Your SEO Idea Bank

Maybe you're an anarchist at heart, and it takes divine intervention to get your feet into two matching socks. But more likely, you're just so overworked that it's impossible to keep every sticky note and e-mail where it belongs. You need help and we're here for you! Before you begin your hour-a-day tasks, follow these simple steps to start your new SEO lifestyle with a “headquarters” on your computer. We call it your SEO Idea Bank!

Step 1: Create a home for your SEO files. Choose a location on your computer or network where your SEO files will live. Having one location for your SEO files will keep things simpler for you.

Step 2: Download tools from yourseoplan.com. On the companion website to this article, www.yourseoplan.com, you'll find the worksheets and templates that we'll be referring to throughout this article. Take the time to download these now and save them in your SEO Idea Bank:

- Keywords Worksheet

- Site Assessment Worksheet

- Rank Tracking Worksheet

- Task Journal Worksheet

- Competition Worksheet

- SEO Growth Worksheet

And don't forget to copy your Goals Worksheet from article 1, “Clarify Your Goals,” into your SEO Idea Bank as well. From time to time throughout the rest of this article, we'll send you to the website to fetch some more helpful documents for your SEO Idea Bank.

Step 3: Start an SEO Task Journal. Your SEO Task Journal is a place to document what you've done, what questions have cropped up, and what you need to do in the future. Your Task Journal will prevent you from duplicating your efforts and help you keep track of what you were thinking last week and the week before. It's also a convenient holding pen for ideas and random thoughts that come up while you are working on Your SEO Plan.

One of the fun things about SEO is wandering down whatever path your explorations take you. But if you only have an hour and you actually want to accomplish something, you're going to need to keep yourself on track. Rather than going off on every tangent that is thrown your way, file those thoughts away in your Task Journal for later.

If the Task Journal isn't your cup of tea, use whatever organizational method works for you. You may be happy using a simple Microsoft Word document and changing the font to strikethrough when the topic is resolved. But feel free to get fancy. Consider experimenting with an online database in your own personal Yahoo! Group at groups.yahoo.com, or an online to-do list through a service such as tadalist.com. With your SEO Idea Bank in place, you're ready for the fun stuff: choosing keywords!

Keywords

Ask any SEO pro what the single most important part of an SEO campaign is, and we bet you'll get this answer: “Keyword choice!” Here's why: The keywords you choose this week will be the focus of your entire optimization process. Keywords (also referred to as keyword phrases, keyphrases, and keyterms) are the short, descriptive phrases that you want to be found with on the search engines. If you put the time into choosing powerful keywords now, you are likely to be rewarded not only with higher ranks, but also with these benefits:

- A well-optimized site, because your writers and other content producers will feel more comfortable working with well-chosen keywords as they add new site text - More click-throughs once searchers see your listing, because your keywords will be highly relevant to your site's content

- More conversions once your visitors come to your site, because the right keywords will help you attract a more targeted audience

As SEO expert Jill Whalen told us, “There is more than one way to skin the SEO cat…. There is no special formula that will work for every site all the time.” And this applies to your keyword targeting strategy. We suggest that by the end of this week you have 10 target keyword phrases in hand. We believe that this is a reasonable level for an hour-a-day project. But you may be more comfortable with 2 or 20 keywords. We welcome you to adjust according to your individual needs. Here are your daily assignments for this week:

Your Keyword Gut Check

Resources to Expand and Enhance the Keyword List

Keyword Data Tools

Keyword Data Gathering

Your Short List

Your Keyword Gut Check

Today you're going to do a brain dump of possible target keywords for your organization. You'll need two documents from your SEO Idea Bank: the Keywords Worksheet and your Goals Worksheet. In the Keywords Worksheet, you'll find columns with the headings Keyword, Search Popularity, Relevance, Competition, and Landing Page. Today you're only worried about the first column: Keyword.

Now, take a look at the list of conversions that you came up with on your Goals Worksheet in article 1. You'll use these as jumping-off points for your keyword brainstorming session.

We met Jason back in article 1 when he was thinking through his target audiences and the goals of his SEO campaign. Jason's company, Babyfuzzkin, sells unique, high-end baby clothes. We're going to follow him through his keyword week. For now, you'll jot down whatever comes to mind, and save the fine-tuning for later. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

Be the searcher. For each conversion you wrote on your Goals Worksheet, take a few minutes to put yourself in the mind of each target audience that you listed. Imagine that you are this person, sitting in front of a search engine. What do you type in the search box?

Name who you are and what you offer. No keyword list is complete without your organization's name and the products, services, or information you offer. Be sure to think about generic and proprietary descriptions. Jason may jot down more generic words like “baby shower gifts” and “baby clothes,” but he should also include trademarked names like “Babyfuzzkin” and a list of the brand names he's selling. Likewise, if it's equally accurate to describe the products for sale on your website with the terms “spray bottles” or “X7 MistMaker Series,” add both to your list.

Name the need you fill. It's not just what you offer, it's the itch that your product or service scratches. So Jason might write down “baby shower gift ideas” or “baby clothes free shipping.” If you sold home alarm systems on your site, you might want to list terms that describe your customers' needs, such as “protect my home” and “prevent burglary.” Think seasonal. Does your product or service vary from season to season? Do you offer special services for special events? Think through your whole calendar year. Jason at Babyfuzzkin may want to list words like “baby swimsuits” and “Size 2T Santa Sweaters.” A spa resort may want to list things like “Mother's Day Getaway Ideas” and “Tax Time Stress Relief.”

Embrace misspellings, alternate spellings, and slang. Here's something you probably know better than any SEO expert: Alternate spellings and regional variations on your keywords. Jason bristles when he gets mail addressed to “Baby Fuzzkin” or “Babyfussing,” but he knows his company name is easy to get wrong, so he'll add those to his list. On a regional note, a company selling soft drink vending machines had better remember to add both “soda” and “pop.” You do not need to consider variations in capitalization because search engines are not sensitive to caps (besides, the vast majority of searches are lowercase). However, you should include singular and plural forms on your list for further evaluation, and be sure to consider variations in punctuation, too: “tattle tale,” “tattletale,” and “tattle-tale” are not necessarily the same words to a search engine.

Locate yourself. In article 2, “Customize Your Approach,” we suggested that brickand- mortar organizations include variations on their company name and location in the keywords list. If your company does business only in Michigan, you really don't want to waste your SEO efforts on a searcher in Nevada. And did we mention that search engines sometimes aren't all that smart? They do not necessarily know that “OH” and “Ohio” are the same thing. So be sure to include every variation you can think of.