The #1 Mistake SEOs Make With Keyword...

So, a recent post about the Scope of SEO and a few discussions around the office have had me thinking about the process of SEO. I have a feeling everyone in the SEO webspace understands keyword research, title tags, alt tags, headings, content, anchor text, robots.txt,  link acquisition, link bait, blah, blah, blah. We get it. Are the concepts really worth posting about anymore? I know they aren’t worth reading about. Lately I’ve been more interested in process…improving efficiency, impact, etc. So this post is about an aspect of the keyword research process I haven’t seen written about. I’m guessing it comes intuitively to most SEOs, but in case it doesn’t I’ll spell it out…

Arguably the most important aspect of search engine optimization is keyword research. Without a doubt, keyword research is the easiest aspect of SEO to screw up…and as we all know, if your keyword research is screwed up, then your SEO is screwed.

So, what is the #1 mistake SEOs make when it comes to keyword research?

They assume keyword research comes before linking.

I, myself, have made this mistake before. I’ve started with my product & market research. I’ve looked at my site content and generated lists of keywords. I’ve pulled search counts, categorized keywords, selected pages to optimize, and jumped head first into making content & meta changes. I’ve completely ignored linking during the keyword research process.

Wrong Approach.

You have two pages on your site about widgets. One page has zero inlinks. The other page has 100 inlinks. Which page do you optimize for the keyword “widgets?”

It’s a no-brainer, right? (If it’s not a no-brainer, the answer is Page 2). Let your external links do the heavy lifting for you. While this situation is an obvious one, most of us aren’t so lucky to have sites this simple. And once more variables are thrown in SEOs tend to lose focus. So, let’s look at a couple of more complicated, and likely, scenarios.

Your site is optimized or was at some point, or maybe the site was just built with SEO in mind. Either way, every page is about a specific idea or keyword-cluster. Every page has a decent amount of links. However, after digging into your external links, you realize people are linking to your Buying Widgets page with anchor text like “widget information.” Basically, people aren’t linking to your pages with the anchor text you expected.

Anchor text is a powerful thing, and it’s easier to follow it than fight it. Webmasters, web designers, and SEOs alike tend to think they decide which page is useful to which person, which page is most appropriate for which keyword. At the end of the day though, the user does. And anchor text is a way users show you how they use your page. In this scenario, it’s obvious that your Buying Widgets page has useful content for people in need of widget information.

So, what do you do? You change the title tag of your Buying Widgets page to make it more information-related. You possibly add widget information content to the page. You change your internal links so the anchor text is appropriate. As for your original Widget Information page, you title it something else so it doesn’t compete with your newly optimized page. Basically, you end up reoptimizing both pages without making drastic changes to content.

This scenario is the same as the one before, but the SEO is smart and looks at their current rankings before they begin keyword research. They do a search for “widget information” and two pages on their site rank. Widget Information ranks on Page 3 of Google. And, while Buying Widgets has way more inlinks with the anchor text “widget information” it only ranks on Page 5.

It seems like Widget Information would be the obvious choice to optimize for the keyword “widget information.” It’s already on Page 3. Pushing it to Page 1 won’t take  as much effort, right? Wrong.

If you’re working with a strong domain, it’s likely internal anchor text plays a major role in how your pages are ranked for keywords. Your rankings really can’t be looked at without considering  internal linking.

So, in this situation what do you do? You do the same as you did in the previous situation. You reoptimize without making huge changes to content. And you change all of the internal anchor text within your site to match your reoptimization. It’ll take less time to make those onsite changes and for Google to take notice, than it will for you to link build.

So, the point of this post: If you’re not looking at your external links as you build out keyword lists, you’re likely causing yourself a lot of time and frustration down the road. You can’t choose keywords based on site content alone. You can’t choose keywords based on current rankings and traffic data alone. If you have an understanding of how your site is being used, how it’s being linked to, you’ll make better optimization decisions. You’ll save time in future link building, and you’ll likely see the impact of your onsite changes more quickly.