5 Basic & Sometimes Overlooked Internet Research Tools

Internet Research Tips

Internet research is at the heart of seo for me. It’s so amazing that we have come to a point where you can glean all the information you need for any given project right from the Internet. I wonder how long it will be before we don’t even have libraries in schools anymore, and simply have computer labs?

When I was in high school, it was only 11 years ago, and did research for anything, I would usually end up in the library. I can’t remember the last time I was in a library, I can’t even remember the last time I picked up a phone book or a dictionary, can you? It seems like doing Internet research should be easy, being that there is so much information out there, but that is precisely what makes it hard.

Here are 5 Internet research tips that will help with the daunting task of sifting through the millions of websites floating around in cyber space.

1. Long Tail Search

Keep in mind the long tail search. If you are planning a vacation to Hawaii, you will be better off searching for hawaii vacation, hawaii lodging or hawaii attractions. Using long tail searches gives the search engine a better idea of what it is you really want enabling them to give you more relevant results.

2. Exact Phrase Search

If you want a website that includes an exact phrase, say you are looking for lyrics to a song, use quotes around the phrase – “hey mr tambourine man”. This can come in especially handy if you are looking for something ultra specific.

3. Utilizing Alexa

Many Internet professionals will tell you that Alexa rankings are skewed, and I would agree. But what you can use Alexa for is simply to give you some insight into the popularity of a site. If there are multiple sites out there on the topic you are researching, which there usually are, find out what each’s Alexa rank is. If one of the sites has a rank of 15,000 compared to other having 8,000,000 you can be pretty sure that the first of the two is more of an authority on the subject. This isn’t always the case, but it’s a good tool to use in many circumstances.

4. Explore Subject Directories

If you want to build your own house, are having a baby, thinking about homeschooling, seeking a web designer etc. check out the various directories pertaining to the specific subject. This will save you a whole bunch of time. Directories are especially designed to group like information together.

5. Blogs & Forums

Blogs and forums are great tools because you can communicate with others and read what the average person as well as subject experts have to say about given topics. You can ask questions, find real life examples, watch or participate in on-line discussions. The possibilities are endless.

Internet research is the best part of my job as an SEO. The Internet is truly the garden of information, we just need to learn how to weed through it.

 

Long Tail Search | Keyword Research

Long Tail Search

Millions of times a day searchers enter keywords and keyword phrases into the search engine search boxes. They’re searching for things you know about, things your website or your clients websites are centered around. Topics like:

• Low income mortgage information
• Creamed cucumbers recipe
• How to relieve lower back pain
• etc…

People come to the Internet to find information about specific topics, like those above. The keyword cars may have a search volume of a gazillion, but the chance that the searcher who typed it in will find exactly what they’re looking for is slim to nil. And besides, if you want to rank for the search term cars you’d better hire seomoz and pay them a gazillion dollars, cause that’s the only way you’ll get it.

The reason the searcher probably won’t find exactly what they want is because right now Google is returning 822,000,000 results for the search term cars. That’s a lot of websites for the searcher to weed through. This is where researching and optimizing for the long tail search becomes necessary.

Cars is a root word. When we start adding to it and making it a two, three, four… word phrase we begin to discover the Long Tail of cars:

• cheap cars
• cheap italian cars
• purple vw bug cars
• used cars san francisco california
• hybrid cars
• where to buy a hybrid car
• You see where I’m going with this?

This is the information searchers are looking for, they want specifics. Deliver specifics. The way to bring targeted traffic to your website is to optimize for the long tail search terms. These are the terms that have the best chance of accomplishing your bottom line, of attracting the searcher who wants exactly what you offer.

As the tail gets longer, the search volume decreases, but the ability to list for the keyword phrase increases and the chance of making the sale also increases.

Recap:

• Searchers want specific information (there are obviously exceptions)
• The long tail keywords are the specifics of root keywords
• Optimizing for the long tail brings targeted traffic to your website

The long tail is yours – go grab it!

 

The Keywords Tag Rocks

The keywords tag gets a lot of flack, or completely ignored, in the seo community, probably because it is dead. But none the less, even when one is dead you should still give a shout out of respect every once in a while. As far as I’m concerned I am still going to use it every chance I get. Then when Googlebot decides to raise Mr. KT from the dead I will totally be ahead of the game. All you web peeps out there who gave up on KT will be wishin’ you hadn’t. Ahha! The mad genius of it all.

 

The Raw Sitemap

Sitemap

After your initial keyword research, developing a sitemap is the first thing you should do before you begin to code or design your website. A good sitemap is essential to your seo. Without it you will flounder around, creating pages here and there, not quite going in any specific direction, possibly duplicating previous ideas, creating an unstructured linking system, veering off topic, and simply getting jumbled up.

What is a sitemap? Many web developers would describe the sitemap as the one page on a site with links to each page on the entire website. This is true, and a very important piece of the site. But this post will discuss the sitemap in its raw form, the auctual mapping out of the site piece by piece. If thought out, researched and developed properly, the sitemap will turn the large task of creating a website from the ground up into a logical, straightforward process.

After doing some initial keyword research, and defining some long tail keywords you would like to target throughout your site, you can begin to form your sitemap. When I first began developing sitemaps I would draw them out on a big piece of paper, my main site concept keyword in the center with spokes shooting out and long tail keywords at the end. Before I even began researching and writing content there would be at least 10 long tail keywords, with descent search volume, shooting out from my main site concept. Then one by one I would start knocking them down, aka researching and writing each page. I would often realize that a few of my long tails would support long tails of their own, so I would then add some spokes coming off of that concept and then create that content. As you can see, developing a sitemap in this manner is brainstorming at its best.

A sitemap will lead you through the development process, it will eventually lead your site visitors through your site in a logical manner, and it will not only lead Googlebot easily through your site, it will provide the little spider with the keywords and phrases necessary for indexing and placement in the search engines.

 

Long Tail Love | Keyword Research

I digg keyword research, it’s totally hot, and what I really digg down deep in my seosoul is the long tail; it’s the heart of Internet research, and for many, seo. Whenever I visit a website and get hung up there for more than a few minutes, one of the first things I do is view their source code. You can do this by right clicking on your screen and clicking “view source code.” I have my own ideas right off the bat of what their keywords consist of, or what they should consist of, and I’m curious if they are utilizing seo.

I can tell right away if they are completely unfamiliar with seo, sorta familiar with seo, or have someone in house or hired an seo expert. The long tail has a lot to do with this.

The first thing I check is the home page source code. If the page doesn’t have a title tag and meta values, I all ready know the situation isn’t good. But if it does and it targets some pretty general terms in the title tag and meta values relating to the specific industry, along with some graphic modifiers, and as always good content (if it didn’t have good content I wouldn’t be there anyways) that’s one thing, but it doesn’t tell me what I really want to know.

You can find out their strategy, if they have one, by viewing the source code of their internal pages. This is where the long tail should be.

Say you’re checking out a website about renewable energy. The home page title tag, meta values and content really focuses on renewable energy, energy conservation, alternative fuel, and the company name (for banding purposes). Good, ok. If you then view the source code of the internal pages, and the title tag and meta values are the same as the home page, they are most likely not aware of or utilizing the long tail.

The long tail is an expansion of the core, root keywords. Individually each carries a significantly lower search volume than the root, but when as many of the long tail words and phrases are utilized, they carry a heavy load as a team.

As an example, long tail keywords of the example above could include and are absolutely not limited to:

• peak oil
• eco homes
• bio fuel
• alternate diesel fuel
• alternative car fuel

There a hundreds more that could be utilized; and each of these could possibly be turned into the main site concept and a long tail developed solely from it. So you see, the long tail is the meat and potatoes of keyword research.

If the long tail keywords are to be utilized properly, they should each support their own page within the site. The title tag, meta values and content should focus on the long tail word, while it always ties itself back in with the main concept of the site.

So as you can see, as an seoer, long tails are totally hot!

 

 

 

We All Work For Google

Yes it is true, whether you like it or not you work for Google or Yahoo or whatever. Maybe it’s your dream to work for Google or maybe you think Google is a communist dictator, inflicting googly morals and values onto the poor webmasters of the world. But seriously folks, if you are a webmaster or seoer, you work for them.

Here’s the truth. It’s the search engines job to give its searchers what they want, whether it’s ham bone pea soup recipes or poyurethane spary foam roofing information, (a current project of mine). When I sit down to research the central theme of a website I am to optimize, I take into consideration that yes, Google is sortof my boss.

SEO should have two parts, Search Engine User Optimization, and Search Engine Optimization. First I want to please humans, because in all truth that is what Google wants to do as well. What pleases humans? Information, sex and money. In keeping with what I can give them on my end I’ll just discuss the information part. If you read the About seoyo page than I am going to keep with my promise of being an extremely revolutionary and original blog and say it right now content is king.

When I sit down to do my part of a project, I look over the sitemap developed by another member of my team, and I always have sub-pages to add. And I know my team members groan when I add in my notes about “add sub-page here”. In a way they are annoyed because this means they have to get more content from the client, but I can’t help it. If a website doesn’t answer my questions, and answer questions I didn’t know I had, when I get there, or lead me somewhere logical, I am gone. And most other searchers are the same, and so are the spiders.

If you build it – they will come, if you write it – they will come, if you give them what they want – they will stay and buy, and give you what you want.

So you work for Google, Google works for the whole world. If your client was the whole world, you’d have some pretty strict googly rules too. But wait, the Internet is global, so your client is the whole world.

 

Search Engine Business

Business owners strive to provide the best products possible. I work for a web design firm and it’s our goal to give our clients the very best. None of us go into a project saying “Gee, let’s give this client a sorta good website.” It’s no different with the engines. Google is servicing the entire world, their clients are anyone with access to the Internet. Google may offer alot of nifty gadgets and services, but their main product is information, lots of it and it must be relevant.