News and Reviews
In the last issue I mentioned Ken Evoy's newest book about writing copy for your website, "Make Your Words Sell." I highly recommend it. But, if you're looking for a freebie, you're in luck. You can sign up to receive a free mini-course via e-mail about writing sales copy. Just click here to send a blank e-mail message to: twmswoodworking@sitesell.net
Rockler's new woodworking catalog is available for free. To make it easier to order, I've put their online request form on my website.
Conquer Keyword Confusion! (Part 1)
When helping out fellow woodworkers as they develop their websites, the topic of "keywords" generates more confusion than any other. And no wonder. Keywords is one of those squishy terms that means whatever you want it to...
Keywords is one of the HTML META tags. Keywords are the things you bid on at pay-per-click search engines. Keywords are the terms that should be sprinkled liberally throughout your web pages. Keywords are the words your target customer will use to find your site.
Keywords are many a different thing.
The way past the confusion is to concentrate on why all these different things are important, and not worry that they all have the same name. That's what the rest of this issue, and the next, is all about.
Remember from the last issue, the key reason for using the Internet in your woodworking business is to make it easy for people who want to buy your product to find you.
All the various meanings of "keywords" deal with the mechanics of helping people find your website. Let's step through a real-world example keeping this in mind: the point of keywords is to help people who are looking, to find you.
Heirloom Woods Case Study: How to Choose Your Keywords
We'll use Heirloom Woods, the website being developed by Mike Glennon, as our example. (His site, a work in progress, is at http://home.att.net/~mjag/ ). In the last two issues of this newsletter, we saw how Mike decided to focus his website on baby cradles.
Actually I had advised Mike to focus on both cradles and cribs, but he thought that was a bad idea:
"I am very disinclined to do cribs as a commercial item. Whereas a cradle is a relatively uncomplex item with one moving part (it rocks) and, give or take a screw or two, I can control every aspect of it, a crib is another story entirely. A crib is much more complex and will make it necessary to use outsider hardware and will be something the customer, unless very local, will have to put together themselves. Frankly, I find the product liability issue far outweighs any positive points I can think of for making them for sale."
Hmmm. Why didn't I think of that? It does kind of sound like a lawsuit waiting to happen... So, scratch the cribs idea.
Now, let's walk through an easy four-step process for figuring out keywords for the Heirloom Woods website. I'll talk about how to use them in the next issue.
STEP 1. To develop our keyword list, we need to think about someone searching for a baby cradle on the Internet. Let's imagine an expecting couple sitting down at their computer to do their search. We need to brainstorm a list of everything this young couple might type into the search box at AltaVista, GoTo.com, Yahoo or wherever. Here's the quick list I came up with: cradle(s) baby cradle(s) baby furniture crib(s) baby crib(s)
A couple things worth noting in my list: Some search engines treat singular and plural forms as distinct, others don't. You'll need to keep this in mind later on. Also, I'm not trying to sneak cribs back into Mike's product line! I put "cribs" on the list because I think some people might confuse cradles and cribs, and use the wrong search term. At this point in the process, we only care about what people might type into that darn search box.
STEP 2. Next, we'll broaden our list using the suggestion tool at http://jimtools.com/keywords. This is a great (free) service that helps you think of related terms. You'll get a lot of suggestions that aren't relevant, but mixed in will be some good terms you hadn't thought of, as well as some ideas for related topics. This tool uses the content of existing web pages to generate its suggestions.
For example, here is the list of "suggestions"
I got when I entered "baby cribs":
baby beds
baby bjorn
baby care products
baby furniture
baby products
baby strollers
car seats
cozy crib tent
crib tent
high chairs
juvenile furniture
little miss liberty
new jersey
nursery accessories
nursery items
nursery monitors
play pens
potty chairs
round crib
I searched on all the terms I had come up with in step one, and selected the interesting suggestions to expand my keywords list.
STEP 3. The final step in coming up with our long list of potential keywords is to use the suggestion tool at GoTo.com. This seems to move around frequently, but I found it today at: http://inventory.go2.com/inventory/Search_Suggestion.jhtml
Type in the terms on your list, and see what pops up. As before, you'll find helpful terms mixed with irrelevant ones. Add the terms that seem useful, and your long list of possible keywords is complete.
Here is the list of suggestions I found for "baby
cradle":
baby cradle
baby cradle plan
cradle bedding baby
wooden baby cradle
antique baby cradle
brass baby cradle
baby center
cradle and all
baby cradle sheet
baby cradle bedding
gif cradle
baby nature cradle
baby sleep system
custom solid baby cradle
baby cradle bassinet
playwell baby doll cradle
baby furniture cradle
home of the oldfashioned baby cradle
This tool uses the complete record of all customer searches at its site during the last month to generate suggestions. You'll want to give more consideration to these terms over those from step 2, since these are what people are really looking for.
STEP 4. Now, to make sense of the list. Go back through the long list and group all the terms into one of three categories: 1) Synonyms or more specific versions of your product. 2) Terms that describe a more general category which your product fits into. 3) Terms for related but distinct topics.
This is easier to understand by looking at an example. Here's a condensed version of what I came up with after working about 45 minutes on the baby cradles keywords. I use a shorthand notation, but I think you'll understand:
Synonyms or more specific terms:
(baby | infant) cradle(s)
(baby | infant) crib(s)
baby bed(s)
handmade (baby) cradle
[wood | wooden | oak | cherry] cradle
baby cradle manufacturer
More general terms:
[baby | infant] furniture
baby products
Related topics:
[baby | infant] (cradle) bedding
newborn bedding
(baby) crib safety
infant safety
changing table(s)
nursery [accessories | items]
We now have a nicely organized list of "keywords", but so what? In the next issue I'll explain how to use this list to guide your website content development; implement the keywords META tag in your pages; and bid on terms at GoTo.com and other pay-per-click services. To get you started thinking about it, here's the current keywords META tag from the Heirloom Woods site:
<META name="keywords" content="Custom woodworking, presentation quality pens, writing instruments, Hand Crafted, Custom Shelving, Detached cabinetry, small furniture items, cradles, baby cradles, boxes, jewelry boxes">
How would you change this keywords tag? I'll share my ideas with you next time.
In the meantime, if you have questions or comments, please send them to me at todd@BridgewoodDesign.com.
