Question

Topic: SEO/SEM

Interior Design Website Seo/ Metatags

Posted by Anonymous on 8/2/2010 at 1:43 PM ET 125 Points
I have recently started my own company and had a website designed. I haven't finalized the metatags and SEO terms yet. I know this may be elementary but I have searched a lot online for this and haven't been able to figure this out. I think the people on this board should have an idea of how to do the strategy for these.

www.elemental-design.com

The web developer suggested some terms but I hadn't wanted to commit in case they weren't the correct terms without some research. Using wordtracker, i spent quite a bit of time looking up the possible terms and am not happy with the results. Since this is not my field, maybe I don't know exactly what I'm looking for, but the values for searches for those terms seems very small.

When I used the wordtracker search numbers, the resulting "search" numbers range mostly from 10 to 300. Interior design was 2069, architecture 3020, interior designer 280, interior design ideas 862, architectural design 869, interior designers 218. The terms that describe what i do were: work space planning 229, office design 163, space planning 90, office space planning 77, interior space planning 63, tenant improvement 63, interior design 31. The majority of the terms with low search results also had a high number in "anchor and title" competition which makes it less desirable.

The wordtracker "google" search results had a higher number of searches with the results just being bigger numbers but similar range.

What is the determining factor to decide which is best to use? What is the difference between the "searches" column and the "google" column? In the end does it even matter? Should I just pick some terms and be done with it? I'm not sure how much random traffic I would get from my website. Most clients would be referrals and then they would look at website for more information.

I appreciate you thoughts on this.
To continue reading this question and the solution, sign up ... it's free!
SUBSCRIBE
Or, SIGN IN

RESPONSES

  • Posted by excellira on 8/2/2010 at 6:20 PM Member
    Unless the developer understands how to research keywords, then no, I wouldn't use them and you are correct in investigating opportunities.

    Ideally, keyword research is done at the planning stage but anytime is a good time.

    In terms of data, it is very difficult to obtain useful data these days. Google's tools are helpful because they own such a large percentage of the market. Microsoft's are worth using too.

    I've had difficulty assessing the value of kewyords using WT's tools though I do subscribe and find the tool useful in a number of ways. I use several tools to get the results I'm looking for. What you should be looking for is relationships between numbers. So if your top term is 300 and your other option is 100, then you know that option "B" will have 1/2 the traffic. The actual number isn't very useful. If you use Google's tool you'll see a large difference between WT and Goog (mostly because of how each mines their data).

    When you refer to "Google" are you referring to "Google Count" in WT? This is a competition number not a search volume number.

    In terms of what to look for (in my preferred order of importance):

    1. Relevance is always the best metric.
    2. Does the keyphrase represent a signal of intent? (you want buyers).
    3. Search Volume
    4. competition (exact match--in quotes "Keyword Term")
    5. I like In Anchor and Title competition too because it provides a glimpse of insight into how well optimized the phrase is (are you competing with a lot of SEO savvy, and therefore tough to beat, keyword competitors).
  • Posted on 8/2/2010 at 7:46 PM Author
    I have only used wordtracker to date to do the searching. When you start a keyword search in wordtracker there are 2 options - Google or Wordtracker. i didn't know how to explain that was how i came up with the 2 different sets of numbers.

    The web developer had suggested I add terms related to my region and I'm not totally sold on the idea. I would like local work but could also work anywhere in the country. Is it really a good idea to put in keywords that don't really relate? Suggestions were: New Orleans, Louisiana, Gulf Coast, Gulf South.
  • Posted by excellira on 8/2/2010 at 8:57 PM Accepted
    I wouldn't bother with meta keywords. If you are optimizing for local search then, yes, add local modifiers to the page.

    In WT they are asking if you would like data from their sources or through Googles Adwords Keyword Tool. The KT is available free outside of WT but the advantage of using it within KT is that you can save and work with the results.
    WT gets their data from metacrawlers (and other sources but they only see ~1% of search: "'Searches' is the number of times that the keyword has been searched for in our partner search engines in the US.

    "The data currently contains 592,544,400 searches over 365 days."

    This can make for some thin volume especially in the long tail. They are saying that a given term is searched for X times per year in their system.

    Google on the other hand owns ~60% of the US market so their dataset is huge. Their numbers are therefore larger and, arguably, is closer to reality. Their long-tail data is also more useful because they have data where other tools may not.
  • Posted by Levon on 8/3/2010 at 11:58 AM Member
    You go after words you can realistically compete on. These are keywords that you actually have a shot of topping the search engines with. I started using the free tool CherryPicker the other day to automate the keywords I go after. It is a great tool outside of Analytics. It is Free too. cherrypickersoftware.com
  • Posted on 8/6/2010 at 12:47 AM Member
    Just to add some thoughts on this issue. If you are doing keyword research for your SEO goals then that is a solid route to go but if you are too concerned on meta keywords then I would like to tell you not to stress too much on this area of SEO. I did my own research on the effects of metas and I have found that the most important metas are the title and description especially for yahoo and bing. I've tinkered with keywords using related and nonsensical meta keywords against a base line and I have found minimal changes over a 2 month period . My unsolicited advise is not to stress out on meta keywords and focus on content and backlinks. Please feel free to critique this advice. Hope this helps.
  • Posted by excellira on 8/6/2010 at 1:31 AM Member
    The meta keywords element isn't worth the time though the title element (not technically a meta tag) is vital to the success of a page. The meta description is key to click-throughs but not rankings.
BACK TO TOP

Post a Comment

Related Discussions

Community Info

Top 25 Experts
(SEO/SEM)