Recently I was asked to optimize a site selling Spanish T-Shirts to attract lots of traffic from the search engines. Without traffic your site won't make any sales. Of the other hand getting lots of traffic does not guarantee sales if your web copy is lousy.
There are many factors that should be considered when you optimize your web site. For my example site to optimize I chose Wild Lily Designs, a site that specializes in selling Spanish Shirts. Here are the steps I took to optimize the site:
1. Create a keyword list
Write down all the keywords related to the topic of your site. Try to also include keyword phrases. ie T-Shirts, Spanish Shirts, Spanish Apparel, Spanish Clothing.
There are probably millions of web sites selling T-Shirts; therefore you need to narrow your focus. This is why Spanish Shirts or Spanish T-Shirts would a better niche because it wouldn't be as competitive. If your niche is too competitive you will have a difficult time getting high rankings. Ideally you want your site to appear on the first page for one of the major search engines...Google, MSN or Yahoo.
2. Find related keywords
These are words that are similar to the main keyword list you created above. You may be able to incorporate them into the content of your site as it grows. Keywords that have a very narrow focus ie Spanish T-Shirts, may not be a popular search term. If I broaden my search to include "Spanish" or "T-Shirt" I will find hundreds of words that relate to these topics.
Use a theosaurus dictionary or thesaurus.com to find similar words besides your main keywords. Another great free tool to brainstorm related keywords is the Google AdWords Keyword Tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal). Here is the list of similar keywords generated when I inserted "spanish shirts" in the Google AdWords Keyword Tool:
madrid shirts
language tee shirts
spain shirt
spanish shirt
shirts in spanish
spanish shirts
spanish t shirts
real madrid shirt
spanish english dictionary
spanish apparel sign language shirt
language shirts
madrid t shirts
shirt in spanish
hispanic t shirt
spain t shirt
language apparel
hispanic shirts
sign language t shirt
madrid t shirt
real madrid t shirts
language t shirts sign
language shirts
language shirt
shirts spanish
sign language t shirts
spanish t shirt
real madrid merchandise
i love shirts
hispanic t shirts
long sleeve shirts
spain t shirts
t shirts in spanish
madrid shirt
From this list you get both the singular and plural forms of the keywords. You may also want to include madrid shirts, madrid t-shirt, spanish shirts. To find out how often people are searching on these keywords you need to use keyword tools. I use a combination of both free and paid tools. Wordtracker is the most popular and effective SEO tool used by search engine marketers. WordTracker allows you to do a comprehensive search for related keywords, provides the number of searches for your keywords, then compares their popularity in the search engines with how competitive they are. Ideally you want to use keywords that receive a high number of searches but don't have many competing web sites for the same keyword. Using the free trial at WordTracker my comprehensive search for Spanish Shirts generates this list: 1. spanish shirts
2. spanish clubs
3. football shirts
4. overseas clubs
5. ebay
6. online shopping
7. online auction
8. apparel
9. spanish
10. t-shirts
11. sports memorabilia
12. ebay.co.uk
13. Spanish
14. real madrid
15. tshirt
The enhanced version would display 285 keywords here. If I click on Spanish Shirts I get a table showing keywords taken from all Dogpile & Metacrawler queries over the last 90 days. Count = 4 This shows the number of times a particular keyword has appeared in the database. E.g. The database currently holds 327967786 words. A count of 4 tells you that this particular word has appeared 4 times (this is over 90 days). The keywords are taken from major metacrawlers (a service that queries all the main search engines simultaneously). Predict = 7 This is the maximum total predicted traffic for all of the major search engines/pay per bids and directories today. Since Spanish Shirts generates a small number of searches, I will search on a broader term ie Spanish or T-Shirts Spanish spanish 3407 6009
spanish dictionary 3183 5614
spanish translator 2295 4048
spanish music lyrics 2114 3728
spanish translation 1892 3337
spanish english dictionary 1352 2384
english to spanish 1049 1850 dig
spanish to english dictionary 1040 1834
spanish to english 1033 1822
spanish babes 990 1746
learn spanish 989 1744
spanish american war 987 1741
english to spanish translation 778 1372
spanish to english translation 747 1317
english to spanish dictionary 745 1314
The first number beside each keyword is the count, the second is the predicted number.The list above generates higher numbers than Spansih Shirts because of their popularity. This is useful because it gives you another angle to attract traffic to your web site. For example you could create a page on how to learn spanish by integrating the keywords "learn spanish" in your article. The traffic this page receives may help sell more Spanish Shirts because the visitors will visit the rest of the site. T-Shirts Here are the related words for the keyword T-Shirts generated by WordTracker. 1. t-shirts
2. funny t-shirts
3. tshirts
4. t-shirt
5. tee shirts
6. tshirt
7. shirts
8. tees
9. funny t-shirt
10. funny shirts
11. cool t-shirts
12. tee
13. funny t shirts
14. funny
15. humorous
If you do a deeper search on t-shirts you get: t-shirts 1146 2021
t-shirt 805 1420
funny t-shirts 622 1097
custom t-shirts 375 661
christian t-shirts 185 326
t-shirt designs 180 317
blank t-shirts 147 259
t-shirt design 146 257
japanese t-shirt 145 256
wholesale t-shirts 139 245
white t-shirt 126 222
vintage t-shirts 123 217
white t-shirts 111 196
cool t-shirts 102 180
rolling stones t-shirts 102 180
If you subscribe to the paid version of wordtracker you will get another 85 words.You also have the choice of digging deeper on each of the keywords above if you want to view words related to the one you chose. Conclusion. Doing keyword research before you write the content for your web site will help you to identify what angles you can use to attract the search engine spiders. If you create different pages that include these keywords you gain extra traffic because they receive a high number of searches.
By Herman Drost
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