You need to research your key words and come up with a list of words and phrases that people are actually searching for and that pertain to your products or services. There are several good tools for doing this. One is Wordtracker. Here, you enter your primary keyword phrase, then review Wordtracker's list of related phrases, adding relevant ones to your "key word basket". WordTracker has a free demo or you can sign up for a day for just a few dollars. They also have a free keyword suggestion tool that gives you up to 100 keywords stemming off of any root keyword you type in. Another tool, which I use regularly, is Keyword Analyzer. This is less labor-intensive than WordTracker, and once you buy it, you own it. No annual subscription fees as with WordTracker. Another is Google Adwords keyword tool.
These tools will give you valuable glimpses into actual keyword query frequency and search phrase combinations that you might have overlooked. You may find that no one is searching for some of your phrases and that many are searching for phrases you hadn't thought of. Do not fall in love with keywords just because they are queried often. Relevance to your site should be your first criteria. Less traffic that buys more product is better than more traffic that buys less product.
When you brainstorm on key words, those that initially come to mind are often too broad, or not specifically relevant to the content of your site. For instance, the keyword phrase, "real estate," is too broad to rank well. Today's search engine users are sophisticated enough to know that "North Carolina Real Estate" or "Colorado Vacation Homes" will be much more likely to yield the results they are seeking.
As I see it, there are two approaches to key word research. Depending upon the nature of your site, you may wish to use either or both of them. The first is to use your products as key word phrases. Selling used cars? Well "used cars" is probably not a viable key word phrase for you, unless you have a nationwide chain. It's too general. You're unlikely to rank highly for it and if you bid on it in the pay-per-clicks, you'll probably spend a fortune without selling many cars. You need to qualify it with a geographic location (New York used cars) or list each type of car you sell (used Subaru Outback). Selling herbs and have an inventory of thousands of varieties? Great! You have thousands of key words. You may discover a variety of keywords for each herb. You can optimize a page for each herb and in the pay-per-clicks, you'll probably be able to bid the minimum amount for most of them. You won't get a flood of traffic from any one key word, but with thousands (or even hundreds), it will add up.
Each key word phrase may branch into several. For instance, if you sell golf shoes, the words 'golf shoes' should not be your only keyword phrase, nor even necessarily your most important one. Consider also, 'buying golf shoes,' '(name of brand) golf shoes,' and 'online golf shoe stores.' Any keyword or phrase that you miss will be traffic and prospective customers that visit your competitor. There are often 50 to 100 ways that different people will compose a query hoping to find the same thing - identify them all.
Visit your competitors' web sites and check their keyword meta tags for any key words that you hadn't considered - you'd be amazed at the good and bad keywords they're targeting. You do this by choosing the "View Source" menu option in your browser. There, near the top of the page, you will see a line that starts with: <meta name="keywords" content=". After that you will see a list of key words or phrases, usually separated by commas.
Review the copy on the pages of your own site for keyword phrases that you use in describing your offerings. You will be surprised at how many keywords are overlooked that are right there in front of you on your own web pages.
Having lots of unique, relevant copy in your site is one of the best long-term strategies for building a presence in the search engines. I'm employing this strategy for my own site by writing these articles. The second approach involves expanding not only your key word list but also your site content to address the core problems, concepts, and products that your web site offers.
For instance, if you sell treadmills, ask yourself what problems a treadmill solves. People buy them to become physically fit. So the problems that concern them might include:
- How to lose weight.
- How to lower cholesterol.
- How to exercise indoors.
- etc.
Use WordTracker to find the keyword phrases relating to those problems. Enter "weight loss," "cholesterol," "indoor exercise," etc., and see what phrases WordTracker comes up with. Then, consider expanding your site to include relevant content that contains these phrases. For instance, create a page of information about lowering cholesterol. Certainly this information will include many references to exercise, and in this, you can link people to the pages where you sell treadmills and other equipment.
You can take this a step further by considering the problems that your products or services cause. For instance, treadmill shoppers may be runners who suffer from knee pain and other injuries. Thus it would be relevant to your site to publish an article on how to prevent knee pain and injuries. These articles will come up in various key word searches and lead people into your site who otherwise might not have found it.
There may be ancillary problems or topics associated with your product that your product does not solve but are thematically related to your site. For instance, purchasers of exercise equipment may run in marathons. You may not sell equipment that can help them do this, but the equipment you do sell is closely related. Therefore you can provide information on how to train for marathons (assuming keyword research identifies relevant terms). You are thinking long-term, building a high-content, high-value site for your customers. You will find that you can take this approach to almost any product.
Once you've assembled your final key word and phrase list, start trimming it down. Remove any word or phrase that doesn't EXACTLY describe what someone will find when they come to your Web site. Don't spend time and money attracting visitors to your site who are just going to leave when they get there. Always think about satisfying the intent of the query; nothing else matters.
Once you have your final list, WordTracker will sort it for you by popularity and by a formula called "KEI" or keyword efficiency index, which is a ratio of the popularity of a phrase to how many sites are competing for it. This isn't a hard and fast rule, but it can often be useful in identifying those phrases for which will be relatively easy to attain a top ranking.
