Craft Your Keywords Carefully
Posted on | May 16, 2005 | No Comments
You could just guess at the keyword phrases your prospects are typing in a search engine to find your kind of business. Then you could spend a lot of time optimizing your site and planning expensive pay-per-click campaigns around those phrases. Only to find out – by the crushing absence of visitors and sales – that you’ve guessed wrong.
Or you could spend a few days doing some methodical keyword research and use some keyword tools before going to all that trouble and expense.
Phase I: Building the Raw List
First, brainstorm a list of phrases that seem logical. This is where deep knowledge of your customers is so useful. Then, use one or more of the keyword suggestion tools above to reveal related search terms you may not have thought of.
Phase II: Checking the Competition
Now that you have a shortlist of search terms, it’s time to see what the competition is up to. Go to Google or whatever search engine you prefer and run a search on each of your keyword phrases to see which sites come up in the search results. Then spend some time visiting the top sites to find out what other keywords they are using that might be prime candidates for your site. Make a list and run them through Wordtracker to get their KEI scores – this will tell you if you should be using those search terms or variations on them.
Phase III: Finessing the List
Now it’s time to narrow down your list to the final cut. A word to the wise: competing for the most popular search terms (one- or two-word terms like “toys” or “sports cars”) isn’t impossible but it’s usually expensive and time consuming. For modest budgets, it’s better to select terms that have less competition and a decent volume of searches. Also: pick terms that are relevant to the pages you’ll be using them on and that will attract the kind of targeted traffic you want.
Phase IV: Putting the Words to Work
First, apply your newly chosen keyword terms to your existing web pages. Then, if you have powerful search terms left over, consider creating new pages to highlight them. For example, if you sell K to 12 educational materials and discover that the phrase “learning problems” is highly searched on, consider creating an informational page on this subject.
Finally, don’t forget to put your keyword phrases in title tags, description tags, alt tags, text links, headings, and subheadings. Plus add them to any incoming links in articles, newsletters, press releases or blog entries you post to the web. Search engine crawlers take note of all these repetitions and conclude that your site must be a true source of information for that term.
Cautionary Notes
Misspellings:
Search terms or search phrases that contain deliberate misspellings are a common and legitimate tactic. But it has to be handled carefully or your site risks being seen as sloppy and unprofessional. If you decide to do it, minimize the risk by only using one spelling/misspelling of a word on any given page.
Tricks:
Some entrepreneurs use highly competitive terms that DON’T represent their product or service, but that represent their competition. (For example, a company that sells natural body building supplements but employs search terms like “steroids” to fool people into visiting their site.) Nobody likes being tricked and that game can easily backfire on you.
By using relevant search terms that accurately reflect your page content, you are saying to your visitors, “You’re in the right place, you can get your questions answered here.”
Click here to read more about Keyword Selection and to view a list of the main Keyword Tools that are on the market.
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