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Choosing the Best Keywords Part 2
Brainstorm, Choose Only Relevant Keywords
Originally Published: September, 2004
Continued From:
<<< Target Niches, Think Like Your Target Audience
Brainstorm For Keywords In Your Category
There are many ways to brainstorm new keyword phrases. You can examine the content and the meta tags on your competition's Web site to see what phrases they consider important. While this is a good place to start looking for ideas, there's no guarantee they are targeting the best keywords. You must check these keywords against the corresponding popularity and competition factors. You could also consult with your thesaurus for synonyms and related phrases and correlate these to popularity and competition. Fortunately, WordTracker will do this for you within seconds. Simply type in the word "clothing" and it will return dozens of the most popular keywords, with the ability to drill down to hundreds more. In fact, the phrases you find here may trigger many new ideas to expand or grow your company's business into areas you had not previously considered.
Choose Only Relevant Keywords
Just because a keyword is popular with a low competition factor, doesn't mean you should target that keyword or phrase. You may be tempted to optimize for phrases that are only loosely related to your site's content -- but DON'T.
The phrases you target must be relevant to what you have to sell. It must also be applicable to what you have to offer on the specific Web page you are optimizing. How many times have you searched Google, landed on a page, and then backed out within 5 seconds of arriving? That page had a top ranking, but it did not have what you were looking for.
Perhaps the Web site did have what you wanted, but the product resided elsewhere on the site. Unfortunately, your visitor may never know this. If you target a keyword or phrase, then the page they land on must offer the products, services or content that they expect, or you'll be wasting your time and your visitor's time. At the very least, the page should offer direct links to the potential products and services they may expect to find there.
How do you know what people are looking for on your pages? Check your site's log files for a list of the keywords people searched on to find each page of your site. You may be surprised to learn that pages are ranking well on phrases that you had never considered. You can also see which keywords and phrases are driving the highest conversion and revenue, to ensure you maximize the return from your SEO effort. Once you identify these pages and search phrases, make sure you are giving the visitor exactly what they expect to find based on the phrases used to find the page.
Understand That Keywords Can Have Multiple Meanings
If you have a travel business, then your first thought might be to target the word travel. However, if someone is searching on just plain old "travel" are they:
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Helping their child with a paper on some aspect of "travel?"
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Looking for the "travel channel?"
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Looking to plan a vacation cruise?
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Preparing to take a business trip?
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Day dreaming about time travel?
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Looking for driving directions for their travel across the country?
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Looking for a travel club such as AAA?
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Looking for the perfect backpack or hiking supplies for a travel expedition?
If you own a travel agency that specializes in vacation cruises and optimized your site for the single keyword "travel," only a limited number of the people identified in the example above would be qualified prospects. This of course assumes that travel was not too competitive to begin with.
While a top ranking on travel would yield a great deal of visitors to your site, many of them would select the "Back" button in their browsers, turn around and effectively walk out of your store! That's not the outcome you're looking for. When you select more targeted keyword phrases such as "Alaskan Cruise," there is a much higher likelihood that you have focused in on exactly the right audience. It's the difference between attracting actual buyers versus tire kickers.
Doing a quick search in
Word Tracker
is a great way to get a feel for all the keyword variations that your audience may be searching on. You'll also discover which are the most popular, and least competitive. This is not only invaluable in regard to search engine marketing, but for your marketing efforts in general.
Editor's Note:
Word Tracker offers a
free trial
and a free
Keyword Research eBook
Continued From:
<<< Target Niches, Think Like Your Target Audience
This article is copyrighted and has been reprinted with permission from FirstPlace Software, the makers of WebPosition.
FirstPlace Software helped define the SEO industry with the introduction of the first product to track your rankings on the major search engines and to help you improve those rankings.
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