As an SEO copywriter, it sometimes falls under my tasks to find or research the best keywords for the article I would be writing. Although often it is the client who would provide me with the keywords.

I enjoy doing keyword research (if I am not heavily loaded with other work) and I am using the Google Adwords free keyword tool. I have tried Wordtracker before, but it is not free. So far Google’s tool seems to be working just fine as my clients have nothing against using only that tool.

However, I have just come across a free SEO tool that looks promising. It’s called Traffic Travis. It even got a great rating from Cnet’s Download site. It is not just for keyword research, as it is primarily a good starter all-rounder SEO analysis tool.

I have yet to use it, mainly its keyword research functions. And I might write about it soon whether it could replace Google’s keyword tool as my favorite or it could just be a good complimentary software.

When you are a freelance writer working mostly for online content, you have to learn all that you can about search engine optimization or simply SEO. That is because what good is your written content if people cannot easily find it through the search engines?

The following are the top 3 SEO blogs that I recommend to every fellow freelance copywriter:

1. Matt Cutts

He is the head of Google’s web spam team and the unofficial spokesperson when it comes to anything Google and search-related topics. He is always a fun to read, even with his non-SEO blog posts.

2. SEO Book

Aaron Wall published what is considered to be the first ebook authority on search engine optimization, the aptly titled ‘SEO Book’. Just by that name alone he was able to establish a reputation as one of the top SEO experts and has created a successful business around it through consultancy and an exclusive forum only for paying subscribers.

His blog posts are often lengthy but a breeze to read as well as complete with his insights about the SEO topic at hand.

3. SEOmoz

Rand Fishkin and the guys at SEOmoz are among the most unselfish individuals when it comes to sharing their thoughts, opinions, tips, suggestions, and more about anything that is SEO. It is always a treat to read Rand’s entries as he goes all the way creating graphs and doodles, almost anything just to help visualize his ideas.

It has only been a month since I started to optimize this blog for the keywords “freelance copywriter” and now it has started to go up Google’s U.S. search results.

The first time I noticed that it appeared in the results, it was on the 12th page. Now, as of this writing, it is on the 3rd page, ranked 26th overall. All I can say is, I’m satisfied with the way things are going. But of course my target is to be on the first page, which I believe is not that hard to achieve.

Also, my girlfriend’s blog, www.CallCenterGal.com, which is one of the first blogs we ever set up, is now ranked second in the Google U.S. search results for “call center blog”. We started to optimize that blog for that search term about middle of last year so it took us more than a year to get to where it is now in the search results. I guess it is more competitive in the call center search arena.

Steve of Success Factors asked: what is the minimum volume you should consider in examining the keyword results, and what is too much volume (e.g., making for too much competition)?

A very good question because otherwise a keyword researcher can just go on and on with his research and come up with a million keywords. So probably the question here is when do we know when enough is enough?

There are 2 factors that you should consider:

1. How big is your site?

2. How much competition do you want?

Photo by cambodia4kidsorg

Keywords and Size of Site

If you are doing keyword research for a website that has thousands of pages, then a list of 50 or more keywords would be normal.

This is especially true with large corporations that have a gamut of products. General Electric is one and if the company is using keywords in its website, I would not be surprised if they are using at least a hundred keywords.

But if your website consists of only a dozen of pages, don’t aim for more than 10 keywords. For this size, I would suggest that you focus on 5 keywords at the most. More than that then your SEO would be muddled, your keyword focus would be lost with all the keywords you might be using.

Blogs can be quite different because a blog post can be optimized for one keyword. And that’s it. I don’t suggest using one or more than two different keywords in a single post because it would lessen the effect of both.

How Much Competition Do You Want for Your Keywords?

They say ranking success by aiming for a highly sought-for keyword is almost next to impossible. I agree and I’m sure any capable SEO expert (redundant? no,because there are some who just pretend to be one) would suggest that do not focus on popular keywords, rather focus on related keywords that have less competition.

Try making a Google search for ‘sex’ and you’ll find that there are currently 764,000,000 results. Millions! Good luck ranking for that keyword.

Now let’s try to find a better niche for a keyword. I tried ‘sex freelancer’ and it showed 634,000 results. Compared to ‘sex’ you’ll have much greater chances of ranking with ‘sex freelancer’. Why would anybody want to use that keyword is beyond me. We all have our own reasons and agenda.

They say the true mark of an artist is in knowing when to stop. Leonardo da Vinci knew he already had a masterpiece when he stopped adding paint on the “Mona Lisa”. The Beatles knew they already had enough “Na, na, na, na, na-na-na-na…” in “Hey Jude” when they ended the song or faded away for that matter.

Set your limits early on in your keyword research and use both common sense and gut feel to know when you already have enough keywords.

Why the Anchor Text and the Keyword Should Go Together

First of all, what is an anchor text? The anchor text is the clickable text in a hyperlink. Do I need to explain what a hyperlink is? I hope not.

An example of an anchor text and a hyperlink is this: my favorite place in the whole world!

The anchor text there is “my favorite place in the whole world!” and it is hyperlinked to another blog.

Now for the keyword. A keyword is the word or sometimes a group of words (usually referred to as a key phrase) that you want your website to be known for. Keywords are very important in search engine optimization (SEO) as these help your website to rank well in the search engines.

Perhaps the best example of the power of the anchor text is the key phrase “click here”.

Do you know what is at the number one spot for that key phrase when searched on Google? And take note that the search yielded more than a billion results!

It’s the page for downloading Adobe Reader.

Amazing, isn’t it? Most especially since the keywords “click here” are nowhere to be found on that

Adobe page.

The only explanation for that is the power of the anchor text.

The Adobe Reader is one of the most popular free software and also one of the most used because of the popularity of the PDF format. Websites that offer downloads of PDF documents and ebooks would usually place a link to the Adobe Reader’s download page so that people who still don’t have the software can easily get it and read the PDF file the websites were offering.

And I think you can guess what anchor text they usually use.

CLICK HERE

So what is the importance of the anchor text to your site? If you want your site to be known for a specifc keyword or set of keywords, it is important that you place your keywords in the anchor text that will be pointing to your site.

So if your keyword is “Sagada”, it is best to write your anchor text like this: …learn more about Sagada.

An extra point with that technique is not only did you make good use of the “Sagada” keyword, but you also included the keyphrase “learn more about Sagada”. So there is a greater possibility that if someone makes a Google search to try to learn more about Sagada, he might find that site in one of the search results.

In parting, always make an extra effort in using your anchor text especially if you are exchanging links with other site owners. Always ask them to make use of your desired keywords for the anchor text when they link back to you.

I have a friend who has just created her first blog and she is almost completely new to the whole blogging concept. So I decided to give her the basics of what blogging is, how she can rank well in the search engines based on certain keywords and also the fact that she could earn from it.

She was actually very interested in the whole search engine ranking idea. So when I asked her what’s the keyword she would like to rank for, she said ‘Prudence Charlz’ which was the pseudonym she was using for her blog.

I asked her why and she said it’s her name so that’s what she wants to see in the search engines.

Big mistake, wouldn’t you agree? I told her the same thing and she would not accept my explanation that nobody would be searching for her name (a pen name that is not yet even well-established).

To give her an example, I made a search for ‘prudence charlz’ on Google and as I expected, it gave a very small amount of results. Only 160 results.

But she was adamant in wanting to see her pen name on the number one spot. I told her okay and that it would actually be quite easy given the small number of competition for that key phrase.

That’s when she decided to give me a helluva of a task. When I told her it would be quite easy to make her blog rank first for the keywords ‘prudence charlz’, she said she would also want to rank well for the keyword, ‘prudence.’

I didn’t need to make a Google search to know how many results would yield the keyword, ‘prudence’ but just the same I made a search for it.

8,430,000 results. Now that’s a lot of SEO work!

How about you? Do you think you can give the ‘prudence’ keyword a shot?

IMBroadcast.com, the multimedia hub for Internet marketers is relatively new but it already has videos submitted by its members that can truly help us all who does business online.

I picked a couple of videos you might be interested in.

Here’s a short but informative video made by Darren Rowse when he asked probloggers Jeremy Schoemaker and Steve Pavlina for their blogging tips for first-time bloggers.

And here’s Aaron Wall and his tips on how to create Google and SEO-Friendly Page Titles.

What’s the ideal keyword density for a 300-word article?

Is it 2% or more than that?

I say don’t worry about the percentage and just do the following and your copy will work just fine:

• Put your main keyword in your title. While it is not definite whether spiders start scanning a page from top to bottom or vice versa, it is the title that states what your article is all about. It is just natural to put your main keyword there.

• If you structure your article into three parts (introduction, body, conclusion), put your keyword once in the first paragraph, twice or thrice if possible in the body, and once in the last paragraph.

• Sometimes if you follow the keyword density percentage, your copy may look spammy or sound too unnatural. Although a good copywriter can effectively incorporate such a number of keywords into the copy, there will always be a limit to the amount of creativity that he can use.

• Know your keywords and build your article around it. Never forget to create a balance between the number of keywords and the general readability (by humans) of your article.

After almost two weeks of waiting, my registration for the SEO Philippines forum was finally approved. Now I can post and not just look around the threads.

If you are new into SEO and would want to learn more about it, I suggest you join the forum. I already learned a handful just by browsing it.

This would be my first SEO-related post and I think it would be best if I provide a list or link to a few great SEO ebooks/pdf files any beginner should start reading.

SEOPractices.com provided such a list. You should go check it out at their
Search Engine Optimization and Marketing Guides post.

Note: I am not an affiliate of that site. I just happen to like their list of resources.