Getting a number-one position on Google for your main keyword is the holy grail of SEO – unless that is you’re ranking in Google America and you’re targeting the UK market (or vice versa).

Making sure that your website ranks in the right country is crucial to how much targeted traffic it will receive. But how do you ensure that it will appear in the right territories?

The type of domain that you choose will almost certainly be a major factor because Google automatically assumes that you are targeting a particular territory based on the domain. For example, if you have a .co.uk domain (or .org.uk, .net.uk, etc) then Google will automatically assume that you are targeting the UK market, whereas if you have a .com, .org or .net, it will assume that you are targeting the US market (and the same is true for other territories).

But what does this mean if you have a .com domain but want to target the UK market?

4 Ways to Target a Specific Country

There are a number of steps that you can take if you run a .com website but you want to target the UK market (and the same rules apply for any territory). These will inform Google which market you are targeting and will therefore give you a better chance of ranking in the right country.

1) Add Your Address to Each Page

By adding your address to each of your web pages (down at the bottom of the page where it won’t distract visitors but will show up clearly for the Google spiders) you will inform Google that your company is based in the UK, which will suggest that you are targeting the UK market.

2) Set Your Geotarget

Go to Google’s Webmaster Tools and register your website if you haven’t already done so. Click on ‘Site Configuration’ then ‘Settings’, and from here you will be able to change your website’s geographic target. If it is not currently set to the UK then simply switch the location and Google will have a better idea of which market you are targeting.

3) Add a Google Listing

Head to Google Places and simply add your listing for free. This will allow your listing to show up in Google Maps and will clarify to Google where your company is based. On top of the SEO benefits, this will give you extra marketing clout by making your site even more visible to potential customers.

4) Add Your Site to Directories

Find some online directories in the UK (or whichever territory you are targeting) and register your site with them. This again helps Google to understand where you are targeting your website, and on top of that you’ll be getting some online adverts to help with your marketing efforts.

Make it Easy for Google to Work Out Your Target Market

Choosing the right domain for your target market is the easiest way to ensure that Google knows who you are targeting. But where this is not possible, use the four simple steps outlined above (the first three alone will take you all of half an hour) and you will be providing Google with the extra information it needs to understand which territory you are targeting.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been looking at much of the background surrounding SEO. We’ve gone through the notion of creating a new website from an SEO point of view, through targeting keywords, researching competition, indexing your new site and acquiring good links to it. More recently, we’ve looked at a newer form of SEO technique in utilising RSS feeds as part of your link building strategy. Today, were going to look at another activity I highly recommend you do in today’s online world – blogging.

Now, blogging is undoubtedly about far more than simply SEO. Some people blog for fun, some people blog because they have something to say, some people even blog because everyone else does…but all of these people have one thing in common, they want to be seen and read. There are many great thing about blogging, but I’m going to focus on why blogging is great for SEO.

So, Why Is Blogging Great For SEO?

Many people view blogs as having some ‘magical’ power to simply rank high within search engines for no apparently logical reason. The truth is that blogs are ‘magic’, but that this magic has a number of logical principles working away underneath. Knowing a bit about what these principles are can help you make your blog posts work better for you, and might also give you one or two ideas you can take away and apply when marketing your main website too. Here’s my summary of the ‘magic’ that underpins blogs…

1. Creating Content Consistently and Easily
Blogs are inherently easy to setup and run. By utilising an editing screen based largely around the common word processor interface were all used to, most people find blogs easier to update than websites using often more complex website CMS systems. Because a blog asks for open thoughts, opinions and words they are easier for most  us to write, especially when compared to more corporately driven websites which usually require us to stick to a brand style, tone and page word limit. As a result, we create more content because we have more freedom of expression.

There are three great things about creating ever increasing content. Firstly search engines love fresh content. If you update your blog often, they will visit your more often and generally reward you with higher rankings. Secondly, more and more content gives other blog and website owners more opportunities to read, enjoy and link to your pages – the more pages you have out there, the more unsolicited links you probably find you attract. The third great thing is actually our 2nd overall point, read below..

2. Catching Longtail Keyword Searches
When we looked at researching keywords in our earlier posts, we were primarily concerned with what we call ‘short tail’ keywords. Short Tail keywords are those keywords that are searched for regularly each month and tend to be the ones we web marketing types focus on – because they are predictable and measurable. Yet short tail keywords make up only 30% of all web searches. This means that 70% of all keyword searches are unique in some way and hence cannot be tracked or predicted. This in turn means that the webpages out there with the most words on them have the best chance of top ranking for long tail keywords. Blogs, by their nature, are a lot more about words than pictures and hence one of the major reasons they attract good web traffic is because they tend to catch long tail searches – our third great thing about content creation. Put simply, more content = more longtail traffic.

3. Auto Pinging & Other SEO Features
Because ‘blogging’ has come to be after the need for SEO grew, blog platforms have created their scripts with at least an element of SEO in mind.  One of the most useful features of a blog is their ability to ‘ping’. Pinging is the process by which you tell search engines and blog directories that you have some new content for them to crawl. Most of the major blog platforms have inbuilt functionality that instantly tells SE’s and directories when you have published a new post. This means that regularly updated blogs are crawled often and new blogposts can often indexed within hours of publication. In fact, if you have a regularly crawled blog, one of the easiest ways to get a new website indexed is to place a link straight to it from your high content blog!

Some of you may already know that I’m a huge fan of WordPress.  WordPress has a number of fantastic SEO plugins, in addition to pinging, that make the whole notion of optimisation so much easier.  If you’re a WordPress user and would like my list of favourite WordPress SEO plugins, send me a nice message from the contact page and I’ll happily oblige.

4. Opportunities To Spread Blog Content
Three weeks ago, we looked at ways of utilising articles again and again across a variety of mediums. Blog posts can be utilised in exactly the same way, in fact writing regular blog posts will give you more and more content to promote, convert and promote again.

There are a number of ‘exclusive’ places online where you can promote your  blogposts. The best of these are undoubtedly ‘blog carnivals‘. A ‘blog carnival’ is essentially a collection of the most informed blogposts on a specific topic. Featured blogposts will come from a number of blogs often spread throughout the world. To be featured in one offers you a highly relevant and highly powerful link which often has an immediately positive impact on your search engine rankings.

5. Another Domain, Another Feed
Your blog will require it’s own address to run from – isn’t this a great opportunity to go and buy another keyword rich domain? Just like your website, your blog can target ‘short tail’ keywords too – and so it should. Do your research and target another set of keywords that compliment the ones already chosen for your main site, if you get both your blog and your website ranking you’ll be making some serious dents online. Additionally, all blogs come with an instant RSS feed. Promote this feed throughout the directories we discussed last time, blend it, bookmark it, do everything you can to get links into it.

In many ways, blogs are actually easier to promote than standard websites. This is down to the fact that ‘blogging’ is what we call a web 2.0 property and hence comes ready made for the new online world of social networking, mobile sites and rss syndication.  Being web 2.0 ready means that a blog can be found, and marketed, in many places that websites simply cannot. Remember to link out from your blogposts to your main website when the opportunity arises. Anything that does good things for your blog will then also in turn feed through to your main site too.

So, if you weren’t blogging yesterday, how you been persuaded to start today?

Part 2 of a series on SEO considerations when building a website from concept to completion.

If you took a handful of successful websites across a variety of markets, I’d bet that the one factor that they all share is one of choosing the right keywords. Whether you discover the your keywords by hook or by crook, once you’re ranking for them,  a simple equation begins to work in your favour; the right keywords = the right website traffic. It makes sense to find, and target, these keywords from the start and, as we discussed last time, if possible reflect them within your domain name.

Over the next two posts I’m going to be outlining a couple of quick and free keyword tricks to help you find the right opportunities for your website. These are of course totally by ‘hook’ methods, if anyone out there does have any tips that work by ‘crook’, I’d love to know

How to use keyword research to discover keyword rich domains.

There are many pro keyword tools out there on the market, some of these really are excellent and I use two in particular myself. However, if you’re not obsessing about keywords on a daily basis, these tools prove expensive. So, if you are running one or two company/personal websites, you need to find another way of researching your keywords effectively. Whatever your wish maybe the web usually provides and who better to help us with this task than Google? The very people we want to seduce with our new website.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool is perhaps the place I visit most often online. Officially, this tool is there to entice you into spending your hard earned pennies on Google Sponsored Ads, which when used properly can a highly lucrative advertising medium – more on this in a later post. Unofficially, Google’s Keyword Tool is where those of us with ambitions to crash the top ten organic rankings can quickly find the right keywords to get excited about.

From this webpage, Google will tell us approximately how many times any keyword we type into their search box was searched for across the previous month. If that wasn’t enough of a freebie, this tool will also tell us about a number of permutations of your original keyword that people search for, along with search numbers for last month.

Let’s apply this fine free tool from Google and find a domain for our new website:

1. Open Google’s Keyword Tool.
2. Make sure your regional settings read “English, United Kingdom” (see below) – unless you are targeting another part of the world and hence this should be set to your target region.
3. Type in your ‘wish-word’ ie the keyword you believe you would like to rank no1 for oneday. I’ll stick with ‘buy shoes’ from the last post by way of example.
4. Type in the captcha and click ‘Get Keywords Ideas’ (click the image below to enlarge).
   
5. Unless you’ve been making words up, you should now be presented with a good page full of keywords.
6. Let’s filter them so they are easier for us to assess. First, pull down on ‘match type’ (see below) and set to ‘exact’. You should now see the search volume figures beside all of your keywords drop in dramatic fashion! Exact match means that Google gives us figures for people typing in the ‘exact’ keywords we queried, ie ‘buy shoes’ and not ‘shoes buy’ or ‘shoes to buy’ etc. Only ever buy a keyword rich domain based on ‘exact’ match figures, they will give you far more realistic web traffic expectations.
7. Next, click on ‘Local Search Volume’. This will rank the keywords in order of search number. ‘Local’ refers to the UK here. Click below to increase image size.
   
8. Open up a second browser window, pressing ‘Ctrl & T’ together is a nice shortcut for doing this quickly. Browse to your favourite domain retailer and check the keywords as domain names in order of search volume eg ‘buyshoes.co.uk’, ‘buyshoesonline.co.uk’ etc. It’ good to use a domain reseller that quickly shows you a number of domain options for a given search, 123-Reg has a nice, easy screen for checking options. By typing a co.uk domain into their search box, 123-Reg will let you know instantly whether or not the .com, .net and other versions of your domain are available as well as your co.uk.
9. Everybody has different ideas as to which version of a domain you should buy or avoid. If you work mainly in UK markets, as I do, then the .co.uk is definitely your preferred choice – Google tends to rank .co.uk domains higher for searches made from the UK. I also always buy the .com version if it’s available too.
10. Often things are quite this easy, in which case I apply the following rules, which have worked for me so far (geared towards UK markets);
    - search for yourkeyphrase.co.uk domains first
    - if this has already gone, and your keyword has no more than two, occasionally three, words in total, search for your keyphrase hyphenated, eg keyword-keyword.co.uk
    - if both natural and hyphenated co.uk domains have gone, or your keyphrase is more than three words, search for .org.uk versions of your domain. These domains have ranked very well for me in UK markets.
    - 80% of the time, the above steps will find you a good, keyword rich domain. If so, check the .com version of your domain, just in case it’s free too. If you don’t uncover any domain options, move on to the next keyword from your Google list.

Overall, domain checking does take a little time and you will probably have to check a fair few domains before you uncover one that you are happy with. Try to focus on matching the highest traffic volume keyword against a domain that you feel could represent your business/website effectively. Some people don’t like .org.uk domains (I agree these are harder to utilise for conventional ‘offline’ businesses), some people don’t like hyphens. That’s fine, choose a domain that you feel good about in all of it’s extension, connotation (does the domain truly reflect what you offer?) and traffic potential. Getting all of those three right pretty much means you’ve found a domain worth bagging. Don’t be frightened to note a few domain possibilities down and think about them for a day or so. I often do this, and so far the domain has always been waiting for me when I’ve returned to buy.

Going back to our working example of ‘buy shoes’, let’s see what potential domains we have uncovered? Click to enlarge the image below.

The fourth keyword I checked for domain potential uncovered some possibilities. As you can see above, www.buycheapshoes.org.uk is available to buy. With Google showing 1000 exact match searches in January 2010, I’d say that’s a pretty good domain for a ‘cost effective’ online shoe retailer to consider. If the .org.uk doesn’t feel right then a little bit of digging will also show that ‘buy-cheap-shoes.co.uk’ is also available to buy, as is ‘buy-cheap-shoes.com’. Overall, I tend to struggle more with hyphens than I do with org.uk, but’s that nothing other than personal preference! Both versions of the domain will work well in targeting the keyword ‘buy cheap shoes’ for Google top ten ranking.

Don’t Go Domain Crazy
Here’s a word of warning. Many people I work with online tend to go a tad domain crazy when we delve into domain research. It is better to spend some time researching and thinking about the right domain for you than quickly buying ten or twenty domains in the name of ‘freezing out the competition.’ For example, the above domain ‘buycheapshoes.org.uk’ is definitely not right for you if your stock retails at the higher end of the market! One of the great things about the internet is that there is always another keyword opportunity/keyword rich domain to find. So, find the right one for you then spend your time promoting it. If you haven’t found the right one, keep searching. Try new keywords altogether, ask your friends and family what they would search for when looking for your goods/services. You will always be surprised.

Next time, we’ll look at how we can delve deeper into Google’s keyword data and find more keywords for use throughout our new website.

This will be the first of a handful of posts aimed at taking you through the creation of a new website from scratch. As my blog is all about website marketing, I’ll approach everything from the point of view that we want to gain as much exposure for our new website as possible. Each post will discuss all the necesary SEO focused thoughts at each stage of yur new website build. Which brings me nicely to the first post – what’s the first step you should take when setting up your website?

Step 1 – It’s All In The Domain Name

Web design has grown largely out of two, previously unrelated, fields – graphic design and computer programming. In fact, the majority of web design agencies tend to have started life as some form of graphic design/marketing/branding agency and moved into websites as the internet grew into a primary form of  advertising (this is even true of H2). This fact often means that many a website project starts out with the digital equivalent of paper, coloured pencils and crayons. There’s nothing wrong with this in itself, but it’s not where I would recommend you start. If you want your website to generate good leads from search engines, then you need to start with some form of direction and that comes from a good, keyword researched domain name.

Why is your domain name so important?

Fundamentally, I’d say this comes down to the way the internet has changed and shaped marketing from it’s traditional base. For example, there are many opportunities for us to stumble across traditional marketing – we ‘passively’ discover adverts within newspapers, inbetween TV/radio shows and through our letterbox each morning. It is far harder to place a website somewhere on the internet and expect people to ‘passively’ discover it. 99% of online website visitors ‘actively’ find webpages by typing in queries (usually within search engines) and following links from their query results. Well marketed websites target the most lucrative keyword searches that people regularly type online for their offering.  If your domain name does the same, ie reflects the keywords you want your website to rank well for, you’ll make your online marketing far easier in the long run. Equally, by starting your website panning with your domain name, you’ll be making your whole website far more keyword targeted right from the start.

Despite the huge growth of social media and web 2.0, Google UK is still by far the most visited website in the UK. All search engines love keyword rich domains, they make it easy for search engine robots to understand exactly what a website is offering and hence where a website should be ranking. What does it mean to be keyword rich? Put simply, if you were selling shoes and you owned the domain buyshoes.co.uk you would have a wonderfully keyword rich domain. This domain would make it significantly easier for your website to rank high for the keyword search ‘buy shoes’. As this keyword was searched for 2,900 times in January 2010 on google.co.uk – owning this domain offers an online shoe retailer a distinct advantage in the online world. You should aim to find such an advantage for yourself .

Why not your company or brand name as a domain name?

First off – if available, you should still buy your company brand as a domain name. You can point as many domain names as you like at your website and you wouldn’t want anyone else owning your company/brand name! But when it comes to your online marketing, make your keyword rich domain the focus of your marketing activities as this domain will give you the quickest, and usually highest, rankings for your new website. Targeting a company or brand name towards a specific keyword takes so much longer – you have to gradually teach the search engines that your company domain name, eg ‘smithsandson.co.uk’, is relevant to, and should rank for, ‘buy shoes.’ Most company brand names are not keyword rich and have little value other than to the company themselves. Many well known brands have bought domains to target specific keywords/rankings, the best example of this might be B&Q who online operate under the domain www.diy.com. Should you find a keyword rich domain, then securing it for your company will give you a true online asset. Domains like diy.com or buyshoes.co.uk will always have a market value, especially if they come with current top 10 ranking positions.

So, how do you know what keywords to target and hence what domain to buy? In the next post we’ll be covering off exactly that. For now, if you’re starting to plan a new website and have found this post, begin to write down what you believe would be your perfect, keyword rich domain names. Don’t worry about whether they are available to buy or not as yet, we’ll be working from your ‘perfect’ list to ‘reality’ in the next post. 

Making your ‘keyword rich’ domain name your first step in planning your new website will bring a focus to your overall project. Once purchased, your domain will begin to feed into your design, navigation and copy thoughts – all of which we’ll cover off as we go. You’ll have a better understanding of where you’re website should be heading and where you expect to be ranking. Knowing all of this before you pick up that crayon will give your website project strong momentum from the start.