Search Engine Optimisation is not magic. If you want to be found more easily in Google, there are some things you need to do – and there are things NOT to do.
This webinar is about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and how to get found in Google. We share the fundamental guidelines to follow when you add new pages, articles or blog posts to your website. We share some tools, tips and techniques for finding your keywords and show you how to use your keywords wisely for good On Page SEO.
The Concise Webinar is presented by Gareth Lane and Richard Keeves.
Here’s what we cover:
You can view the webinar here. The full transcript is below.
How to get found in Google (Part 1)
Presenters: Richard Keeves and Gareth Lane, Concise Digital
Richard: Welcome to this concise webinar. Today’s topic is SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and how to get found in Google. We look at how to find the right keywords and show you some handy tools we love. Then we look at on page SEO which is all about where to use your keywords on your webpage for best SEO results. As I say my name is Richard, a director of Concise since July of this year. Gareth, introduce yourself to those few who don’t you.
Gareth: For those who don’t know me, I’m a founding director of Concise and technical checker. If Richard starts talking a whole heap of nonsense I will let you know and talk some more nonsense instead.
Richard: Just a quick bit about the concise webinars. As I say these are going to now run every couple of weeks. These are intended to be concise obviously but also educational not full of sales pitches, not a lot of waffle, getting to the point and covering specific topics of things that hopefully have got to be useful. If you’ve got any suggestions about topics then which we’d love to hear from you about those.
Before we begin just a couple of housekeeping things. This session is being recorded and will be available for viewing. This is an interactive session. As you can see they’re on screen. Gareth is going to be running through some demos of some tools that we use. If you’ve got any searches that you would like to have done during the webinar please type them into the chat box and we will hopefully get to those and demonstrate how the tools work using those searches that you’ve got in mind.
I guess, one thing that we’d love to tell you about is the SEO magic wand. Everyone seems to want one of these. It would be quite a useful thing if it existed but the said and bad news is there is no magic wand. This stuff takes time. Anyone who tells you that they can do SEO easily, guaranteeing results and will show you on the first page of Google very quickly is generally playing with themselves or pulling your leg. The best way to get on the first page of Google if you want instant results is to use Google Ads. Organic search rankings takes a lot longer but obviously once you’re there if you can maintain it then you are able to get traffic to your website at no charge which is obviously better than Google Ads. There’s a balance. For someone who wants instant results use Google Ads. For someone who wants to build up over time so that you have traffic coming to your website, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the way to go. Typically what we recommend to people is to use a balance. Get the SEO work happening but balance that with Google Ads. Then once you start to get rankings for the searches that you’re after. You then don’t need to use as many ads typically.
Let’s get into it. To start with the key to getting found in Google is to actually understand what your customers are searching for. This may seem very obvious but a lot of people miss it. What this goes to is the language of today is the search intent or the user’s intent. What is it that the person who is searching actually wants to get? What is their goal? Google is getting very clever. You probably all know that. That is no big secret but Google is getting seriously clever. It tries to assess what each of the searches is looking for and then to deliver the results to meet that specific intent. The intent can vary. It varies with text, whether they’re doing a text search or a voice search and obviously depending on where the person is in the buying process, whether they’re just trying to research a topic or whether they’re actually wanting to buy and buy right now. It’s about making sure that you can understand the intent of the person and what keywords they use to do the searches and then to deliver the content that satisfies that. I guess the key here is the person’s goals. Think about it when somebody is searching what is the goal. What is it that they actually want?
There are some tools that are available and some of them cost money. Some of them don’t cost money. Some of them used to be free and now are going to be charged for. We’ll tell you about one of those in just a minute.
SEMrush is very good. Our SEO guys at Concise use this along with various other tools. This is something that you pay as a subscription for. It’s very good. It’s very powerful. Often it’s overkill if you’re trying to do SEO yourself but it’s certainly a handy thing. There are others as well. There’s one called Keyword Sheeter that helps you identify a whole bunch of keywords that may be relevant. Its cousin Keyword Shitter, another tool and you can get bombarded with keywords.
The tool we love is Keywords Everywhere. This right now and as of last night and in the last few days when we put this presentation together for you. Right now it’s a free Chrome extension. We’ve actually noticed this morning that this free Chrome extension is now going to be paid for. As of October 1 it’s no longer free. There’s a small charge based on the number of searches and keywords that it delivers. I think they’re now going to charge a dollar for every 10,000 keywords that it processes partly because they’ve got cost. This interacts with Google’s API and pulls out information from Google. It is at the moment a free extension to Chrome. We strongly recommend it. We use it. The fact that it’s now going to be charged for won’t stop us from using it but it just changes a teensy bit.
One of the key things with Keywords Everywhere is understanding that it’s quite powerful and Gareth will show this in just a sec but you can set your location, you can set the location that you want it to pull results for. This is a useful thing. This is a useful thing. As an example, if we did a search for how to build a dog kennel. With this extension turned off the Google search just shows you what you normally expect. When it’s turned on it actually shows you the volume of searches that are done in a month in a location that you have selected. It also shows you what Google estimates to be the likely cost per click that you need to bit to get an ad in there for this keyword and also the competition for that. This is really helpful information to start with but Keywords Everywhere does more than that. It also shows you search volumes for related keywords and not only that but also for other terms that people also search for. How to build a dog kennel, one of the related keywords as you can see here how to build a dog house. I thought they were called kennels but it turns out a lot of people think they’re called houses so it goes on. The other terms that people also search for are particularly handy. Gareth, over to you mate. You can do a little demo of how this one works.
Gareth: Screen sharing now, assuming this works. Mic check.
Richard: All good.
Gareth: The application only works in Google Chrome. That is a browser. That is this little colored on down here. If you’re wanting to use this tool you need to use Google Chrome. If you simply Google Keywords Everywhere or go to KeywordsEverywhere.com you’ll be able to follow the process to install it. Until last night it was free but as with all the things someone needs to make a bit of money out of it at some point but they are only charging a dollar or so a month so it’s not the end of the world. Once it’s installed you’ll get a little thing that pops up in here with a little K in the top right hand side and you can turn it on and off. It can get quite annoying for some if you’re sort of Googling for a new house or some cars or something but otherwise you can turn it off.
One key thing to point out is there’s a number of different locations. If you’re doing some research in Australia make sure you selected Australia. If you’re a global business you can click global or there’s Canada, India, New Zealand, South Africa and so on. I’m just going to click on Australia. Then what it does is every time you Google something for example pet warehouse. It will add a whole selection of data to these terms. What Google has popped up here are related and suggested search words to do with pet warehouse. You can see next to each one there’s a number that says 320/MO. That means that on average over a 12 month period there are 320 people a month in Australia searching for that term. The number next to it that says $1.10 is how much a cost per click bid would cost on average. It’s not that accurate.
If you attended the webinar the other day you would have learned about quality score and so on and how that dramatically affects that price. If you didn’t there is a video recording of it that we can send you if you’d like to learn about that. Then the number on the end is actually a percentage with one being the highest. It’s to do with how competitive that keyword is. If it says 0.09 like this one does then that is the equivalent of 9%. That is a pretty easy one to compete on.
In addition to that you get a little strip that appears underneath the search here that gives you the volume for the term. The cost per click bid and then the competition. There is a little star next to it which allows you to add it to your favorites. If you’re doing this for your business and you selected 10 or so terms that you want to keep a track of then you can add a little star and then in the application itself if you click back up here it will go into your My Keywords list.
Finally down on the right hand side as Richard mentioned just before it will give you a whole heap of related keywords and then things that people might also search for that it thinks are relevant. It’s a really handy tool to help people or help businesses or website owners work out what people are actually Googling and how competitive those things are.
Richard: As of today it now says Keywords Everywhere will be a paid tool from October 1. That only came in today.
Gareth: There was a question from Kirsten regarding voice search. I’m just going to speak to that very quickly and Kirsten if you want to follow up with me by email I can point you in the direction of some other tools. This is to do for everyone else’s benefit with voice activation like Google Assistant or Google Home. It’s a complete change in the way that consumers use search engines. If I’m on my computer I might just use the keywords like pet warehouse but I would never say that in speech. If I was to ask my Google Assistant where is the nearest pet warehouse it would also start with a question. It would be where is the something or it might be what is or how much. If you’re doing keyword research and you want to make sure that your site ranks for voice search you want to look at question based searches. For example you could say to Google Ok Google, how much do flights to New York cost? Like that and then you could then do some keyword research based on that. I don’t know if you can hear my microphone in the background but my little Google Home is trying to answer that at the moment. It’s listening constantly. Just keep that in mind. Anything else you want me to cover on that Richard?
Richard: No, that’s good.
Gareth: Ending sharing.
Richard: The next question really is where to use keywords on the page. A lot of this you may already know but hopefully they’ll be some distinctions around that. There are various elements in which to use the keywords. Some of those relate to where the keywords are shown. This is an extract from Google search engine results page obviously. The question I typed in is what is the best dog food? What came up for this is these particular entries. What you can see is the information that is on a particular page has got the keywords in it and is being used in the page title, in the page URL, in the meta description and if there are categories then it can also be used in the category page names.
The meta description specifically is not used for search engine optimization. Google doesn’t place any value on the use of keywords in the meta description but as you can see it appears in the search engine results page in the snippet. The purpose of the meta description in this case is to make the snippet enticing so that people actually click on it. Where to use the keywords? The page title, page URL, the description in the page category names. If we then click on that particular page, what you can see then is that the keywords are also used in other places the header tags, the H1, H2 and H3 header tags. The image, the name of the image and also the alt tag that goes along with the image. Obviously using keywords in text content. If you’re going to be having videos and if you’ve got links on the page then all of this can help the ranking for the keyword within Google.
Now we’re going to introduce you to another one of our tools. This is called SEO META in 1 CLICK. That is its name. This is a free extension and as far as we know it’s not going to change to be paid in October 1. To look at this one, if we look at that same page and turn this particular extension tool on and activate it what it will then show is the metadata about that particular page. As you can see it’s got this information here about the title. You can easily see the description. You can see how they’ve used various things. This is just a screenshot. Gareth is now going to do a little quick demo of this particular extension tool. Over to you Gareth.
Gareth: See my screen okay, Richard?
Richard: It is coming to me now.
Gareth: This is a website that we picked. This only works in Google Chrome and once you have installed their extension it pops up here in the top right hand side and then you can click on this and it will load up some information. For example the title, the meta description here, if there are any keywords that it has picked up on the page, what the URL of the page is, some other information, the headings, how many heading tags there? A lot of this can be fairly quite technical but it is once you sort of started playing with it for about 10 years you’ll find that you’ll know it off the top of your head.
Richard: Gareth, can you go through those tabs headers and image?
Gareth: Headers, these are the heading 1, heading 2, so on etc. it condenses the page and it’s really quite a good tool for auditing as well. Images, it shows you how many images it has picked up on the page, how many don’t have an alt tag, how many don’t have a title. There’s also links to running a page speed test in there. There are links to and from the, inside the site. How many, ones that are unique, ones that don’t have a title, if there’s any errors. There are social links as well. Sometimes it’s not entirely accurate so just don’t take it as gospel but it’s pretty close. There’s also some also for the tools that it links to quite nicely.
I’m just going to show one other thing that is also quite handy from Keyword Everywhere. If you click the app extension and click the one that says analyse page it will load up another screen which will do a check of the page that you are on for all the keywords that it can find on that page. It will tell you where it found it. T for title, D for meta description and then headings and then densities is a percentage based on how much of it it finds on that page. How many occurrences and then it will give you all the monthly volume and cost per click data and computation again. It’s a very handy tool. It’s well worth the one dollar that they’re planning to charge.
Richard: Just on that. There’s a couple of reasons for using these tools. One is to analyse your own pages and see what is going on on your website to understand what keywords are in the page and what you may need to add in or may want to add in for each particular page. The other thing to use these tools for is to analyse your competitors. To understand for a particular keyword that you want to rank for, understand who are the top 10 businesses that are already ranking for that and then go in and analyse that top competitors who are ranking ahead of you and understand what they’re doing, where they’re using the keywords and what keywords they’re using. By doing this analysis and it does take time but by doing that you can understand why it is that your competitor’s pages are getting ahead of you and you can then start to do something about it.
By the way, this session is not encompassing about every issue to do with SEO. There are other things that you need to be looking at. This is about on page SEO. There are other things that you need to do with your website to make sure that Google thinks that your website is an authority on a particular topic. That is going to be covered in another webinar. This is not be all end all of SEO and how to rank in Google. This helps you get an understanding of how to get your pages ranking but there is a heap of other things to do to have Google understand that you’re an authority in this particular topic whatever it may be.
Where to use these keywords? This is something that we aren’t going through specifically in this webinar because this is concise and we will produce this into a handout, a PDF. Whereabouts to use the keywords and where not to use them? Also a mock-up of a page. Typically a good page article is somewhere between 400 and 1500 words. Don’t be frightened of long content. What we’ve got in this particular page mock up is where to use the keywords, how to use them, where not to use them. If you want this this is free to people who have attended this webinar. It will be on the Concise website later on some time but for the moment it’s for webinar attendees only. If you want this please send me an email and I will send it to you. No charge, no obligation, no nothing but we’re just restricting who is getting this at the moment.
The other thing that I should mention is the clever webinar system here has added a little link at the top that you may see. If you want to have a chat about any of this stuff and you would like to schedule a chat with me about it then you can click on that link and organize an appointment like a meeting, 15 minute, 30 minute phone meeting, Skype meeting, whatever it may be or in person just to talk about your particular situation.
That’s it from our concise webinar. Now we’ve got some time for some questions. If you’ve got any questions please add them into the chat box.
Gareth: I think I have answered the ones that have come through so far. A few people asked for the webinar link. I’ve pasted a link to the YouTube video in there. If anyone has any keywords that they would like us to try on screen then they’re more than welcome otherwise we’ll wrap up. There is a question coming through from Andy. Is it possible to still get good SEO results if my webpage is primarily images?
Richard: The answer is yes but it’s harder.
Gareth: It’s harder. If you look at Google’s websites you’ll notice that they’re all full of text. They’re pretty good at leading by example. There are ways around it. I would encourage you to potentially look at ads instead because the SEO because a fine line between a really nice looking website and one that ranks in Google. Depending on whether or not there is keyword volume for the type of words that you’re trying to come up under you may find that if it’s a very specific niche area in a niche location it would be far more cost effective to use Google ads rather than trying to spend a whole heap of time and potentially money if you’re going to pay a third party to do it to try and optimize your site. It can be done but more difficult.
Richard: If you’ve got any other questions please feel free to contact us after the session, schedule a chat, send an email or whatever. Just a quick thing. We do have a couple of other webinars coming up. On October 8, how to write product descriptions for good SEO and also to sell product obviously but there are some things that are really important to know about how to put product descriptions together. On October 22, one of Gareth’s favorite topics, how to set up goals in Google Analytics. You can schedule yourself into that one if you want.
Gareth: If you don’t like math I suggest not attending that one.
Richard: If you want any more help please give us a call or send us an email. Get in touch somehow rather. Thanks again for participating, for joining us, trusting us with your time. Thank you very much. If we can help you in any way just let us know.
END OF TRANSCRIPT: ‘How to use Keywords for good On Page SEO‘ Webinar
