Internet Marketing Tycoon

**lgc252** · 08-28-2006, 01:08 PM

Hi all - good to be back.

Would someone please explain a very important concept to me? One which has been explained to me several times -- each time differently.

It is the concept of using KEYWORDS. Simple. Maybe not.

If I am in a very competitve category (namely guitar, bass, banjo and mandolin strings and accessory sales) - and if "guitar strings" as a key word brings up more than a million responses - should I stick with that one and the other high-rated keywords -- or concentrate on lesser requested keywords like "Dunlop guitar picks"?

Also, should the titles, keywords and descriptions for each page of your website be different and reflect what is specifically on that page?

Thanks.

**chrishirst** · 08-28-2006, 06:02 PM

actually "guitar strings" (no quotes) isn't as hugely competitive as you would think with less than 150,000 pages really competing for the phrase.

What you do is to target lower competition terms while still targeting the more competitive ones
so a page title such as "Electric Guitar Strings - Ernie Ball Guitar Strings - from USStrings" gives you branding (USStrings) and several targeted phrases;

Electric Guitar Strings
Guitar Strings x 2
Ernie Ball Guitar Strings
Ernie Ball Strings

and several more combinations;
You then reinforce the title by using the same words (in different orders and patterns where possible) in your copy, not forgetting that most punctuation (and sometimes the "stop" words) is ignored by SE indexers when constructing phrases from the page.

Yep, ideally Title, meta KW (not worth much), Meta Description should reflect the page content and copy and should be (in the most part) unique or at least duplication kept to a minimum.

Just looking at some of your pages, there are some technical details that need resolving.

Your category pages are 150Kb - 250Kb (without images) of text. 75% of which is blank lines (dial up users must hate your site), there are <style> blocks spread at seemingly random positions.
The vast majority of your pages are supplemental, due in the main to the poor titles and duplicated meta description usually. Many pages are being truncated in the cache (due to the size)
I would say that you need some help from a developer who knows whatever catalogue/cart/cms you are using, or get a better one with a cleaner code output.
The one you are using is not really "friendly" WRT to natural SE results.

**vangogh** · 08-29-2006, 12:09 AM

Chris really summed it perfectly how you should be using keywords. I'll just reinforce things a little. While a search for guitar stings does yeild quite a few results if you search for intitle:guitar + intitle:strings you'll find 138,000 results. Sites that are really competing for keywords will typically use them in the title of the page so the real competition is a lot less than it first appears.

When you use the phrase electirc guitar strings you're down to about 32,000 results which should be fairly easy to compete against. And as Chris mentioned when you use 'electric guitar strings' the phrase also includes 'guitar strings' so you're optimized for both.

You don't need to always mention the phrase in it's entirety. You can use 'strings for electric guitars', just 'guitar strings' or 'electric and acoustic strings are different'

If you write a page about electric guitar stings chances are the word strings will be used most often throughout the page followed by the word guitar and lastly electric. It doesn't have to be that way, but it seems most natural to me that it would.

You do want to write unique titles and descriptions for every page of your site. meta keywords I don't bother with much since they really won't have much if any effect.

As you would write unique titles and meta descriptions you should be optimizing your pages for different keyphrases. So you might optimize one page for 'fender low tension electric guitar strings' and another for 'D'addario xls stainless steel electric guitar strings'

Both pages will be optimized for phrases like 'guitar strings' and 'electric guitar strings' and each will be optimized for a longer more specific phrase. For the d'addario phrase there are 832 results in google without using the intitle: operator. If you used the full phrase in the title like:

D'addario xls stainless steel electric guitar strings from US Strings

and reinforced the words in title in the meta description, headings and text you'll probably be #1 in Google for the complete phrase shortly after they revisit the page. Not everyone will use that search, but someone who does is probably ready to buy so if you can be #1 for that kind of search you have a good chance of making a sale.

When you realize you can optimize most pages of your site for those long tail search phrases you can get quite a few visitors to your site even if each page only attracts a few.