understand keywords:
      
      http://www.youtube.com/user/HubPagesDOT … JIAh9uCt4c
      http://hubpages.com/hub/Long-Tail-Keywords-SEO

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      1. 80

         Aficionadaposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         You're a dear, Marisa!  This kind of help is exactly what I needed.  Thanks.
         
         Last question - This seems to put the level of competition from advertisers further down the list of importance than I have been thinking - fairly important, but still not as important as CPC? Have I got that right?  By "importance," I mean the kind of value I attach to each factor at this stage in my ability to understand it all.

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         1. 84

            Marisa Wrightposted 14 years agoin reply to this

            Aficionada, the CPC gives you a rough (only rough) idea how much advertisers are willing to pay for an ad on that topic.  You get a percentage of that - so the bigger the CPC, the bigger your cut.
            
            Mind you, I do think people are getting overly obsessed with the keyword tool.  Did you know that Nelle Hoxie chooses her subjects by going down to the mall and watching what people buy (among other things)?
            
            You touched on this in your post - the keyword tool tells you what's already hot, it's not telling you what is the coming thing.  To really make a killing, you'd want to know what people will search for tomorrow, not what they searched for yesterday!
            
            My best performing Hubs are the ones I wrote because I couldn't find a good site offering a decent answer to one of my own searches.  For instance, I have one on cataract surgery which gets great traffic (though it doesn't make much money - I mean, what do people want to buy on that subject??).  I wrote it because my husband had cataract surgery and I couldn't find anyone else who'd written a decent article on it.
            
            I didn't use the keyword tool at all until recently.  I just wrote about things I wanted to write about.  Recently I've started using it to improve my titles and add good keywords to existing Hubs.

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            1. 80

               Aficionadaposted 14 years agoin reply to this

               
               
               Again, muchas thank yous!

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               1. 84

                  Marisa Wrightposted 14 years agoin reply to this

                  The other thing to remember is - the keyword tool is designed to help advertisers, not us.  We're using it in a way Google never intended it to be used.  So there's a certain amount of guesswork in interpreting the results.
                  
                  That's why you get conflicting advice, because people have different opinions - no one really knows, or if they do, they're not going to tell us and lose their competitive edge!

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                  1. 80

                     Aficionadaposted 14 years agoin reply to this

                     This explains a lot!  I have been figuring that my poor grasp of the subject derived from some sort of middle-aged muddle-headedness. Not that it's not happening, but it helps to know that there really is some mystery involved too.

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8. 80

   Aficionadaposted 14 years ago

   I definitely hope someone will help us out!
   
   I'll go back to AdWords and look at the blue rectangle again. 
   
   As I wrote, every time I think I understand this well, along comes something to disabuse me of that idea!
   
   Someone help, please?

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   1. 59

      Eric Graudinsposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      OK, here's a paper on Keywords that I wrote to explain the concepts in plain english.
      
      Please let me know if it helps.
      
      http://theinternetbloke.com/Keywords.pdf
      
      cheers,
      Eric G.

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9. 68

   Pearldiverposted 14 years ago

   Yes... as always.. thanks Eric and Eric. Hope you and yours are well these cool days of winter. Take care mate.

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10. 59

    Eric Graudinsposted 14 years ago

    Geez Pearldiver.
    
    What's with the frog like avatar?
    Trying to get Frog Dropping's attention?
    
    Have you run out of sheep over there or something?
    cheers,
    Eric G.
    
    P.S. My daughter is coming over to NZ for a weeks holiday on a tour. I'll warn her about you

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11. 80

    Aficionadaposted 14 years ago

    Eric and kephrira,
    
    Thank you both, truly, for trying to answer my question.  But, I regret to say, neither one of you actually did help.
    
    I spent a lot of time writing out a paraphrase of what I think I understand, and I hoped that my opening lines would explain where I currently stand on the learning curve.  Because of the time I spent yesterday, I will decline to waste any more time today explaining why your answers were not helpful. I will content myself with simply reading and re-reading what others have written and with "educated trial and error," which appears to be the bottom-line advice anyway.
    
    Again, thank you for trying to help.

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12. 87

    IzzyMposted 14 years ago

    I spent a few days optimising the keywords on my hubs, and one of them is now number 1 on google out of 1 and half million results with a long tail keyword, and if I mix the keywords up it still number 1 but of of a million.
    <sigh> still waiting for traffic. It gets plenty of hits from hubpages, but not from the web (yet).
    I've got a lot of hubs on goggle's first page, but not on highly searched terms. Neither's the one above.

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    1. 84

       Marisa Wrightposted 14 years agoin reply to this

       How are you searching on Google?  Remember that Google is "smart" these days, so you're getting a different result to what other people do.

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13. 61

    Eileen Hughesposted 14 years ago

    I may be wrong but if you put the whole title in all (or many) articles will show as no 1 on google page.  Or so I found out I did that a few times and got all excited then realised why this was happening.
    
    In the end I would just put a main keyword up and that would give a completely different page view.   Not sure if I am right or not.

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    1. 80

       Aficionadaposted 14 years agoin reply to this

       That has happened to a lot of us.  I got excited about the same thing, and I frequently see forum titles about the same issue, especially from those of us who are newer and more naive about writing for the internet. 
       
       It really does make a difference how you search, what search terms you use, as to which page you show up on.  I admit, showing up in the number two spot on Google's page one was a huge ego boost and encouragement for me.  But I know realistically now that that's not its actual page rank.  So, I'm continuing to write and refine, rework and keep plugging on....

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