For our fourth individual assignment, we were given four search engine optimization tools to explore, and are required to discuss two. This is not the area that I am really interested in, or good at. I find all of these things quite confusing, hopefully writing it out helps me understand.
The tools we were asked to explore are all tools that one can use for search engine optimization, and are mainly for keyword planning and site mapping. I am only going to discuss a couple of the tools, for the sake of not repeating myself.
I learned a little bit more about the Google Keyword Planner that comes with AdWords, and took a look at how AdWords actually works. This will be especially helpful for the Google Online Marketing Challenge we will begin competing in next month. AdWords Keyword Planner takes your keywords and tells you how many advertisers are using that keyword, and the probability of your advertisement/page ranking high enough to make an impression. AdWords also asks for your daily budget (how much will you spend in a day on advertisements?) and tells you how many impressions and clicks you can expect to have in a day. With a budget of $1.00 a day, one could have over 103 impressions, and more than 11 clicks. Before this week, I was confused as to what the difference between an impression and a click was, and I'm sure if one is not familiar with online marketing - it should be explained: an impression is when a person sees and reads the advertisement (aka, it shows up on somebody's Google Search results page when they search for a keyword you have designated as relevant), a click is when somebody physically clicks on the advertisement and goes to explore the web page. The Google Keyword Planner does take in to account that AdWords makes Google money, and tends to choose the keywords that will benefit Google the most. To find other keywords there are a couple of other tools (the ones I was given the option to explore):
Moz.com: SEO Software, Tools, and Resources for Better Marketing
Uber Suggest: keyword brainstorming/suggestion tool
The other most interesting and important tool I explored was Screaming Frog, which is a desktop program that "spiders" all of a websites' elements in a way that is easy to use for search engine optimization. Screaming Frog organizes all of the material and makes it easy to look through and analyze every page, link, image, URL, script, CSS, and app. This tool is especially helpful for finding duplicate pages on a medium or large site with lots of pages, as duplicate pages can detriment a page's search engine ranking (this, I did not know!). Screaming Frog also allows one to export the information to Excel, so as to have a form of the information that can be shared with others. This could help my team immensely with search engine optimization, because the our client's website is complex and well developed already.
The most important thing I have learned from this assignment is what to do with AdWords, how to use AdWords better, and how to find the keywords that will work the best to search engine optimize our client's website (and my blog).
Of course it is a good thing to have great keywords, and use them to have your site rank better in Google's index, but don't forget that there are consequences for overloading your site with keywords. "Keyword stuffing" as it is called, is a black-hat marketing technique, will have your page marked as spam and earn you a lower ranking in Google's index (quick recap: black-hat techniques are the techniques that are not approved or seen as cheating the system by the search engine). Before I go, here's a funny for this short reminder about keyword stuffing:
The tools we were asked to explore are all tools that one can use for search engine optimization, and are mainly for keyword planning and site mapping. I am only going to discuss a couple of the tools, for the sake of not repeating myself.
I learned a little bit more about the Google Keyword Planner that comes with AdWords, and took a look at how AdWords actually works. This will be especially helpful for the Google Online Marketing Challenge we will begin competing in next month. AdWords Keyword Planner takes your keywords and tells you how many advertisers are using that keyword, and the probability of your advertisement/page ranking high enough to make an impression. AdWords also asks for your daily budget (how much will you spend in a day on advertisements?) and tells you how many impressions and clicks you can expect to have in a day. With a budget of $1.00 a day, one could have over 103 impressions, and more than 11 clicks. Before this week, I was confused as to what the difference between an impression and a click was, and I'm sure if one is not familiar with online marketing - it should be explained: an impression is when a person sees and reads the advertisement (aka, it shows up on somebody's Google Search results page when they search for a keyword you have designated as relevant), a click is when somebody physically clicks on the advertisement and goes to explore the web page. The Google Keyword Planner does take in to account that AdWords makes Google money, and tends to choose the keywords that will benefit Google the most. To find other keywords there are a couple of other tools (the ones I was given the option to explore):
Moz.com: SEO Software, Tools, and Resources for Better Marketing
Uber Suggest: keyword brainstorming/suggestion tool
The other most interesting and important tool I explored was Screaming Frog, which is a desktop program that "spiders" all of a websites' elements in a way that is easy to use for search engine optimization. Screaming Frog organizes all of the material and makes it easy to look through and analyze every page, link, image, URL, script, CSS, and app. This tool is especially helpful for finding duplicate pages on a medium or large site with lots of pages, as duplicate pages can detriment a page's search engine ranking (this, I did not know!). Screaming Frog also allows one to export the information to Excel, so as to have a form of the information that can be shared with others. This could help my team immensely with search engine optimization, because the our client's website is complex and well developed already.
The most important thing I have learned from this assignment is what to do with AdWords, how to use AdWords better, and how to find the keywords that will work the best to search engine optimize our client's website (and my blog).
Of course it is a good thing to have great keywords, and use them to have your site rank better in Google's index, but don't forget that there are consequences for overloading your site with keywords. "Keyword stuffing" as it is called, is a black-hat marketing technique, will have your page marked as spam and earn you a lower ranking in Google's index (quick recap: black-hat techniques are the techniques that are not approved or seen as cheating the system by the search engine). Before I go, here's a funny for this short reminder about keyword stuffing:
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| Who likes turkey without gravy anyways? Image from: https://www.seo.com/blog/keyword-stuffing/ |
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