Keyword List Prioritizing – SEO Training

Posted by Pixelhead

This post should be read after the Keyword Research post has been read.

To prioritize your Keyword List, you must calculate the R/S value, that is obtained when Results or number of competing sites is divided by searches per month. The quotients of the R/S values for each keyword phrase are then compared and used to prioritize which words will be optimized for first.

There are tools out there that will determine the competition for your keywords, but the easiest free way I know of is to plug your potential keyword phrases into Google. If you use the “allintitle:” search function, you will get web pages that have the keyword in the title, that is to say the title tag of the site includes the keywords in it.

The title tag is the name of the site that is shown in the little blue bar at the top of the browser, like the title tag at the top of this page which should read “Keyword List Prioritizing-SEO Training – and SEO tips from Pixelhead” followed by your browser name. An example of using the “allintitle” function is “allintitle:cloth bags” and Google shows 52,000 web pages that have the phrase cloth bags in the title as opposed to 490,000 pages that show up for the phrase just typed into the Google search bar.

Next, you are going to divide the number of sites that result from the keyword search (R)by the number of monthly searches(S). Plugging my examples numbers into the equation:

52,000 competing pages
approximately 27,100 searches per month.
52,000/27,100 =1.92 r/s for cloth bags

*One note..Lizzie my wife prefers to use the keyword in quotes not the allintitle results. She feels you are getting a more realistic number of sites you are competing with as opposed to only sites that are using the keyword in the title tag.

The r/s value, which should be done for all of your potential keyword phrases, will be used to determine the priority of words in the campaign, with the keywords with the lower ratios being your first priority. Since I am using Excel for my spread sheet, I will then sort my data based upon the R/S column. If you are good with Excel, you will be able to program in the function so that the r/s ratio is automatically calculated when you put in the data into the Results and Searches columns. But that is another lesson entirely.

R/S values are now computed, you can now break your list into groups of 5, the lowest five being the first words which you should target in your SEO. And this is the end of this post…the next step in our optimization series will cover on-page optimization for your keywords. At this time, you can now begin to build links for the first group of words. But first, see past Link Building posts for tips on this, which include:

SEO Training Series Posts include:

Got any questions about the SEO Training series?

Written by Pixelhead on February 17th, 2009 with comments disabled.
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Niche SEO – Find Your SEO Niche (July 22nd, 2010)

41 comments

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simon
#1. February 17th, 2009, at 11:44 PM.

I’ll need to read this a couple of times before it sinks into my thick scull.

Accountants in Phoenix, Arizona
#2. February 18th, 2009, at 7:06 AM.

Hi Pixelhead,

The “allintitle” function is one in which I haven’t heard about for some time… but a very useful tool for those wishing to get the most our of their SEO.

The r/s value is a new concept to me… while in theory it sounds intriguing and I’m definitely going to experiment with it… but I was wondering, did you develop this equation?

Nicole Price
#3. February 18th, 2009, at 11:56 AM.

“Lizzie my wife prefers to use the keyword in quotes not the allintitle results. She feels you are getting a more realistic number of sites you are competing with as opposed to only sites that are using the keyword in the title tag.” What do you think?

Wayne
#4. February 18th, 2009, at 5:29 PM.

Good stuff. I’ve been meaning to get all my keywords into a catalog for all my sites.

Thanks for laying that out in plain english. I’ve some playing around to do now.

Looking forward to the next post!

Pixelhead
#5. February 18th, 2009, at 10:21 PM.

Simon, take your time, it is best to let it all sink in and to digest it properly.

Accountants in Phoenix, I did not come up with the equation, it has been out there for quite a while. Googling “R/S ratio” by the way comes up with 52,000 results.

Nicole, I think which ever you choose, you need to stick with it and be consistent. I will continue to use “allintitle”. We all have our opinions. I put that out there to show that there are numerous techniques that work.

Wayne, hey my friend thanks for stopping by…how is the Lil Wayne vs John Wayne thing going for you?

Chelle
#6. February 18th, 2009, at 11:09 PM.

I haven’t heard of the allintitle search before, I will have to try that! Some of the keywords that I would write about I avoid simply because the competition has seemed to be too much. What is a good r/s value to have? Any handy little programs out there yet that can calculate it ? My method of using wordtracker and then seeing what my competition is in search engines works but its a bit time consuming!

becky
#7. February 19th, 2009, at 5:35 AM.

wow great counting and excellent information.thanx for sharing such a great idea. does it work for any keyword?

Norilyn Aspera
#8. February 19th, 2009, at 9:52 AM.

Thanks for sharing these tips and guidelines, I am not an SEO pro so I usually check and read other people’s post regarding the matter to learn more and make good use of free resources around.

brooks
#9. February 19th, 2009, at 12:37 PM.

Surrely, a tedious exercise to learn this tactic. Sounds great, but needs experimentation.

Pixelhead
#10. February 19th, 2009, at 2:48 PM.

Chelle, the only one I have heard of is SEOElite… Here is my affiliate link if you want to check it out. Right you are about it being time consuming.

Becky, it will work with any keyword, provided the keyword actually has some searches for it. Its funny, but there are words out there that get no searches, but people actually optimize.

Norilyn, there is nothing wrong with free…well sometime it does actually end up costing you more in time. But free is a good place to start.

Brooks, yes..it can be very tedious.

Marketing Consultants
#11. February 19th, 2009, at 5:13 PM.

Nice series of articles. Some comments suggest that calculating the R/S ratio is compicated. If you are doing this on any scale you should eb using a spreadsheet and the calculation cna be automated. Anyway if you are using the full version of one of the most popular keyword generation tools it calculates this for you automatically.

Affordable Electronics
#12. February 21st, 2009, at 10:48 PM.

Calculating the r/s value will help me prioritise, thanks for sharing.

I’m going to calculate them for my site now.

Paul
#13. February 23rd, 2009, at 11:51 PM.

I haven’t been by for awhile so I decided to stop by and say hi!!!

Pixelhead
#14. February 24th, 2009, at 3:18 PM.

Paul, thanks for stopping in my friend.

Affordable Electronics, hope it helps.

Marketing Consultants, yes, you are so right that it can and should be automated.

GregR
#15. February 24th, 2009, at 5:25 PM.

I learn something everyday. I did not know about the R/S value. Keyword management is vital and I use these strategies all the time.
Cheers

Orange Amps Rock
#16. February 25th, 2009, at 4:11 AM.

Its nice to be able to sort of quantitize keyword lists like this. I can’t even remember how many times my keyword lists have been unorganized and it lead to lots of lost time.

Clair
#17. February 25th, 2009, at 12:04 PM.

Actually, I do the same when prioritizing my lists of keywords, but i divide the number of results by the number of searches, but the number of searches by the number of results.

Retirement Investing
#18. February 26th, 2009, at 12:40 AM.

Good tips, I think I may start using some of them in the near future being that I’m new to all of this. Thanks!

Sean Stewart
#19. February 28th, 2009, at 1:58 AM.

Thanks for the tips. I’m just trying to get started with SEO and this will help.

Tnomeralc Web Design Toys
#20. March 3rd, 2009, at 7:45 PM.

What I like about this and your blog is you never stop updating SEO people with the news.

Today I learned something new. This keyword prioritizing hasn’t give me the results I wanted, but i’ll keep studying this. Thanks!

Jingles Man
#21. March 4th, 2009, at 9:18 PM.

That’s interesting. I’ve been researching SEO for a while now and I never knew about the allintitle search until now. Cheers!

Greg
#22. March 5th, 2009, at 5:29 PM.

I always use a combination of KEI and R/S to prioritize. I think KEI is more important though

cheap ipods
#23. March 6th, 2009, at 1:05 AM.

Most of the keyword tools out on the market are junk and 90% of the sites link wordtracker,as thay only hit just a very small percent of the SE searchs.

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#24. March 6th, 2009, at 3:02 AM.

I normally use quotes in Google as well, instead of the allintitle function, as I think this does give you a broader range of sites that you potentially are competing against. Never used the R/S calculation though, I’ve always just gone in order from most searched through least searched. An interesting idea that I’ll have to try on my next site.

jc
#25. March 15th, 2009, at 7:47 AM.

sounds like a time consuming process. I guess it depends on how narrow your field of potential keywords is as to whether it is worth the effort.

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#26. March 16th, 2009, at 11:23 AM.

Prioritizing keywords is extremely important. Sure you can work without it but you’ll probably achieve a lot worse effects than if you’d spend couple hours analizing all your keywords.

fayetteville real estate
#27. March 16th, 2009, at 4:51 PM.

SEO is a great way to get a website up and running and getting people to come to the site, however you need to be careful that you find a company that will do the work and not just send it to India because you will pay and will never see anything – do your homework.

French Cheeses
#28. March 17th, 2009, at 12:16 AM.

Many people say this is too time consuming, but I’ve wasted six months on the wrong keywords. Of course everything I did with my blog I did for free, but I could be making more now had I known the whole time what I was doing. The thing is that many SEO people tell you “some” information and not the whole truth. That’s why I respect people like you and Courtney Tuttle, you don’t hide the truth. Thanks!

Alpine bow
#29. March 17th, 2009, at 11:27 AM.

I would like to thank you for this great post and valuable information.
i want to give you this link i hope that it will be useful :
http://ezinearticles.com/?7-Link-Building-Mistakes-to-Avoid-at-All-Cost&id=1420022

Goran
#30. March 19th, 2009, at 9:00 AM.

I also prefer to use the keyword / keyword phrase in quotes to get a more accurate indication of competition for it. Great post, which should help people nail down their keyword research process!

Ira
#31. March 25th, 2009, at 3:12 PM.

I will have to try that! Some of the keywords that I would write about I avoid simply because the competition has seemed to be too much. What is a good r/s value to have? Any handy little programs out there yet that can calculate it ? My method of using wordtracker and then seeing what my competition is

Jay
#32. March 28th, 2009, at 10:42 PM.

Thanks for posting the Keyword article. Gave me some good info to input into getting my site off the ground.

Domy Gryfino
#33. April 6th, 2009, at 11:21 AM.

You need right priorities in everything And especialy when choosing keywords. It’s very easy to accidentaly try to promote your website under either too popular keyword or too niche one. You need to find the right balance between keyword you will never conquer an keywords you don’t need.

Hotels in Las Vegas
#34. April 23rd, 2009, at 4:36 PM.

say i wanted to make a list of the top 1000 sites for gadgets acording to google.
is there a program or easy way to do this with out going through every page of google and copy and pasting every single domain in the top 1000 for that given keyword?

Pixelhead
#35. April 23rd, 2009, at 4:46 PM.

I myself am not sure of any easy way, but if you find out, please share…what about using some form of rss?

Do an advanced Google search, by making it show the max, which I believe is 100. Copy paste into a spread sheet and sort. But you would probably still want to visit them all to make sure they were not spammy to insure quality.

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#36. April 24th, 2009, at 5:46 PM.

Hi, I have a huge list of things to do. Is there a systematic way of prioritizing these so that I do them in them right order of priority? I have some idea of making a chart and adding a field called “Urgency” and one called “Impact” and I was going to rate the 1-10 and then multiply the two fields…

Discon
#37. July 6th, 2009, at 11:50 AM.

Ofcourse everything I did with my blog I did for free, SEO is a great way to get a website up and running and getting people to come to the site, but I could be making more now had I known the whole time what I was doing. The thing is that many SEO people tell you some information and not the whole truth.

Miami SEO
#38. July 10th, 2009, at 8:07 PM.

Brilliantly articulated approach to keyword prioritizing! Sending this article to my colleagues for sure. Wish I had found this article earlier.

In addition to calculating R/S values, would you recommend a preliminary round of PPC to test which terms convert most effectively? I’ve found this to be a helpful tactic – as it often confirms which phrases are worth targeting heavily off the bat during the linkbuilding process.

Thanks again for the outstanding article. Tweeting for sure.

Pixelhead
#39. July 10th, 2009, at 9:37 PM.

Miami SEO, I think that is a brilliant tactic as well. Thanks for sharing.

Katherine Johnson
#40. October 22nd, 2009, at 7:39 AM.

WOW! You must have had done lots of research to come up with those computations. I also have my own share of research and recently started writing about SEO in my blog and there is so much to write. I hope you can check it out here: http://seo-keywords-tutorials.blogspot.com/2009/09/using-keywords-for-smart-link-building.html

Regards,
Katherine

Training in
#41. June 15th, 2010, at 11:53 PM.