When we talk about SEO, keyword research is a vital fundamental step. It is easy to set it aside because we think that generalizing it to “create awesome content” is a better strategy.  When people think of keyword research, surely they will directly go to Google Ads Keywords since it is by far, the biggest search engine. Nevertheless, Google has only limited useful keyword data that it gives. There are exceptional and free keyword research tools out there. So if you are interested, let us begin with the first one.

• Tagcrowd

  • One of the most vital part of creating the proper keyword research includes studying your competitor’s content. Sure there are available tools make this easier for you, but these will cost you. Well, here is another free alternative, TagCrowd.
  • The assumption behind TagCrowd is that it permits you to envision word frequency by making word/text/tag clouds. To be able to see a competitor’s most often used keywords for a certain page this can help you to know their keyword strategy with no expense on your end.
  • TagCrowd after all is straightforward to use. There are different ways to increase and analyze content: you can paste the page text, paste the webpage URL, and upload a file. That is real cool, don’t you think so?

• Keywords Everywhere

  • It is a free browser add-on for Firefox and Chrome that gathers data from more than 15 most known keyword tools which includes Answer the Public, Ubersuggest, Google Analytics, Google Search, and Search Console to mention a few. So, when you search in Google, Keywords Everywhere will show you fundamental but practical data.
  • What is great about Keywords Everywhere is that even if they got information from many sources, they still made it easy for you to get the data you are looking for. Just download it in Excel, PDF, or CSV file format. Keywords Everywhere was made possible by the team who is also behind Keyword Keg.

• Merchant Words

  • This is a great keyword research tool if you are an Amazon store owner. Merchant Words assemble data from more than 1 billion verified Amazon searches all over the world. All of the keyword data comes straight from the shopper searches in the Amazon search bar.
  • Try Merchant Words for free with minimal number of keywords. The paid version of this is $30.00 monthly, for U.S. data, and $60.00 if you want a wider audience. The price covers the unlimited searches and CSV downloads, and there is a 24/7 customer service whenever you need assistance.

• PinterestKeywordTool

  • While everybody is waiting for Linkedln keyword tool, there’s another keyword research solution coming from a known social media platform which is Pinterest.
  • At first, it might look spammy. Just to make it known to you, PinterestKeywordTool does not give many useful keyword data when it comes to search volume or difficulty in ranking. But what it can give you is what keyword is popular in Pinterest and if there are other keywords you could use.

• Keyword.Guru

  • It gathers results from the best search engines like, Google, Bing, and Yahoo even ecommerce sites like eBay and Amazon. The minute you type, it gives results which is based on real-time. Although, Keyword.Guru does not show details about keyword search volume, it instead shows you the most average searches. Should you use the real search results, you will know which keyword phrases are always used.

There are new SEO practices that are very useful, but let us not forget the old school SEO habits that are still very useful today. These helped the website rank better, and earn cash. Pretty cool, huh? So, let us go over these old SEO habits that you can still use.

• CAUTION

  • This is such a vital habit of the old school SEO. Its mindset is no discussion about your websites in public. Being boastful about the gigantic success you have earned will not bring you anywhere, so don’t!
  • This will just make you an easy target of envious businesses that will strongly compete with you and will challenge your wit. They can also wreck your business just to get you out of the field. It pays to be cautious at all times.

• CONCEAL

  • The idea is to make it difficult for your competitors to find your search engines and to have access on all the websites you own. Again, rule no. 1, conceal and do not announce to the public how your scheme is linked to it from a social media or public blog. That is courting danger, for sure.
  • Sadly, a lot of people do not believe in the safety of concealing. A famous search expert made the mistake and linked one of his sites that came from a blog post just to show how well it will rank using this method. After just a few days, Google banned his site.

• NEVER SHARE LINKS BETWEEN WEBSITES

  • If you are playing by the SEO rules or use combative SEO, it is still advisable that you do not share links connecting websites or connecting your websites. Keep your links unattached. That way, if one of the website goes off, it does not pull down your other sites or network.
  • The thing is, even if you follow all the SEO rules, another person might use deceitful SEO and if for any reason, your site gets involved, that in itself will jeopardize other sites that are connected with the hazardous site.

• REDUCE THE DOWNLOAD SPEED

  • It has been proven that a speedy download speed brings more ad impressions and of course more sales. Your site will go on running if it undergoes an odd amount of traffic. What is terrifying is to have such gigantic traffic see the server crash because of the its weight. In this scenario, you should keep the template code light.
  • Should you want to reduce your speed in the maximum level make sure that:
    • Use the simplest template possible.
    • Do not use external fonts, buttons, and icons.
    • Reduce using fancy effects.

• MAKE THE LINK TO YOUR SITE SIMPLE

  • Keep your file names short and surely it will look awesome on social media. Aside from that, it will be easier to remember and that is exactly what you want.
  • Allowing hot-linking and sharing images is a good way to tell people out there that you are in existence.

• HIDEOUS SELLS

  • It was discovered that you just can’t make your buy buttons huge enough. Having some intricate stuff could boomerang on you. The idea here is to make your site element so easy to find, and that should give you more sales. Carelessness is the major reason why a lot of websites suffer the loss of rankings.

It’s important to learn the basics of SEO. To guide you, here are the top principles of SEO that owners of small businesses have to know. You don’t really have to be an expert; just make sure you grasp everything:

• What are the guidelines?
• How can they influence search?
• Learn the schemes or get someone who does.

It is good to know the simple terms and use them. But more than the terms, you should know the principles.

• User Intent
  • People would say, content is king but it isn’t. It is the user intent that is the king. This does not mean that you shouldn’t do content. But before anything else, you need to ask yourself, what kind of content will boost the edge to accomplish the search engine user’s intent?
  • Simple, users just have to search for ‘adidas shoes’ so it is clear that they want to buy or probably they would. So, think, how many sites can people buy Adidas shoes? For sure there are thousands out there.
  • Now, let us talk about your intent. So you are selling Adidas shoes and the user just searched for Adidas shoes in the search engine and you don’t know its intent and we have discussed that the intent is to buy shoes. There are countless of sites that Google can pick that can fulfill that intent. Although, a study showed that users are not just interested in buying shoes.
  • Google does not focus on your intent but the searcher’s intent. A site that does that has a bigger chance of ranking and Google has a higher assurance that their user’s intent will be most likely to be fulfilled. So, you need content just so you can fulfill the user’s intent.

• Local Seo
  • If you are putting your hand on the local market, you might have known about the SEO strategies. But that is not the same kind of SEO. You have to know that there are SEO elements that are just for local. It is all about areas and parts and basis that you should look at. Know that your SEO should be looking beyond local applicability than the complete site’s solidness.
  • You may interpret this as: you will have to give more importance to the local nature of links compared to volume and that you will have to be certain that your on-site presence strengthens your location. This does not mean that you stuff your city into the content more than you should.
  • What you really need to pay attention to are:
    • Finding an organizational layout that works for you and putting it to the different pages.
    • Adding a Google Map of your business listing on your contact page.
    • Knowing your businesses on Bing Places.
    • Learning your other business listing aside from Google and Bing.

In terms of your link efforts, focus on the smaller local papers rather than the bigger sites. This does not mean though that you will not look at bigger chances, but it will take more of your time and might result to the decline of returns for local. By the way, if you want to learn more, part 2 of this series is posted here.

Before you apply major changes to your website, you need to review the present status of your website. Consider its flaws, strengths, possibilities, and opportunities. You should identify what should remain and what should be migrated. Despite the changes, you will be able to preserve your rankings. Here are 2 things before you make changes:

Site Architecture.

• Check on how the pages are arranged. There are two things to consider:
  • Continue the present site architecture and do not lose rankings.
    • If you don’t want to lose your good rankings, keep the present site architecture. This means using the same URLS and the categories. Of course that is, if you are not changing the web pages.
    • If you want to integrate web pages, then select the most popular URL and then redirect the past URLS to the current URL.
    • Be careful now; know that 301 redirects are only done when the pages whose content has close equal to each other. If you do not match the redirect content, it will surely affect unfavorable ranking.
  • Revamp the old structure to improve rankings.

Discuss how to improve site architecture.

Improve the Site Architecture.

• Others think that a“flat site architecture” has an edge in ranking. A flat site architecture is when the web pages can be reachable in one, two or three links. Know that the web pages with not be classified. The idea here is to crawl all pages and index them to have an equal ranking chance.
• A flat site structure may not be a great idea as a website ranks for many phrases.
• Contrasting pages are most likely good for different phrases. What makes sense though, is arranging the website in different categories. Therefore, if you are improving your website, it is good to review your site architecture. If what you had is disorganized then, upgrading your site with a great category structure will surely work better.
• It is, likewise, a great idea to have organized content because it has a greater chance of ranking well. When it is arranged well within the categories, they will all interlinked resulting to a significant context to each other.
• A well-thought-of category page is a great page to showcase the general questions.
  • An example would be a general search for “tv,” which is greatly gratified by using a general category page regarding “flat screen TVs”. That is what Google is inclined to rank. Now, when you search for “flat screen TV,” it will show the general pages about flat screen TVs. Observe how Google ranks the common type product searches. Search with common two word phrases and see how Google ranks it.
  • This, of course, is against the usual SEO misconception that category pages have identical content and no indexed followed. This is the wrong way of approaching it.

During a Google Webmaster office-hours hangout, John Mueller shared the importance of NOT using a noindex,follow tag:

 “So it’s kind of tricky with noindex. Which I think is somewhat of a misconception in general with the SEO community, in that, with a noindex and follow, it’s still the case that we see the noindex.

And in a first step we say ok we don’t want this page shown in the search results. We’ll still keep it in our index. We just won’t show it. And then we can follow those links.

But if we see the noindex there for longer then we think, this page really doesn’t want to be used in search. So we will remove it completely. And that we won’t follow the links, either.”

…noindex and follow is essentially kind of the same as a noindex, nofollow.”