Keyword Monkey Update

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You may have noticed that we have been reworking the Keyword Monkey email report. The reason why we did this can be summed up in one word: actionability. Analytics tools are great for collecting keywords, but where do you start with optimizing if you have hundreds or thousands of keywords? We asked ourselves the same question and decided that it would be more valuable to present relevant information in the email rather than keeping a separate interface for the Keyword Monkey. All your keywords are being collected in your Analytics program and it does not make sense to keep two or more interfaces running at the same time that essentially show the same information. You can see and export keywords from Google Analytics and there will be an API soon to get keywords directly. If you do miss the Keyword Monkey interface we are rolling out an update to our Transaction Assist report that will allow you to export keyword information that you cannot at this point get anywhere else. I will write about the Transaction Assist capabilities separately.

Here is a simple process for using Keyword of the Day (KOTD).

The more relevant your landing page is for a keyword the happier your visitors and search engines and of course you, the merchant.
In general there are different kinds of optimization for a single keyword for a given page on your site: On-page; On-site; Off-site.

On page optimization is about keywords keywords keywords.

You want a:

  • unique Page Title
  • Unique Meta Description
  • unique keyword rich body copy.

Fields used: NAME, CAPTION, sometimes ABSTRACT/DESCRIPTION
RTML: Title tag is built in. Custom RTML Templates can help here on legacy.

On site optimization (but off page) is all about links — you want your best $$$ keywords in links to that page.

Custom RTML Templates can help here with sidebar nav links, prev/up/next, breadcrumbs, related items
You can hand code these as well: links in CAPTIONs on other pages, footer links in the FINAL-TEXT, SPECIALS on homepage

Off site optimization is simply getting links from other domains to that specific page with good keywords in the anchor text.



1) Find the Most Relevant Page for that keyword on your store.

Find the most relevant page on your store for that keyword using suggestions from Google and the Keyword Monkey engine. Remember: If the words in the Keyword of the Day don’t exist on your site, it’s almost impossible to rank for them.

Exact Match

site:yourdomain.com “exact keyword phrase”

This is VERY specific, so sometimes no page shows up.

Broad Match

site:yourdomain.com exact keyword phrase   
            
This is somewhat broad, so look at the top 5 pages.

Any Match

site:yourdomain.com (exact | keyword | phrase)

This is extremely broad , this is ANY page with ANY of the words in the keyword phrase, but it will give you an idea on where to start for phrases
where you have no content.

So now you should have a page you want to rank for your Keyword of the day. Let’s call this your Most Relevant Page.

2) RANKINGS: See how your Most Relevant Page ranks in Google, Y!, and MSN for Keyword of the Day

In a spreadsheet, record the Keyword of the Day, Date, and Rank(s) for G, Y!, MSN

Keyword of the Day, 11-05-2008, Google #16+17, Y! N/A, MSN #29
Keyword of the Day2, 11-05-2008, Google #13, Y! #23, MSN #29

(TIP: Make sure you are logged out of Y! / Gmail / Google  / other accounts so you see what most other people see. Personally, I use a separate browser.)

3) LINKS: See how many links the Most Relevant Page for the Keyword of the Day has

For this use we the Yahoo! Site Explorer tool.

See links from your domain

link:URL site:yourdomain.com

See links from other domains

link:URL site:yourdomain.com


NOTE: Deeper internal pages usually don’t have a lot of external links. This is where having a blog on a separate domain comes in handy.

4) Anchor text: See what keyword are in the anchor text to that page

Hand checking these is fine. Tip: There are services and software that you can use to automate this.

Sometimes you may not want to do anything with a particular Keyword of the Day. That’s OK. Just click on the ignore link and move on to the next keyword the following day. My way of thinking about SEO is to make sure the search engines understand that my site is really about the keywords my customers use to find my store and buy what I sell. No great mysteries here, but I hope this gives you an easy-to-use process for optimizing your site without overwhelming you.