While it’s not a stat holiday (although some might argue it should be!) Mother’s Day is coming up in May. If you’re having a Mother’s Day sale on your website, start thinking about targeting key phrases now.

Here’s a helpful list of Mother’s Day-related keyword searches which were popular on NZS.com last year:

• mothers day
• mothers day poems
• mothers day gifts
• mothers day quotes
• mothers day poem
• mothers day gift ideas
• mothers day ideas
• mother’s day poem
• mothers day present

Get in quick are you’ve got the best chance of gaining a good search engine rank for your Mother’s Day-specific pages!

For NZS.com, the largest spike we’ve seen over the last year was in relation to the Olympic Keyword Searches that were being searched on. These searches were across the widest range of user demographics that we’ve seen in some time.

Here’s a helpful list of Easter-related keyword searches which have gained popularity on NZS.com over the last week:

• easter activities
• easter ideas
• easter baking
• easter recipes
• easter crafts
• meaning of easter
• how to make easter eggs
• easter cards
• easter symbols
• easter bun recipe

NZS.com also has a set of useful Easter related Articles: Easter Gifts, Easter Activities and Easter Baking.

If you have a statistics package attached to you website (like Google Analytics, which is freely available) it’s a good idea to look back at Easter 2008 and see if people found your site by searching for Easter related terms. Re-cycling those terms this year within your website copy may help increase your traffic on them.

You might be surprised at the extra opportunities that present themselves by following other seasonal keywords that your visitors are using through-out the year.

Olympic fever is in full swing and it’s great to see the entire nation getting behind the NZ Olympic Team as we’re all preparing for the glitz and glamour of the opening ceremony in Beijing today.

As avid followers of search within New Zealand, it’s interesting watching the flow of Olympic keyword searches, such as what people are searching for when they’re looking for information about the Olympics online – specifically information on the Olympic team.

Here’s a snippet of some of the top Olympic keyword search phrases that we’re seeing on NZS.com:

• new zealand olympic team
• olympic games
• new zealand olympic team 2008
• olympic games 2008
• olympic medal tally
• first new zealand olympic medal
• new zealand olympic medal winners
• new zealand olympic medal tally
• first new zealander olympic medal
• new zealand olympic gold medal winners

The Olympics are a global phenomenon and are one of the few events that capture the interest of the young and old. The level of people searching for background information on the history of the Olympics is something that comes across as a strong focus.

You can read more about the history and our local team on the NZS.com sports articles available; NZ Olympic Team, 2008 Olympic Games, NZ Olympic Medal Winners, Olympic Athletes and the history of the Olympics themselves.

But is bad keyword spelling really useful or does it just make your website look unprofessional?

The answer to this question depends on your point of view. Just take a look at any keyword tool and you’ll see that intentional misspellings account for a significant proportion of searches online. So, including misspelled keywords can be useful, allowing you to:

• Target searches that are commonly misspelled, for instance ‘accomodation’ instead of ‘accommodation’
• Get good search engine rankings for profitable popular search terms that have low levels of competition
• Capture the market for regional spelling variations, eg. both UK and US spellings of words such as ‘optimisation’ (‘optimization’)
  
• Help searchers find what they’re looking for, even if they enter a word incorrectly

But along with these benefits, there are also disadvantages to including misspellings or alternate spellings in your website copy – the most obvious being that visitors and potential clients will see your website (and therefore your business) as sloppy, careless or… lacking in basic spelling skills. Even worse, you may end up losing your search engine friendly status if you, or your Web designer, try to fool search engines with invisible text or other keyword tricks.

Find some of the best SEO consultants in New Zealand in the NZS.com directory.

Image from Flickr.

And New Zealand search statistics are showing the popularity of this summer pastime. Reports from Hitwise show that searches relating to the great outdoors have increased significantly in recent weeks. Most of these high ranking search terms are generic (like ‘camping grounds’), but other popular search terms are geographically specific (for instance ‘paihia camping ground’).

Top ten searches relating to camping holidays in New Zealand, for the week ending 8 December, 2007 were:

1. kiwi camping
2. camping grounds
3. camping
4. camping equipment
5. camping gear
6. camping nz
7. camping ground
8. camping sites
9. new zealand camping holidays
10. camping new zealand

So, what can we do with search keyword stats like this? Information on how searchers are finding your website can be used (along with data on what searchers are looking for online) to better tailor your website content and keywords. These statistics also show the power of seasonal search trends (online promotions should take into account the time of year) and region-specific searches (you may not be number one in generic camping term searches, but you could rank highly for a geographically specific search).

And if you’re getting ready to relax over the summer holidays, get sorted for your camping holiday with our directory of New Zealand camping grounds and camping equipment stores.

Getting the results you want
To get the most relevant results from search engines, you need to be quite specific about the ‘keyword search phrase’ you type into the search box. In this example, you have decided to use NZS.com to help you find out where you can buy piano music at a reasonable price. You are based in Christchurch (the city in New Zealand, not the town in England). The words you might choose to include in your search term would then be: “second hand piano music christchurch”.

By being so specific about your search, the search engine can pull up what it considers to the best and most relevant result to answer your query.

Searching for New Zealand Web sites
If you’re interested in searching for a New Zealand service or company, NZS.com itself is a great place to start, but Google is still the world’s favourite search engine and comes in hundreds of different varieties. Google NZ offers the option to search New Zealand Web pages only, so you can start narrowing your search field that way.

Read more about keyword phrases and using them in your search engine marketing campaigns. More on this in another post! Adios!