In the past I’ve written about the importance of organic optimization or theming your web pages for good search engine rankings.

Theming starts with your choice in keywords, then optimizing the text to support those keywords.

Next we apply a proper keyword analysis to our keyword selection.

There is a concept of Informational Keywords (usually single words), which are usually the keywords used when starting the search process.

There are also those phrases referred to as Buy Keywords. These are phrases used when the person searching is ready to act, by inquiring about your product, or making a sale. This action is also called Conversion.

In both situations above, the assumption is the chosen keywords are driving traffic to your website.

The third concept belongs to those keywords that are Duds, Thuds, or black holes.  These keywords provide little if any traffic to your website. To have a decent conversion rate on your website (the actionable process), you need traffic.

This is why Keyword Analysis is the Backbone of Optimization.  Optimizing your web page to a keyword or keyword phrase which draws little traffic to your website is a waste of your valuable resources.

Keyword Analysis brings several components to the table during the optimization process. They are, Commercial Value, Competition Level, and  Traffic Level.

The commercial value of the keyword is an historical marker indicating an expected dollar value per sale.

The competition level indicates the number of websites having been optimized for the phrase. The competition level can range from a few websites to millions.

The traffic level references how many people are using this phrase in a search campaign. This can range from a high positive number to zero.  A level of zero means the keyword phrase could very well be a Dud, Thud, or black hole phrase.

Properly choosing a target keyword phrase becomes an art rather than a science. You know your product or service and the value placed on that product or service.

Be realistic when choosing a metric for the commercial value. Too high may hinder your efforts. Can you expect to make $10,000 per click?

Choosing a very low competition value may have the same effect as choosing a very high competition value keyword.

The same applies to the phrase traffic level. Too high may put you in competition with well optimized sites and provide poor rankings, while too low a value may give you a better ranking, and little traffic to your website.

It’s best to start with middle of the road values.

Once you have decided on your keyword phrases, set a range reflecting an acceptable commercial value of your product or service, determine the competition level you will be comfortable with, and set a target traffic level.

Finally, check your keyword phrases validating your phrases have values falling within your defined component ranges.

You may need to repeat this analysis several times until you have several related keyword phrases meeting the criteria.

Now choose the primary and secondary phrases and begin writing your supporting content. You are now on your way to optimizing your web page for good search result rankings.

More of us are becoming aware of the benefits of going Organic. Organic gardening, organic food, meats raised on organic feed and so on.

When we consume organic foods, we get more value from the food in the way of nutrients.

When it comes to your website, you should be thinking organic as well.

An organic website should be rich in information (nutrients) which is “food for thought”. As with organic food, nutrient rich or information rich websites provide more value to your visitor, which in turn may produce a higher conversion rate (sales) for your business.

When we introduce additives to our food, we actually reduce the nutrient value. It may look like we’re getting more, but in reality they’re only fillers that tend to leave us less satisfied. It won’t be long before we look for something else to give us what we’re looking for.

The same holds for websites. When sites are missing the good quality information we crave, we quickly go some place else to find what we need.

Another phrase associated with organic websites is Organic Marketing.

Orgainic websites, having an information rich presentation, providing good quality, authoritive food for thought, designed to attract your prospective customer, keeping them coming back for more, and also helps your ranking in the search engines without the need for key word programs.

Many of us have been approached by the major search engines to buy into the paid advertising key word programs. You’ve seen them, those first 3 or 4 paid advertiser links on the first page of the search engine results. They appear above the organic (free listing) search results.

These key word programs can be thought of additives when used with websites lacking in good quality information. Unlike adding seasoning to your food preparation, they typically result in acting like fillers specifically designed to drive traffic to your website. Conversion of that traffic into sales may be another thing all together.

Key word programs can end up costing you $100, $300, $700 or more per month, and fail to produce the desired conversion results you are hoping for.

How could this be?  My website gets lots of traffic, but we’re not getting sales!

While it’s true the key word programs can drive traffic to your website, if you’re serving junk food, folks are going elsewhere.

Questions you should ask yourself about the content you are serving include; Am I being clear about my product or service offerings?, Do I sound like the expert in my field?, Do I appear as mediocre or ordinary?, Does my competition do a better job at appearing credible?, and most importantly, Can my content be found on other websites (referred to as Duplicate Content)?

Nutrient rich content leads to a clear understanding about your product and service. When you are the authority, people will realize your credibility and be inclined to do business with you.

Avoid just copying and pasting content from other sites, even your suppliers, into your website. If you need help writing the content for your site, you should utilize the services of a professional copywriter. This small investment will boost your credibility and help toward increasing the conversion rate of your organic website.

What does Optimized Theming mean?

To optimize means, “to make as effective, perfect, or useful as possible”, while theming is used to “create a unifying or dominant idea”. So Optimized Theming is to create an effective dominant idea.

Now what does this have to do with websites?

In the world of Optimized Website Design, content is your weapon, it is what you use to identify and present a need and apply a solution to fill that need. This is a natural extension of your keyword research process as your optimized theme will surround and reinforce your best or primary targeted keyword phrase.

As an expert in your field, you would pick a specific topic to focus your content. For example, a doctor may pick a specific ailment for his dissertation, while an auto mechanic might pick a specific repair to write about.  To define this methodology a doctor writing about psoriasis would hesitate to include a lot of information about the heart and cardiovascular system, or the mechanic writing about tire repair, would be less likely to be talking about the proper operation of the cooling system.

Skin disease and heart disease would be two different dominant ideas, as would be tire repair and anti-freeze. Your primary keyword phrase is your dominant idea or theme.

Focusing on a dominant idea or theme, is the first step. Next comes the optimization process and is where you build supporting content to make your case. A good word count target would be in the area of 500 to 1000 words. As an expert in your field, it would be relatively easy to come up with 500 to 1000 words of content, and in reality, you may have much more.

For a web site, or web page, much more than 1000 words may be daunting, and cut down on the number of people that will actually get to the end.  This means editing out the superfluous content or embellishment  and stick to the facts as much as possible.

Your content should be focused on the dominant idea or theme of your targeted phrase. You can always create more pages later on, to either go into detail or write about related themes as they pertain to your dominant idea. Cirelle can help provide unique supporting content, optimized to your theme.

Why is this important?

This brings me to the search engines. Search engine algorithms (of which there are many) take into consideration foremost, quality focused content. This allows the algorithms to identify the focus of your web page, and consequently will provide your content to their users when a search is done for your keyword phrase.

Their (the search engines) business is to provide links to quality content based on the user’s search criteria. If they produce junk results or unrelated results, users will go somewhere else to get their information. Hence search engines will reward a web site with a top link for well optimized, themed content.

Remember, you are the expert, your content should reflect this. Being the expert you will find less (if any) need to copy and paste from the work of others and your content will be unique, in presenting an optimized themed web page.

What are “Primary Search Results”?

Primary Search Results (PSR) are the subset of all results returned by a search for a given keyword phrase.

When I do a search on Google (for anything) and Google reports, say, 100 million results, what gets returned is more in the range of 500 to 600 results (give or take), as the actual results you see. You may see repeats beyond that.

I had a recent experience where I was trying to resolve a chirping sound coming from the serpentine (accessory) belt in my car. The chirp only happened when the car was cold and disappeared when it warmed up. Very annoying, so I was determined to find out if there was a solution on the web. My wife calls it the “Answer Box”.

In the process of searching for a remedy, I was willing to view hundreds of pages  of search engine results. The chirp was annoying!

After clicking the next page a couple of dozen of times (getting into  page 60 and 70), (more…)

Keyword choice is important when you are building an on-line venture. We have said it before, most folks start their on-line venture by getting a domain name, get some hosting, throw up a few pages with colors, images and usually little content then pick some keywords out of a hat and expect the Field of Dreams syndrome to kick in. That is, “if you build it they will come”.

Unfortunately, this is usually a poor approach. You might get lucky… Do you feel lucky?

We’ve pointed out in the article Keyword Research, You Ask Why? some of the pitfalls of playing “Pick a Card, Any Card” with your keywords. The reason for this is, although your keywords may be relevant to your product or service, they may fall short of (more…)