Matt McGee (who I owe a link to for winning the SEO group NCAA tournament bracket back in March...damn you, Florida) wrote a fantastic post over at Small Business SEM called "I Have My Keywords...Now What?" It's concise, it's to the point, it's magical.
His post is a classic "Duh" post, where once I read it I thought, "Duh, I wonder if our clients know this?" (I'm sure they do. You may not know this, but Rand is a pretty good SEO.) When I first started working at SEOmoz, I'd generate lots of keyword research reports for clients, email them to Rand, and not think anything further about it. My mentality was not unlike that "set it and forget it" rotisserie. (Yes, my mom bought one, and yes, it was awesome. We had pork roast every weekend for like a month straight.)
Recently, however, I've gotten keen on shaking that "set it and forget it" (or, perhaps more appropriately, "generate the keyword list and forget it," though that doesn't have quite the same snappy ring to it) mentality. Earlier this week Rand and I sat down to do a site review for one of our clients. The big thing we noticed was that they weren't utilizing any major, relevant keywords throughout their site and in their title or meta description tags (in fact, there were no meta description tags). A distinct lack of keywords, despite the fact that we had previously supplied them with an extensive keyword research report.
I wonder, therefore, what our clients do with our keyword research reports. I've done countless site reviews and jotted down the ever-repetitive "Utilize your keywords in _______" note, knowing full well that they already have a fatty list of keywords provided by yours truly. It wouldn't surprise me if, upon receiving a keyword research report, our client goes, "Ah, cool. These all seem relevant. Ooh, look at all these search counts! These are accurate for sure!" and then sticks it under the wobbly leg of their desk. As that old saying goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it incorporate keywords in its title tags (or something like that). Not that it's their fault--obviously these companies hire us to help them with their sites. If they knew to target keywords in their site, they'd be doing it already.
Nonetheless, Matt's post made me feel guilty about setting and forgetting it. I know I'm not Rand and that our clients pay the big bucks to talk to him, not me, but that doesn't mean I should be ignorant to the work I do for our clients. The next time I turn in a keyword research report, I could attach it to a document highlighting the importance of targeting proper, relevant keywords throughout the site, and provide a couple examples of some of the keywords in action. Then, if they want to ignore my awesome hard work, that's their prerogative (Bobby Brown style, yo!).
What experience do any of you have with this sort of situation? When consulting or when providing a keyword research report, how do you hammer home the importance of keyword incorporation and placement in your client's site? At one point do you wipe your hands and say, "Screw it, I tried"?
By: Rebecca Kelley
Don't Set It and Forget It! Use That List of Keywords!
Keyword Research
The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.
Put together a simply formatted excel spreadsheet with the first column indicating a specific page on the client's site, the second column the suggested targeted keywords, and subsequent columns providing specific suggested <title> tags, meta description tags, and on-page content change suggestions (add an instance of this phrase in the third paragraph, etc) - goes a long way to actually seeing these changes implemented. Actually including the <title>and <META> tagging in the spreadsheet so a webmaster can simply copy and paste... tada, no more "oh they never did that, maybe I wasn't clear enough" afterthoughts.
It's another level of analysis beyond basic keyword research to map the keywords to existing pages - but it provides a nice opportunity to illustrate to a client why they may need more content on site to attain some better keyword spread.
Very nice. We tell clients where to incorporate keywords, often giving them specific title and meta description tags, etc. But I do like the spreadsheet format. Businesses clients LOVE them some spreadsheets!
hmmm...interesting. i have only worked at one seo company so far and if we do not host the clients site ourselves we usually get ftp from them so we have the ability to make the changes as we see fit. and continue tweaking and making changes based on analytics, keyword ranking reports, etc.
it sounds as though this is not the norm and most seo companies tend to send suggestions to clients to implement themselves?
i'm happy the way our system works. i can imagine it would be challenging to get some of our clients to make the changes in a timely manner or at all. i like that we are able to essentially 'take over' the site and make changes on the fly.
Kimber, that's how we do it as well. Our clients would never make the changes.
There's a few that we do the first pages, but if they add any pages, they have to put the meta tags and stuff.
I do sometimes give clients keyword lists to include in their content if I'm not writing it.
kimber, I don't know that there is a "norm", it just depends on the company. In my previous job, we had some clients for whom we did everything and some whom we just consulted. In my current job, we're consulting only. I think both approaches have their pros and cons.
Like Kimber and Jtaylor's companies we do all designing and implementing ourselves. This means that you have the luxury of not having to wait for the client to take action.
I think that the problem is not necessarily keyword reports. You can just fill in any type of deliverable in its place. "The client does nothing with my []" where [] can be anything you want; design proposals, quote, update report, etc. And now imagine you're in the Caribbean where they say "I will look at it first thing in the morning, swa" for a few weeks/months....
For this reason we try to do as much as possible for our clients and take as many decisions out of their hands as possible. So, we don't just generate the keyword list; we write the text for it, put some nifty colors around it, upload it to our own servers and put it live. With a bit of luck the client just has to write the check and be happy.(I can imagine that this doesn't work for you guys though, but hey you asked for past experiences)
We usually send them their keyword analysis so that they can choose the important keywords for their website. Afterwards, we create a report telling them how they should target these particular keywords and where on their website to target them.
CY
That's a good policy. We should maybe look into contributing a follow up report.
We find it's helpful because then it generates questions from our clients allowing us to explain why they need to target the keywords within their website. Thus, it gives them a sense of understanding on how important relevant content is to their website and how it will possibly improve their rankings.
Let it never be said that Rebecca Kelley doesn't pay off her debts. :-) Thanks for the link and the good discussion here in the comments. I also can't stand "THE" Ohio State University....
In the past, most of my SEO services have been tied to design or redesign work, so it has been part of a bigger project. This often made it easier for me to integrate specific optimization, not just structural optimization, into the project.
But I've also been doing more standalone SEO and keyword research, especially with larger clients that either don't/can't allow access or who have internal resources to manage their web presence themselves.
I think there are a couple issues going on here.
One, I definitely agree that providing the why and how is critically important. What we consider common and everyday tasks are still extremely foreign to most people.
Two, and perhaps this is the bigger issue, isn't as much why or how, but who... either helping them to understand who should be using this information, and/or more importantly, making sure that our explanation of the why and how reaches the who. (maybe we need a Dr. Seuss SEO book)
Bigger clients like this may have a web developer/designer or webmaster as well as a marketing person and even copywriters or a separate marcom group, all of which may have some involvement or responsibility over the site.
As an SEO, you may not even be in contact with all of these individuals, and to make matters worse, different elements of the page may fall under different areas... perhaps the meta and title sections are the webmaster/designer/developers' area, but the page copy falls under marcom, but copy on specific product pages might even be under marketing or the individual product managers' responsibility.
Nevermind trying to get everyone on the same page, getting them within the same book might be a battle. It is probably advisable for SEOs to ask who has responsibility over which sections of the pages and the site/s and try to arrange a meeting or training seminar to help educate everyone on how to use this information.
Keep in mind that we are talking about very different backgrounds and viewpoints, and some of this SEO "schtuff" is going to seem completely foreign and even against everything some of these people think.
Well all this talk of keywords and spreadsheets seems like good timing, or perhaps the extra push to toss together the spreadsheet tool I have been meaning to create.
I've been meaning to put together something to help in managing and tracking keyword optimization usage for myself, and after working with a client last week that should be able to put this to use, I finally got around to doing it.
It is just a basic Excel spreadsheet kind of tool, which you are more than free to modify, extend, or do whatever to customize it to your needs... and of course it's free.
Get the Keyword Site Manager and see if it works for you and/or your clients-- and of course, no guarantees, warranties, or anything else, use at your own will/risk and otherwise.
Thanks for sharing your spreadsheet I am going to try it out
Whilst I haven't done any 'getting hands dirty' work yet since moving to the agency side, I'm pretty sure that our attitude would be to supply as many actual examples of how to utilise the words as possible - in fact that would be part of our pitch.
Back at the publisher, I used to scour the copy that the journalists were writing, and pull out examples of articles that were using keywords, and also ones that weren't. That way I could highlight the good & the bad!
PS for the Mozzers - the strike through functionality doesn't seem to work on the comments....
very good point ciaran,
It was the point I would make, examples.
Any keyword report could be made exponetially more beneficial by tailored examples.
Instead of "here are four keywords you should concentrate on", it could be, "this is what your homepage would look like if you were taking full advantage of the four keywords we reccomend".
feed - yeah its good to provide direct examples.
I like to whow clients keyword reports with stats/traffic analysis to show the benefits of using long tail keywords in articles/blogs.
Its amazing how adding a few references to popular events can drive traffic
A perennial problem. Clients eh? Who'd have them?
We tend to go as far as actually writing title tags and helping with re-writing a lot of content etc. as well as providing keyword reports and advice.
I agree...I generally like to just do the work of updating the title and description tags myself, and even sometimes editing copy.
That way I can ensure it gets done right and some yuppie programmer doesn't screw it up.
It also opens the door for being able to re-bill an already existing client. All my contracts state that any work that needs to be re-done due to to an error that is not my own is rebilled at $XX/hr. This ensures I have their attention and they see the importance in it.
Exactly - like I said, if you provide them with real examples of how & where to use them, its more likely that they will - and that they might just ask you to do a copywriting job as well!
When it comes to keyword and content implementation, I think it's fair to say that we at VIZION Interactive nag our clients in the most loving way possible. Then again, we do the actual implementation on more than half of our clients sites (we prefer this so that we can ensure the work gets done and gets done right).
There will always be some clients, inevitably, who prefer to do all implementation themselves for security and stability reasons. In those circumstances, we nag on a weekly basis because we want our clients to see results. It's not enough to walk away with a check every month. We have to do everything in our power to deliver.
Thanks Rebecca, definitely a good point that the research must be revisited. We go through the reports each month to see how the site is being found as well and compare that to the original research to see what we may be missing so we can update our keyword research. Often dig up some great misspellings that way too :)
Thanks Rebecca and Matt,
I am a strong believer in a keyword report to be a tool to discover what searchers are searching for.
Good contents can either be:
If you make contents after number one, then you don’t need much keyword research.
The problem comes when you want to write contents there is a demand for. Assuming you have a proper keyword report with thousands of relevant keyword phrases and all the metric you need to make quality decisions.
This is a lot of information, which lead many of our costumers to ask: Can’t you just give us the keywords we have to use.
For me it is the same question as a writer that asks which book to write. If the writer doesn’t know what to write about, then research phase is properly not finished.
What I can do is to tell what keywords there is a demand for, but the writer has to decide what to write about.
Then you need to enable the writer to find the information in the keyword report. You can do that by:
I have chosen to have the option, for my customers, to set a relevance score in my keyword report, but that only solve half of the problem.
Therefore I have written documentation to explain how to use keywords reports most efficiently.
Feel free to use the documentation as you like, as long as you leave credit to the source. They are found in Word, OD and PDF.
How to understand your keyword report. Found here.
How to use the functions in excel to find the best keywords. Found here.
Step by step instructions for every variable in the keyword report to find good keywords. Found Here.
All the documentation is illustrated. Hope you and your customers can use it.
Making sure you're using the right keywords is one thing but distributing them throughout your pages is another. Make sure you use them effectively. There is simply no point in having competitive key phrases and not using them in the correct manner.
Think logically, - how can this benefit my website? Which keyword would be relevant to which page?. When you decide which keywords are most beneficial to your website, make sure you do your research and plan thoroughly.
Rebecca, would you say rating keywords by supply/demand ratio is generally enough to pick out the best keywords?
What do you mean by supply/demand?
Do you mean supply/demand in terms of CPC?
Valiik,
The supply is not the most precise number, mostly because it is difficult to compare keyword phrases with different lengths and the search engines don’t give the exact number.
The demand is highly polluted of different software (ex. rank software)
Conclusion: You have two inaccurate variables in a formula and that result in a very inaccurate number to pick out the best keyword from.
NB: I have been thinking about taking supply/demand out of my keyword reports. Have anyone had any customer reaction doing that?
What? No M.C. Hammer reference?
And I know what you mean. If I had a nickel for every client that didn't implement 3/4 of my suggestions, I'd be counting lots of nickels....it's a good thing I get them to pay me in checks.
Nice post Rebecca. I suppose that's one nice thing about working for small clients: even though they don't have the budget for a lot of fancy stuff, you get to implement your suggestions straightaway.
PS Better luck in next year's Tourney -- not enough upsets this year for the bracket veterans to clean up...
At least Florida beat Ohio State. As a native Michigander, I have to root against anything coming out of Ohio.
Ahem. I believe you mean THE Ohio State.
Shut up. I refuse to acknowledge that. Seriously, was there some sort of dispute as to which Ohio State was the "canonical" Ohio State? Is there some Ohio State University in New Mexio we aren't aware of?
I hate that school.
I am from Ohio and I find that "The" Ohio State University stuff annoying!
Try working with several alumni who all instantly correct you every time! ARGG!
I actually went to OSU for a year of grad school but left because I found the overuse of definite articles too annoying.
OK, so that wasn't the only reason, but still, I agree 100%.
So - from a newbie:
How often should a keyword report be run? Just once? Once a week? I feel like I know what to do with my keywords, but does that change? Is it dependent on the industry?
Tanks for any clarification; excellent article.
Dear Akuzenski,
I am not sure I can answer your question, but I try to give you some hints.
Basically it is a cost/benefit problem.
Said in a differently way: How much benefit do you receive compared with the cost of an updated keyword report.
The industry matters a lot. If you are targeting an industry which changes all the time like movies or gossip, you need to update your keyword report more frequently or you might need to guess what is popular because by the time the information arrives in a keyword report it will be too old.
If you are targeting accounting, it is pretty statistic area, where you don’t need to update your keyword report so often except if you decide to target news related contents like scandals within accounting.
I personally recommend, in most cases, to have a profound keyword report made, compared to several smaller updated keyword reports.
But it all depends on the industry and your strategy.
Akuzenski did you have a special industry in mind?
Akuzenski I hope you find the information useful?
I work with a company who designs and builds clients sites as well as does some SEO to separate sites, we tend to get the client to draw up a list of about 50 keywords (depends on size of site, most of ours are smaller fry!) that they wish to rank on/think relevant... We then put in the research and see which terms generate traffic, which are worth optimising for and which just plainly arent going to be worth it and go back to them with a refined/edited list. They sign that off and we get on with it... this makes them feel involved and well, after all they are gonna know their business better than we do right? ;) lol
Hi Rebecca,
I've been working for multiple clients, again providing endless recommendations based upon keyword research. My common findings are again clients become lazy when writing web copy, not utilising the keyword research information provided.
To make clients aware of how important SEO is, I like to provide an example to clients of how their competitors are doing in the search rankings. 9 times out of 10, the competitors are already following SEO best practice, by placing keywords/phrases in context with the page copy. This often is reflected by the ranking positions in Google.
When clients find their site not performing as well as their competition, its often a WAKE UP call for them, to start paying attention and give SEO the credit and dues it deserves.
Another factor I've noticed recently, SEO is on a major up. I attended an internet show a few days ago in London, I was amazed as to the amount of SEO firms that were on offer (20+). This time last year at the same show, there were only a handfull of companies shouting about SEO. Generally accross the board, I think companies and clients alike are now (last 6 months) starting to understand that SEO is just not a 3 letter word. Its a way of life....at least it is for me as am sure yourself also... :-)
Kind regards
Shahid.SEO