SEO keywords. Am I doing it right?

[Sock&Co.]

So I picked the keyword(s) 'Mens Socks' and 'Buy Mens Socks' which I realise are going to be high competition or whatever but I don't know much about SEO.

I added them as a keyword for each product I stock, and have tried to include those phrases in pages on my site. Obviously I don't want a tailored website review as I'm not a full member, but I would just like to know if this is what you're suppose to do with keywords?

(And if anyone has a step by step SEO tutorial, I'd be grateful!)

 

[faradaykeynes]

Best is use Google keyword Tool to get idea how competitive these keywords are and build nice Title and description for main page of site. Each product pages should be further optimised depending or product. Unique content is the key. It will take some time for google to rank site on basic SEO

 

[Ninja Commerce]

Hi there.

I take it when you say you've added those keywords to every product you mean that you have added the phrase "buy mens socks" to every page title?

If so, then that's not the ideal approach to take. For a site like yours, keyword targeting is probably something that will pretty much sort itself out, since all of your products are socks, Google is going to know exactly what your site is about.

Adding "buy mens socks" to every page title doesn't necessarily add any value for the user, so there are probably better ways you could use them. That said, your page titles don't look awful, so this isn't a huge criticism.

I would focus on crafting each product's page title and description with a focus on the user seeing it and clicking on it (title and description appear in Google search results, so they are important for maximizing click through rate).

There are SEO tutorials all over the web, so you could easily spend weeks reading up, if it helps though, we've recently published a checklist of 57 items that you can consider (probably best not worry about every item, just do what you can):

http://www.thinktraffic.co.uk/ultimate-seo-checklist
(mods: is this link allowed? not sure on the policy)

Other than that, I would focus on adding some more content, a blog would be nice, although I appreciate it may be difficult coming up with ideas, but you'll have to be creative.

Hope that helps.

 

[MikePNV]

HI
Try to do a google search :key words in seo step by step and i am sure that you will find a lot of usefull information

 

[StevePoster]

It is not just picking keywords for your website. You need to study the competition and your site's product and services specilaites. Target your potential customers according to population and its location. I would suggest to use keyword planner to choose the best keyword phrase that has the most volume of visitors. Be specific in targeting your audience.

 

[fisicx]

The keyword planner tool is for Adwords to will give very skewed results.

Selecting keywords for any marketing (not just SEO) means doing some research. Men's socks my be an obvious choice but is that what people type into a google search? Have you considered that a more useful search would be be 'men's socks packs' or 'black cotton socks for men'.

As to the actual SEO, do a search for google SEO guidelines. Then search for SEO tutorial or SEO techniques. There are zillions of articles out there, spend the weekend reading them all and you will get a better idea of how it all works.

 

[asbesting]

you need to try Google Keyword Planner tool. it's located in Google Adwords → Tools (on top). The only true way is to use the keywords that were not used by your competitor. i think it is something creative.

 

[WebMeUp]

Do not rely solely on Google's Keyword Planner Tool. Although it can provide you with an overall idea of how much keywords are searched for, and show nice keyword combinations, it won't provide you with the exact data on how much traffic a keyword might bring. So use multiple sources to get keywords from: take a look at your Google Analytics data (if you have it) to see what keywords people already use to land on your website; as asbesting suggests, take a look at your competitor's website and at the top websites in your niche. What keywords are used in titles, descriptions, on pages? For better understanding and complete list of sources for keyword research, check this guide.

And then comes the next part - optimizing your landing pages for the selected keywords. Here, stick for one or two terms per landing page. Check out a detailed guidance here. Hope this helps.

 

[makeusvisible]

The keyword planner is only going to show you the competitive nature of paid advertising for any given keyword....not how competitive the organic results are. The keyword planner (previously keyword tool) should NOT be used to choose your keywords, unless your are talking about Adwords PPC (which the OP isn't).

To determine which keywords to target your really need to look at doing a full keyword analysis, of at least the top 10 sites, to determine how much effort has been put into ranking. This will involve looking at the top 10's inbound links, their on-site quality....and ideally things like their social media presence.

You have mentioned you have little SEO knowledge.... from what you have said it might be worth rethinking your keyword choice. Remembering that being on page 1 for a low search volume keyword, is a thousand times better than being on page 10 for a huge-volume keyword. i.e why not go for a longer tail (easier keyword) which you can actually rank for.

Hope that helps.

 

[webgeek]

I doubt you're selling mens socks, sorry to burst a bubble.

However, you may be selling steve madden brand, mens cotton, ribbed, gold-toed, black dress socks in sizes 9-11 (and others).

Some people will be searching by colour, while others use size. Some will search for features or material, others will search for occasion where they are worn.

The various taxonomies people use mean that you have multiple approaches that can be undertaken in order to connect with buyers.

Sure, some may search for "mens socks", but as soon as they do, they quickly realise that they have to hone their search further, otherwise 99% of the results are not the steve madden, mens cotton, ribbed, gold-toed, black dress socks in size 10.

Try searching for the phrase you think you should optimise for... How many of the organic & paid results are the same product, or extremely similar to your own?

If none are similar one another, then you're in the wrong keyword search and need to revise it more definitively (more terms to make it specific). If all are similar to one another, and are unrelated to yours, then revise it and start from scratch.

You'll find a lot of combinations fit what you sell:
steve madden socks
mens dress socks
mens cotton dress socks
mens black socks
mens black dress socks
gold-toed dress socks
black socks size 10
....

You can't optimise for each individually, but you can include a fully descriptive title and product description which have each of the components within.

After that, it's up to Google to decide if your product matches up with the intention of the buyer - something they're getting better at, unless of course you're searching for a Jaguar.

 

[DrBradley]

You'll never rank for "buy socks" som target something like "buy mens socks in Sheffield" or something like that but check that it has some search traffic in the keyword planner first. Your title tag is the most imprtant place to have your keyword.