How do you decide which keywords to optimize first?

[will_lam]

Hi Stephanie,

I'd say pulling your analytics data for keywords you're getting long tail traffic for that you're ranking for on the first page (not in top 2 spots) and prioritizing that against your rankings data (whether its from SEOMoz, Advanced Web Ranking etc) using Vlookups in Excel

If you're estimating potential traffic, you can export Adwords keyword data for potential traffic (very rough estimate) to get an idea of what kind of traffic you could potentially be getting

An excellent resource would be http://www.distilled.net/excel-for-seo/#vlookup to start off with.

Hope that helps!

[irvingw]

I would look at what you already have ranking and quality phrases which are coming up in the search and need that extra attention to get them onto the first page and also factor in:

Level of Competition

Potential Traffic / current traffic

The quality of content on site you have to work off of

That would tell you which short tails you have a shot at and if they are out of reach or already ranking, start taking a look at the next most valuable long tail terms

[jhinchcliffe]

Great answer thank you

[jhinchcliffe]

Thank you

[KevinBudzynski]

One strategy is feeding KW terms into Google Trends and figuring out interest levels. Next, figure out the total amount of sites ranking for that string (via quotes in a Google search). Once you have these two data points you can prioritize the string as you have a good indication of interest/competition.

[EvolveCreative]

Hmm, I seem to take a different approach than most here. I look at each page and see which of my keywords will match up to that specific content. I don't use a top keyword list unless I'm optimizing the homepage. I hardly ever look at competition when placing keywords on the content pages of the site. I ALWAYS look at competition when looking for long-tail blog post type keywords. I used to use 5 different tools to look at competition, but then I realized that you really only need one metric - the allintitle: "keyword." If the allintitle is below 2000 you can rank 1st page with the keyword being furthest to the left in the title tag pretty easily. If it's higher than 2000 the keyword you choose dosn't really matter. It's going to come down to off-site SEO.

[jhinchcliffe]

Hi Dave,

Yes I am doing something similar, most of these keywords are for different pages. Obviously all the pages will be optimized to the keywords specific to that page, but i am wanting to pick 10 keywords to focus on and rank for with their respective pages. Rather than focusing on everything and building links all at once, I want to focus on 10 at a time, set goals and measure the results, then maintain those results and work on the next 10.

[EvolveCreative]

How do you focus on keywords without being spammy? Backlink anchor text? Guest post title tags? keyword proximity to your backlink?

[jhinchcliffe]

yes of course. i am just in the process of creating a new strategy though and fixing some of the stuff the person before me messed up.

[EvolveCreative]

I know how that goes :(. Good luck!

[jhinchcliffe]

lol thanks

[Chris.Menke]

Go to your google analytics and see if any of the organic search keywords align with keywords on your list.

Run ranking reports on the ones that do. Note pages that are getting search traffic for terms on your list but that are not at the top of the search results.

Review the pages that are receiving the search traffic for those terms to see how well they're optimized.

Start first with the pages that are least optimized, getting traffic, and are on page three, two or bottom of page one of the results. Optimize those pages for most closely aligned keywords

It's called low-hanging fruit.

[JawwadQD]

Stephanie i will suggest you to make a use of Hittail Keyword tool as it helps you to get a list of keywords that are good and have potential to get you good traffic + are closer to the first page and are easy to rank i use   HitTail: The Best Long Tail Keyword Tool beside that if you already have a list of keywords what you can do is worki8ng first on the long tails building links for them to build authority as well once authority is build you are surely going to get a push on your short keywords + till then getting complete advantage of your long tail keywords

[peterlaurent]

That's an SEO companies IP I think if you're looking at level of competition, ppc $ and monthly traffic estimates that can be a good start but you are also part SEO part business consultant so you need to factor in the clients margins and other factors as well if you want to do your job properly in my opinion.

With existing websites there is always this sunk costs bias which I tend to see creeping in as well which affects people's decision making process.