subject: Expert Keyword Research Tips You Should Know [print this page] You may be dealing with a local business that already has a brand, already has a website, let's say Joe's Plumbing. He wishes to increase his capture and let's say he's based in Preston. One needs to consider whether to create a new site called Preston Plumbing and somehow feed it and how that would that fit with his existing site. And also how to best utilize Google places for it. Of course it all begins with the right keyword research tips.
The first thing that I would do, I would identify their business, where they're located and make sure that I get the key suburbs around that particular area, the real key ones. I would do the on page optimization for those. So five or six suburbs around where they are and I'd do the on page optimization on their site for those keywords. Usually there would be variations like South Yarra Dentists and then it might be something like Periodontist Windsor, just so that way those geographic keywords are on the site.
Because we're talking about really long tail things you can pick up those keywords even though you might have the geographic location on one page and dentist on another page, it's still in there because it is telling Google, this site is about that location. Listen to a James Schramko interview to learn more about keywords and SEO in general.
Basically I'll pick out five or six suburbs, I'll optimize pages on their site for that and then if there are really key ones like Melbourne Dentist or South Yarra Dentist, some of the real money phrases, then I will register a domain name. A lot of it does depend on what the client has asked for as well. It's obviously going to be more expensive for them for us to then go build a WordPress blog and build up a feeder site network that feeds back to that website, so it really does depend on the client.
Let's take my plumbing example, Joe's Plumbing/Preston, /Thornbury and consider whether to use these as extensions of their existing url as well as optimizing on the page with those phrases, those suburb names.
Trying to put in sub categories in the website with the geographic location and then having pages is a good standard practice. Try and have the keyword in the url. So if you can have the geographic location in there as well, then more power to you.
From a management point of view, having these different sub categories, for me we're getting down to the point of splitting hairs and it's probably focusing so much on the details. As long as you get your on page optimization right, you have whatever your primary keyword is, that you're trying to optimize that particular page for, if you have that in the url, then you should be alright. You don't need to stuff too much in there. But it can't hurt either. I think having those suburbs, if it's easy enough, then implement it, but it's probably the 80 % there that's not going to give you the result there.
The domain is often the actual brand itself. BHP.com is probably a good example and you need to consider whether you would create feeder sites for that. Are there other less intensive ways of capturing that audience? We might register a domain name and then have it automatically redirect.
If building a feeder site is for SEO benefit, then I would build a complete site on it because if you had a WordPress blog you can build tons of pages. SEO basics is a game of numbers. If it was for SEO, the more pages the better. Just make sure you come back to knowing what your outcome is.
Make sure those feeder sites are optimized for what your outcome is. If you want to send them over there, then it needs to be blatantly obvious when someone hits that page that they need to head over to wherever you're sending them. You may want to consult other keyword research tips to further give you ideas on this.
