Having gone through a series of SEO evaluations those last few weeks, I was shocked to come across so many cases of websites with bad internal linking structure.   I now think it's essential to stress on good internal linking since I have the impression that web designers often overlook the importance of having a well structured site in terms of internal linking.  The current situation is very sad since a lot of websites are not benefitting of the power of internal linking.  I therefore compiled a short list of factors that one should consider while building the website structure.

Good Navigation - The most important issue here is to make sure that the site navigation is correctly spidered by the search engines.  We can ensure this by either use of anchor text and text based navigation, or an image-based navigation type with significant 'alt attributes' attached to every image link in the navigation.  Avoid Javascript and Flash navigations because they are still not well crawlable and spidered by the search engines.  If you still want to keep your 'flashy' navigation then I'll suggest you include an alternative navigation that would be spidered by major search engines. For example, you could have a text based navigation at the bottom of your page, this will help you inner pages be more spiderable.  

XML Sitemap - I cannot stress enough on having a good XML sitemap on your website.  Sitemaps provide an overview of the site at a single glance but at the same time they help search engines crawl the website.  Submitting a XML sitemap to Google Webmaster Tool for example can be very useful since it gives the search engines a concise format that provides spiders with a super-fast blueprint for indexing a website. Furthermore, sitemaps also improve web usability as they are an alternative form of a site specific search, which brings users to the information they need quicker.  

Breadcrumbs - I believe breadcrumbs are excellent internal linking tools. Being 'links' by nature, they aid with internal linking and consequently increase the search engine visibility. In addition to anchor text differentiation, breadcrumbs are very useful since they increase the general usability of the website by allowing users to know exactly where they are on the website.  

Links in Content - I had the chance to analyse different kind of websites in different industries but it was quite common to see a lack of links in their copy.  It's essential to have in-content links, since not only they are more likely to have higher click through rates (increased confidence path), but they are also capable to add more significance to a link because of the neighbouring text.  Therefore, the rule of thumb here is to have links with anchor text with targeted keywords in the copy of the website.  

Links to Important Pages - It's essential to always ensure that all important pages are well linked to other pages on the website.  I sometimes found it amazing how some of the most important pages of a website are not properly linked to other pages.  It is better to link them directly to the homepage so that they can benefit from the power of link juice passing from the homepage.  But time and again I see websites with important pages buried too deep and ending up with no page-rank at all.  And it's not uncommon to find those pages not indexed by the search engines.  

Cross-check Robot.txt - This may look stupid, but I came across cases where I found important pages of a website not being crawled and spidered because they were found in a section where the robot.txt was preventing spiders to crawl.  This mainly happen by mistake or when new pages are added to the website.  Sometimes webmasters tend to forget to go back to their robot.txt and check whether all crawlable/non-crawlable sections are up-to-date.  In brief, your important pages need to be findable, if not there's no way they'll get crawled and indexed.  

Linking Policy - It is very important to be extremely consistent in your linking behaviour. What I mean is that while linking pages we need to be meticulous about how we are building the links.  I once had to re-build the links of a whole website since links to the homepage were very inconsistent.  Some links were pointing to the .com page whereas others were pointing to the .com/index.php page.  The website also had some major canonicalisation issues where several links were pointing to identical pages but with different URLs.  Cases like this actually decrease all the power of internal linking since the link juice is diluted around the site instead of being intelligently focused on the essential pages.  In brief a link policy should be setup so that everyone building links knows exactly how and where to link them.  

Just to remind, good internal linking ensures that all pages on your website get properly spidered and indexed on search engines.  It increases the relevancy of a page to the targeted keyword phrase.  Allows proper link juice passing to internal pages hence increasing their page-rank. That's it, hope that this helps tuning and enhancing your internal link structure.  

Earlier this month, Seth Godin wrote a blog post entitled 'Lessons from very tiny businesses'. This piece outlined 5 different things we can learn from small businesses, using examples of companies he has encountered. His second point was 'Be micro focused and the search engines will find you'.

Shortly after reading this, I was searching for a carpet cleaning service. I had used one earlier this year, but couldn't remember his number, so I went to his web site. Now bear in mind this is a one-man show, so what you would typically expect is at the most two pages - landing page and contact page. What you get is something else: 9 fully-optimised pages, a blog, and even a Twitter stream!

The thing that impressed me most, however, was the blog, 'My carpet cleaning blog'. Since November 2008, Chris (the carpet cleaner) has been diligently writing up many of his daily jobs as blog posts. Each one is titled with a variation on the phrases 'Carpet cleaning' or 'carpet cleaner', plus the location of the job, either as a postcode (W4, W14) or as the name of the location (Fulham, Wandsworth), and includes some detail on the job in question. In this way he is targeting relevant searches for carpet cleaning all over Greater London. Oh, and he follows these posts up with Tweets as well.

But that's not all. When he came to clean my carpets, Chris also explained how he has managed to get himself placed in Google Local Business ads for not one, but four different postcodes! By asking customers to write reviews, he is managing to come top of the list as well.

Ok, so not everything is rosy with his site from an SEO point of view. URLs need optimising, his blog is one of those 'wysiwyg' ones, and he has literally no incoming links at all. Still, with little technical background and knowledge, Chris has realised the importance of Google as a targeted traffic generator, learnt some of the basic rules of SEO, and applied them assiduously, and with great effect to one set of keyword combinations. Since last November, the site has been appearing on the front page of Google for many local London search related to carpet cleaning, and the number of contacts from his web site has literally doubled!

What's the lesson for me in all this? It's just as Mr Godin says - or as I interpret it anyway: sometimes, as we work on SEO for large organisations in highly competitive markets, we spread ourselves too wide, and look to achieve too much, making it far more difficult to deliver tangible results. Instead we need to identify where we can make a difference, and we need to focus on it. If an inexperienced one man band can do it, we have no excuses.

Looks like Google is trying out some new ways of displaying SERP URLs.  In this image (taken by @robhammond), Google is sharing the location of a results page within a site by including the page's breadcrumb string instead of just using the first 51 URL characters.




The Renault UK results page (#7) has matching breadcrumbs on the destination page:



Today, a search for mobility provides the same results with "normal" URLs:

So what does this mean?  Should we all style out our sites with Hansel and Gretel in mind?  Keeping Google's usability priorities in mind, I think bread crumbs should be a mainstay in any site anyways.  Also, I do believe this is a feasible full time change we may see some time in the future. 

Displaying breadcrumbs in SERPs clearly maps out for searchers what section of the site their query result is located within; this will enable searchers to better read those URLs and have a clearer idea of whether or not that result is appropriate for their query. Also, if this is a going to be a major SERPs change, it's important the breadcrumbs don't go too deep since as always, there is limited character space.

I'm looking forward to seeing how this alteration plays out - if you see any more examples shoot them to me @ChelseaBlacker or chelsea.blacker@baseonegroup.co.uk .

Mid February this year people in the search industry spotted a change in how Google returned search results for certain types of keywords, a change giving "big brands" a push in Google search results. Following discussions on blogs and forums Matt Cutts (head of Google's Webspam team), on March 4th finally confirmed a change had been made. The update was dubbed the "Vince update" (no sorry, not a Vince Neil update)

More on the "Vince update" later on and now a brief history of important updates of Google's search algorithm.

The "Florida Update"

On November 16th 2003 Google made a major update on their search algorithm. Named the "Florida update", it had a major effect for a very large number of websites at the time and came to change the course of search engine optimisation.

Aaron Wall from SEObook says: "The Google Florida update was the first update that made SEO complicated enough to where most people could not figure out how to do it. Before that update all you needed to do was buy and/or trade links with your target keyword in the link anchor text, and after enough repetition you stood a good chance of ranking."

Pre-Florida update prominent search engine ranking could be quite easily achieved by doing basic reciprocal link-building, on-page keyword stuffing, and using repetitive inbound anchor text in links.

Post-Florida update a huge number of pages, many of which had ranked at or near the top of the results for a very long time, simply disappeared from the search engine results altogether.

The "rel=nofollow tag Update"

In January 2005 Google contributed to changing the structure of the Internet when Google proposed a link rel=nofollow tag. Originally it was introduced to only stop blog spamming but was shortly afterwards also affecting link buying. In the eyes of Google you are considered a spammer, and risk getting penalised, if you were buying links without using rel=nofollow on them.

In a URL the tag looks like this: <a href="http://www.baseonesearch.co.uk" rel="nofollow">Base One Search</a>

Plenty of prominent websites have adopted the use of the nofollow tag, sites such as Wikipedia, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and most blog platforms support the tag in the comments section.

"By adding rel="nofollow" to a hyperlink, a page indicates that the destination of that hyperlink SHOULD NOT be afforded any additional weight or ranking by user agents which perform link analysis upon web pages (e.g. search engines)." (http://microformats.org/wiki/rel-nofollow)

The "Universal Search Update"

In May 2007 Google launched their Universal search update. Universal search means that search engine results are blended with selected content from Google's "vertical search databases". The vertical search content is blended directly into the organic search results. Before the "Universal search" update Google gave a list of 10 text-based search engine results.

The "vertical search databases" Google blend into the organic search engine results are: News, Videos, Products, Maps, Images, Books & Blog posts

Today optimising your website for Universal search is important, (e.g. by adding alt-tags and keywords to your images, listing your business of Google Maps, creating videos and optimising title, description, tags etc.), you can increase your chances of achieving prominent search engine rankings.

The "Vince Update"

In October 2008 CEO of Google Eric Schmidt gave a hint of things to come, i.e. the "Vince update". In an interview he talked about "brands", he said:

"The internet is fast becoming a "cesspool" where false information thrives, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said yesterday. Speaking with an audience of magazine executives visiting the Google campus here as part of their annual industry conference, he said their brands were increasingly important signals that content can be trusted." He continued: "Brands are the solution, not the problem," Mr. Schmidt said. "Brands are how you sort out the cesspool." "Brand affinity is clearly hard wired," he said. "It is so fundamental to human existence that it's not going away. It must have a genetic component." (http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=131569)

The "Vince update" has caused a bit of outcry in the search community because with the update it's believed (and proven) that Google is now favouring brands/corporations for core category keywords. Aaron Wall from SEObook in his blog post proved changes had been made in the search engine results, evidence big brands getting favoured. An example is in mid-January three major US airlines all of a sudden began getting top rankings for "airline tickets" (see below)
 

(http://www.rankpulse.com/airline-tickets)

Addressing it as a "minor change", Matt Cutts says the change is about factoring trust more into the algorithm for more generic queries rather than pushing major brands to top search engine results.

So does this latest Google "update" - "minor change" mean that big brands/corporations can take a back seat and receive top search engine rankings in Google by default? I think not, the "Vince update" may well be just a minor change. Google is continually tuning its algorithms to give most relevant results for users.

For navigational-type searches (aka research queries, "going through the front door in the shopping centre") such as cars, airline tickets etc. brand/corporation sites are maybe what searchers are looking for? In the above illustrated example, shouldn't there be a couple of airline companies in the results when you search for airline tickets?

Buy expiring domain names and get link juice and authority. Expired domains are great for SEO. I will try to explain why.

So what are expiring domain names?
Every day thousands of domain names expire but get bought up and changes ownership before they delete and become readily available again for registration. In the domain name industry the domain name aftermarket of buying expiring domain names is big business. Lots of "domainers" and domain name companies are spending hours upon hours sifting through lists of upcoming expiring domain names.

Nowadays buying expired, or pending delete, domain names has become more of a main-stream thing, even outside domaining circles. It takes an expired domain 30 days before it goes back into the pool of masses and become readily available again to register at any domain name registrar. Within this 30 day time period, between expiring and becoming available again, thousands of domain names exchange hands in what is called the 'domain name aftermarket'.

The life cycle of a domain name
The life cycle of a generic domain name (.com, .net, .org etc) explained by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers).


(Source: http://www.icann.org/en/registrars/gtld-lifecycle.htm)

I am not going to patronise anyone in this post by saying it is obvious that you need both quality content and links in order to survive the search engines....... The debate here at Base One is between me and a co-worker over what is MORE important as we realise the significance of both for ranking purposes.


The Background

The co-worker  is a link building machine - he could be considered an Arnold Schwarzenegger of the link building world, except his phrase is not "I will be back", it is more like "I am not going anywhere"....

Me?  Well my strengths lie more in on- page optimisation. This major difference is perhaps where this year- long debate has stemmed from...........




 The Arguments

For Content: Whilst acknowledging the co-worker's argument, and the importance of links towards any search marketing effort, I remain in favour of quality, keyword rich content as the more significant element. I am debating for the user whilst the co worker is debating for the search engines. In my opinion, the ultimate objective for any website is to gain user intrigue, navigate throughout the site and hopefully get them to convert.

A website can have a million quality links but, if it has poor or limited content, that is not relevant to the search, it is likely that any user will instantly bounce off the website. What will gain conversions, links or content? And if this is, after all, the objective, should there not then be more importance placed on quality content rather than links? Without great content, link building can prove difficult.....particularly when approaching high authority websites. People are more likely to link to strong, well optimised content with relevance to their own website. Be it a product or a service, quality and interesting content more often than not will have people blogging about it or linking their own websites naturally to yours.

For Links: Without links there is little or no chance of ranking on the first page for any competitive terms. They are vital to off-page optimisation in allowing a website to be found and potentially gain a high volume of traffic. If using logos as links on relevant websites then this also increases online brand awareness, as users will start to recognise the brand. Referring traffic or even direct traffic can increase with this type of link building.

Closing Statement

I put this question to you......User or search engine? Good content MORE important than links? I ask you this: can you, the user, live in a world where websites are revolved around the number of links they have and the importance that Google has placed on these sites, or do you want to create a society where the content is interesting and relevant to your search?

"Let us not despair...

And so, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream, that one day content will reign over the link weight in the Google algorithm, that content will be able to walk the worldwide web with heads held high.... "

VOTE CONTENT!!!!!

Attending a search conference can be a very valuable experience; it can also be a very memorable one. Note: consuming copious amounts of free alcohol will affect memory.
 
This post intends to illustrate and advise how to get the most from a search conference.

Consider it a manual which highlights reasons why you should be attending search conferences.

1.    Read the conference agenda thoroughly. Try to select the sessions that you have a keen interest in and will most likely to improve your skills.
 
2.    Attending a conference can be an excellent opportunity to establish new and develop existing relationships.

3.    Remember it is not only fellow professionals within your industry that attend search conferences.  It is often the case that before a business actively seeks to employ a search marketing company they will attend events such as the upcoming London SMX to get a general feel of the potential benefits a search marketing campaign can offer.  This is an amazing opportunity to network, be the first point of contact and to exchange details with prospective clientele.
 
4.    Don't be afraid to start conversations - always introduce yourself if given the opportunity. You are all in the same boat and share more common interests than you may think so don't be shy.  If it helps here are some SEO Jokes to break the ice or start with the tried and tested lines "is this your first conference?", "What was your favourite session today?" or "What industry are you in?"

5.    Don't overly pitch people - let the conversation grow naturally.  Desperation is a real conversation killer and it smells bad too. A conference should be seen as a method to make contacts not sign contracts.
    
6.    The after party which contains the secret quest of every search marketing professional - Free Beer.  Coincidently here is a drinker's guide to hangover cures.

7.    Never, Never, Never forget your business cards.  If you have made the effort of attending a conference and actively set about networking then you want them to be able to remember that fine young gentleman or lady in the future (that would be you).
 
8.    Take notes on the back of business cards - You will ultimately forget conversations no matter how great and insightful they were at the time. For future reference take notes on the back of cards highlighting what was discussed and how you might work together.

9.    Bring a SWAG bag to fill with all the free items and products from the exhibition stalls. You often find many exhibitors willing to give out free stuff to promote their product or service but be warned only part with your details on two conditions; you are offered a whole treasure trove of goodies or you are actually interested in the product or service.  I was once hounded for weeks by a sales rep who I gave my details to because I felt I had to after taking a cup warmer. Damn that cup warmer.

10.    Working within the dynamic search industry you will know that you are constantly learning new techniques, so what better way than to sit back and listen to highly experienced and knowledgeable speakers.  Debates often arise and many questions can also be asked and answered.  It is like a forum but in REAL time, amazing huh?
 
11.    It is not always the high profile search marketers that have the best tips.  Don't spend all your time trying to harass the session speakers as it is often the case that other more quiet individuals have just as much experience and knowledge. So pull up a stool crack open the Werther's Originals and soak up as much information as you can.

12.    Make it a point to hug a black hat. Although you may not employ black hat techniques it is always very useful to know what they know just to keep you aware of new techniques.  They also have some very good ideas outside of the box which can often be tweaked to fit into an online strategy. Some tips on black-hat spotting include; corner hangouts, soft whispers, secret handshakes and every time you ID me a rabbit dies t-shirts

13.    Not only do you learn from conferences they also inspire future ideas.  Surprisingly you may learn more at the bar as it often acts as fuel for the mouth of many search professionals. This information can turn out to be just as valuable as what you get in the sessions.

14.    A chance to obtain competitor research and trade secrets - If you have passed your stalking grade 1 badge you will undeniably run into employees from competing firms. When you do be friendly and ask lots of questions. Smile, be sociable and engaging. Remember how important it is to be a great listener; this will be important as scribbling annotations into a notepad is not the most subtle of methods.
 
I hope these tips and tricks act as a good resource for search professionals newer to conferences. Ultimately the number one tip would be - don't be shy - it's good to talk. There are so few opportunities to discuss your thoughts, ideas and questions outside of work so grab the opportunity and embrace it.

It's ok folks you have not read the title wrong, I have not posted in a euphoric state, we can make http error codes fun!

A while ago I was introduced to this by Lisa Ditlefsen and Chewie, I have named checked Lisa specifically for the reason of my family having someone to blame at the sad, sorry state that I have become, one of which is often described as a geek.

I invite you now to break the conversation codes below and also to create your own conversations in the comments section.

Enjoy!

Person A:  I had a row with my girlfriend the other day; she said my actions were 406

Person B:  Oh, bit of 409 at home I see. What happened?

Person A:  Well it was my birthday and she said she had a surprise waiting for me;                             unfortunately the surprise I was thinking of was 501

Person B:  So you made a 400?

Person A:  Yep, it was a 405 apparently and it was 403

Person B:  Not even on birthdays?

Person A:   No,  that was not 202
 
Person B:  So your 417 then, shame

Person A:  Yeah not the best birthday, I 408, said I was going out and was 410.
                 Hopefully I will come back and find out she has 301


Here is the full list of http error codes to help you in your quest:

• Full list of HTTP Error Codes

100     Continue
101     Switching Protocols
200     OK
201     Created
202     Acceptable
203     Non-Authoritative Information
204     No Content
205     Reset Content
206     Partial Content
300     Multiple Choices
301     Moved Permanently
302     Moved Temporarily
303     See Other
304     Not Modified
305     Use Proxy
306     Unused
307     Temporary Redirect
400     Bad Request
401     Unauthorised
402     Payment Required
403     Forbidden
404     Not Found
405     Method Not Allowed
406     Not Acceptable
407     Proxy Authentication Required
408     Request Time-Out
409     Conflict
410     Gone
411     Length Required
412     Precondition Failed
413     Request Entity Too Large
414     Request-URL Too Large
415     Unsupported Media Type
416     Requested Range Not Satisfiable
417     Expectation Failed
500     Server Error
501     Not Implemented
502     Bad Gateway
503     Service Unavailable
504     Gateway Time-Out
505     HTTP Version not supported

As strange as it may seem ethics, morals and principles are associated to various coloured hats within the SEO world. We wear our hats like hearts on sleeves. As characters, our hats define us but they do not box us. For example, a 'white hat' may believe this is the best possible approach but could also respect and admire the innovation and techniques of their deadly rivals the 'black hats'.

To quote Salt n Pepa "push it good, p-push it real good" I hear you sisters, but how do you feel about pushing the boundaries?

The discussion of morals, principles and ethics within the SEO world is comparable to a heated discussion concerning religion or politics: there will always be more than two perspectives and therefore two sides. Both of which are strongly opinionated and could sell you 'their way' faster than a fat kid eating cake.

In order to gain a better understanding, we need to obtain a clearer insight into what colour the hats are and what they believe in. Practitioners within the search industry are divided into three camps. There are the "white hats," their polar opposites "black hats" and the hybrid outfit the "grey hats", who use a combination of ideas and techniques whilst hiding under the comfort and safety of the white hat blanket.

 "Do you wana be in my gang, my gang, my gang; do you wana be in my gang, Oh yeah?"

Coloured hats and their beliefs:
 
White hat SEO generally means using traditional and accepted optimisation techniques and thoroughly avoiding and thinking about using practices like cloaking, which made their distant cousins 'black hats' infamous.

Being part of the white hat SEO group you will typically use standard best practices, focusing on optimising a website for the end user but with the search engines in mind.  The content displayed will be the same content the search engines will see, the pages that rank will direct visitors to originally intended page; you will have nothing to hide.
 
Although this sounds like an astrology reading, white hats will have patience and strive to achieve a top ranking position naturally.  They will place a strong emphasis on writing engaging on-page copy, with well placed keywords and use above board techniques when link building believing (sometimes blindly) that Google will smile upon them if they do so.   
 
Black hat SEO Black hat SEO Black hat SEO (I am not keyword stuffing I promise) usually means employing ranking techniques that are clearly outside of Google's stated Webmaster Guidelines.  Black Hats will focus on optimising a website for the search engine with the end user in mind. Although it is not right to box them the majority will aim only to obtain high search engine ranking positions; many would say in an unethical manner as they breaks search engine rules and regulations and can create a poor user experience.  One defining trait of a Black Hat is that they continually look for loopholes in the algorithms of search engines; some could call them pioneers.  The one public example of how Black hat techniques can be detrimental to a brand is the BMW case where they were banned from Google for using a practise coined 'cloaking'.

Methods used to achieve higher search rankings include cloaking, hidden text, keyword stuffing, and intensively cross linked sites.
 
Grey hat SEO lies somewhere in the middle, they have no real territory, no allegiance and exist on the realms of both worlds. The concept of Grey hat SEO is much more difficult to define as techniques which fall into this category are subjective and could be argued to fall into either black hat or white hat.  Although Grey Hats are based within the walls of the white hat territory, agreeing with most of their principles, they just can't help themselves so they often peer out of their windows or go out across the street and snoop around, like a nosey neighbour.

A lot of Grey hats admire Black hats and push the boundaries by employing some of their techniques but toned down and reapplied with the end user in mind.
 
Anakin Skywalker would be the pin up boy of this gang, just before turning evil of course.
   
Deep Breath...

Some people feel that ethics, principles and morals are the equivalent of excess baggage which can't fit into the hand luggage, easily dismissed and forgettable on the trip to number 1, in the sunny, quaint village of Google.  Others would feel that ethics should be adhered to and are central to their way of life.

The benefits of black hat techniques are often short lived and like the laws of gravity, whatever goes up in an unethical way through using Black Hat must also come down - thanks Mr Newton.
 
Black hats seem willing to sacrifice the experience of the end user as their ambition to get the desired number one spot blurs their vision, losing focus on what's really important, the customer.  Client consideration must also feature in the discussion; it is immoral and dishonest to work on clients behalf using these techniques. I would never do this as in the long term they often turn out to be detrimental to a website.
 
The Streets sung "let's push things forward" and personally I view the black hats with respect and admiration.  They are integral to this industry being as dynamic as it is and their techniques inspire others to continue thinking of new practises. Some of their ideas get filtered and form the basis of techniques within the grey hat SEO World, who combine their original function with more focus of the end user.

SEO techniques and practises are not a science; they were and continue to be created out of trial and error and a lot of experimentation, knowing this, where do you stand on pushing the boundaries of SEO Ethics?
 

At one of my first SEO conferences I heard a respected SEO professional present the importance of keyword research. Being new to SEO, and agreeing with what she was discussing, I went to put this into practice, as part of a research campaign for a number of new clients. Little did I know that the difficulty would not be the research itself, but convincing the client of the proposed targeted keywords. Bear with me on this analogy...

The Foundations of the Relationship
The foundation of any relationship is based on understanding each other, what each other want and each other's natural behaviour. Most relationships break down as communication is lost and they do not try or want to change in order to gain a solution to each others problems. Particularly for women (feminist shmeminist) the age old question comes to mind what do women want? The fact is that men will never know because we don't even know, the difference is trying to understand what we want. This is the first step for any company, to understand their customer and their potential audience, their search behaviour and the types of persona they will be targeting.

First Date- Getting to know Each Other
No one knows the company better than the company in terms of product/services and brand. Any SEO company should be provided with a list of keywords from the company that outline basically what the company does - a kind of what's your name, where do you come from and what do you do (thanks Cilla) This will be the basis of our keyword research. The problem is that you will not always be found for keywords that you WANT to be found for, particularly smaller less well known brands, but should focus instead on search terms users WILL use. The first date is where you get to find out all about the other person - in understanding exactly what they are looking for in a relationship. Depending on your type (target audience) they may be looking for different things, using different search methods and keywords to gain their perfect match, search results.

Keyword research often reveals hidden opportunities, digging deeper on the first date could mean that you skip a lot of dates before you get to the end result, saving time and cost of wining and dining. Knowing your audience means that you know the right things to say and do in order to reel them in and get them to want to see you again.

The BIG question!!
Don't panic, the big question is looming...... now if you want to seal the deal and convert that relationship into a lifelong partnership you cannot dither with the language you use, get to the point, and just ask the question!! There is a danger using jargon or industry related keywords and phrases that a user, unfamiliar to a brand or service, would not search for. Keep it simple, remember users are lazy and want answers to their questions without redefining their search term. The problem is that a company provides solutions, whereby the user asks questions. The key is to optimise for both problem and solution for the search engines in order for a potential customer to find your site. A search engine, as sophisticated as it is, cannot work out the answer to a question which is why you should base the targeted keywords more of a conversation with your audience.

Once a company understands and targets the customers/audiences behaviour, you will be able to satisfy the customers needs. And it might sound a little something like this:  

A Little Dating Advice
Here are a select few keyword research tools to help ease you into the first date;

For a free and fun date, SEObooks keyword research tool  allows you to get to know the customer and start to collate information on their behaviour.  Another free tool is Quintura which shows searched keywords (and related) in the form of a mind map. 

Moving on to the special (paid for) night, worth the money for the end result is Wordtracker which costs £165 for annual subscription; they also have a recommended free version of their tool .Trellian's Keyword Discovery tool, is an supposedly accurate tool drawing on data from 180 search engines. It is a gourmet meal for 2 at $49.95 monthly fee.

"Most people don't know what they don't know about relationships. They don't know there is a proven body of knowledge and skills that, when learned, result in lasting, successful relationships"
(Paul and Layne Cutright)