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By now you have likely heard that keywords and keyword phrases, are extremely important in having search engines display your website. So how do you choose them? Guess? Ask a friend? Check successful competitors sites? There is a better way!

First let’s digress. There are a lot of things that affect your ranking in search engines and ultimately how many sales you make from you website. The quality of the (and amount of) content on your site, how many links point to your site, what keywords are used, how they are used, even the age of your site can play a factor. Large companies spend thousands on getting their companies to the top of the rankings and keeping them there. If you’re a small company trying to compete with these large budgets, you are likely to come up short.

So, how can a small business with a far more moderate budget compete? Niche Marketing! People searching for information on products don’t always use the keywords you would expect them to use. And just because a competitor has a large enough budget to reach the top with a certain keyword or keyword phrase doesn’t mean you will be able to. Niche phrases are sets of keywords that people are using to search in the search engines. If you are able to rate high on these niche phrases you will see an increase of traffic. To find out what words people are using you need to use one of the word tracking sites. These sites find out from the search engines exactly what phrases your potential customers are using.

For example using Google, “used cars” turned up 36,900,000 results; if you don’t show up in the first 10-30 results it is very unlikely you will ever have someone click on your site. In this case every major car dealer and thousands of smaller dealers are competing for those same 10-30 spaces. You have a huge amount of competition. Likely though your potential customers also see this huge number and if he or she can’t find what they are looking for they will try to limit the search. If they are looking for a local dealer they may try adding a city. My office is near Redding California. By entering “used cars Redding”, I still receive 205, 000 results. That’s a lot closer and maybe I could optimize my pages to reach near the top, BUT will my efforts really produce the results I want?

So far I have only guessed that my potential customers are really using this search phrase. If I check my competitor’s site I will only be able to see their guesses. That is where word tracking comes to play. There are a number of sites that offer word-tracking services. Some are free, others charge for their service.

The advantage I’ve found of using a paid word-tracking site over the free sites is that at the free sites, you are told how many times a word has been searched for but there is little or no other information provided. These extra features are what help you to make the best decision on your keywords. These features include keyword suggestions based on your starting keyword, and most importantly the ratio of how many people use that phrase verses how many competitors are using the phrase. It takes a little time to learn how to make the best use of word tracking software, but it is well worth the effort. If you are having someone else optimize your site, insist that they find out what phrases are being used.

Using word tracking you will be able to tell how much competition you have for each phrase and how often the phrase gets used, so that you can optimize a website page for phrases that will get clicks to your site. To illustrate the point, would you rather have 0% of the clicks resulting from 1000 searches or 20% of the clicks resulting from 100 searches? If you choose keyword phrases that will put you at the top of the search engines lists you are far more likely to see results you want.

That’s the benefit of choosing your keywords wisely!

Dwayne Goerges is the owner of ADAC Programming of Shasta Lake California Specializing in data driven websites for inventory display and client management. =Auto Mall Website

Keyword Research will reveal answers to 3 critical questions:

1. Is there a demand for what your site offers? If not, you need to keep moving down your list until you find something that people are already looking for.

2. How are people searching for your topic? For example, if your theme is “Japanese food” how are people searching for information? Are they typing in “Japanese recipes”, “low sodium miso soup”, “history of Japanese food”, “Japanese food in NYC”, etc. This part of the search will allow you to build up good topics for your site pages and provide keywords that you will use to optimize your pages to become a search engine magnet.

3. How many sites will you be competing with ? does demand outstrip supply or vice-versa? Right now your job is to build huge lists of high-demand, low-competition keywords. Be thorough and exhaustive in looking for phrases that people might use to find your site.

You cannot cut corners at this stage of the process or your business will suffer. This can be slow, tedious work but fortunately there are some good tools to help you automate your keyword research and help find the most profitable keywords to build your content around. There are some good free tools to help you make light work of this including Search It from Site Build It! and Overture. More comprehensive tools that provide demand, supply and profitability data that help you find profitable niches include Brainstorm It from Site Build It! and Wordtracker.

Keyword Optimization

You may have heard the terms “search engine optimization (SEO)”, “keyword optimization”, “page optimization”, etc. Basically, they all refer to the same thing ? making sure your pages have the right amount of keywords, placed correctly, to effectively get your site “spidered” or found by the search engines, such as Google.

Repeating keywords throughout a site is just as important as choosing the right keywords. If you use the keywords too often the search engines will ignore them; if you don’t use them enough the search engines will not find and index them properly.

The main keyword, in our example “Japanese food”, should be used as part of the domain name and in the title tag of the HTML code for the page. It should also be used in the heading of the page where you tell visitors what the page is about. Also, most SEO experts agree that it is best to put your keyword in the first and last sentences of your page.

As for the body copy, there are some good rules-of-thumb that help you achieve the correct “keyword density” or keyword repetition. Many experts say you should use the 4% – 7% rule (approx. 25 words in a 500 word document). However, don’t use a single keyword over and over or your copy will seem forced. Instead, weave in some variations of the keyword (e.g. plural forms, synonyms) to ensure your content flows well and makes sense! Simply filling up a site with your keywords will not fool the search engines; rather, it may be considered spamming and your site can get banned!

Many people say that content is king, but in fact, it’s content that is keyword rich that is king. It is absolutely critical to find your best keywords and use them in the right way to attract targeted traffic. It takes some time and practice but if you persevere your web site will be built on a strong foundation.

Written by Gail Kaufman.

For more information and practical tips on how to build a popular and profitable web site inexpensively, please visit: http://www.websitedesigngenius.com

I get half of the world traffic for the term “dirtbagging,” on one page of my backpacking site, but that only means ten visitors a month. Without decent keyword demand you can’t ever get much traffic. Total demand is just one factor to consider, though. Here are some others.

1. Demand/supply ratio. There were 289,000 searches for “fishing” last month, but could you compete against the 35,000,000 results on a Google search? “Bass fishing tips,” with 3,700 searches, and 31,000 results is a more likely winner.

2. Total supply. For “dirtbagging,” Google shows 240 results, and there may be 20 searches monthly for the term. It was easy to get on the first page of results. On the other hand, a keyword with a demand of a million, and a million search results has a better ratio, but can you really get in the first few pages of results? Whatever the ratio, you have to be able to compete against the supply. If you are on the tenth page of results, virtually nobody will find you.

3. Type of keyword. Getting good search engine placement is one thing, but what type of visitor are you getting? Who is more likely to buy something from you or click on your affiliate links, a searcher for “fishing stories,” or “fishing poles.” If I was selling gear, I think I’d be happier with half as much traffic for the second term as the first.

4. “Odd” keywords. I optimized my site www.IncreaseBrainpower.com for “brain power,” and later found there was even more traffic for “brainpower.” Both, by the way, are in the dictionary. Look for odd search phrases, but be careful optimizing for misspellings and bad-grammar keywords, if it might hurt the reputation of your site.

5. Value of keyword ads. If you rely partly on Google Adsense for revenue, you may want to consider the ads that will be diplayed for a given keyword. Poetry pages will get you about $0.04 per click, while surveilance cameras can get you $2.00 per click.

A final consideration when doing keyword research is to consider your interest in the topic represented by the keyword. Do you want to write a page on that, and can you deliver what a searcher of that term is looking for?

Steve Gillman writes on many money-related topics. To learn more, and to subscribe for FREE to “Web Site Optimization Secrets,” go to: http://www.TheMoneyMakerSite.com

Keyword research is certainly the most important phase in Search Engine Optimization process. Whether you hire a SEO company to do the job or you are doing the SEO process in-house, take your time during this process. You should not be a spectator, but you should be an active part of the decision making process.

Try to think as a customer

Before to start the keywords analysis & research process, be sure that you know how you should perform this process. Try to think about your keywords as a customer. How would you search for your product or service? Which keyword or key phrase would you use? Think about which words or phrases describe best your product or service.

Generic keywords vs. highly targeted key phrases

Surprisingly many companies still believe that increased traffic will necessary lead to increased sales. Unfortunately this is very far from the truth. If traffic is not well targeted, visitors will not found what they are looking for, and they won’t order anything.

Many companies still make the mistake to attempt to get ranked for generic keywords. This is often costly mistake. You will simply loose your time, money and resources to get ranked for generic keyword. Chances are that if you are in competitive industry you won’t succeed to achieve top ranking. In many cases, even if you succeed to get high ranking for generic keyword you won’t benefit much from that. Let’s elaborate this with an example.

Key phrase “shoes manufacturers” will return worldwide results, and your competition will be very strong. Even if you manage to rank high, “conversion to sales rate” will be fairly low. Some of the people would actually search for “shoes manufacturers” which are located in Asia. They might enter on your site, and they will leave without to order anything. You will get more traffic, and you want increase your sales or establish new business contacts. None of your goals will be achieved.

That is because your product or service is not exactly what the people are searching for. Key phrases like “UK shoes manufacturers” or “EU shoes manufacturers” will have better conversion and you will get high ranking faster. Why? It’s easier to get ranked for these key phrases because of smaller number of competitors. From the other side, because of better targeting your conversion rate would be higher, because your traffic is better targeted.

Best approach to do find right keywords and key phrases is to get your generic keyword, and add a specific word to it. Using this approach you will be able to find yours most important key phrases, and target your traffic much better. Key phrases are usually two to five words long.

Think global

In different countries people use different terminology for same product or service. Be sure that you check your terminology for your main keywords. Different terminology for your keyword might be used in Canada, or in Australia. Follow your site statistic, and if some country is missing, something might be wrong with your terminology.

How many keywords do you need

Number of the key phrases for which you will optimize your pages will depend from your budget of course. But be sure to create long list to select from. Initial keyword research should end with at least 70 -100 keywords or key phrases.

Your first thought here might be how you will find so many keywords. Creativity and well knowing your industry will do half of the work. The tools will do the other half. Wordtracker has free trial which will tell you how many times the key phrase was searched for last month. Full version (you can pay for one day only if you want to use this tool once) is much more powerful tool of course. Overture has also free tool for keyword research which will give you useful suggestions. These tools will give you suggestions which you might not come to your mind, and tell you how many competitors you have for every keyword.

Next phase should be customizing some of these suggestions and make the re-check after that. After establishing the main list, start the elimination. Have in mind that your chances are bigger if you select bigger number of keywords. It is always best strategy to optimize each page for one primary and one secondary keyword. Optimize your main page for your most important key phrase.

Final selection will depend from your budget. You can always optimize more pages later, so keep the initial keyword list. Best option is to start to optimize your pages for less competitive key phrases first. When you achieve high ranking for these key phrases, then go after more competitive key phrases.

About The Author

Zoran Makrevski

Search Engine Positioning Firm

SEO.Goto.gr

Have you ever got one of those silly emails that offers to let you own a keyword? Silly question. How many such emails do you get every day?

A number of such services regularly email me offering keyword ownership of premium keywords for $300/year. They say that anyone can type the keyword I bought in the address bar of Internet explorer, instead of typing in a URL, and they will be sent directly to my site. In total it seems that there are about 2% of Internet users worldwide who have enabled one type or another of this system, spread out between a few competitive services.

Data shows that between 4% and 7% of search queries are performed by entering something in the address bar. By default for IE users, these searches are automatically routed through to MSN search. Many of us however have installed so much software over time, and unknowingly, some of this software has re-routed these search queries to other search portals, such as iGetNet, or others. This often happens if you’ve installed any file sharing software. We have all heard / read about how many extra ‘features’ come with programs like Kazaa. This means that your default search from the address bar may no longer be MSN, and may have been rerouted elsewhere, but the basic principle still applies. Of the queries that are actually run from an address bar, at least half of them are unintentionally instigated by people mistyping the desired URL. This means that between 2% and 4% of Internet users actually search via their address bar.

So how exactly do these address bars work? There are many of these companies offering this kind of service, with each one of them selling the very same keywords to different and sometimes competing companies. To make things worse, the keywords you might buy will only work with the issuing companys proprietary address bar plug-in. Then, to actually offer search capabilities from the address bar, each of these service providers needs to get individual Internet users to download and install their plug-in, and remember to run searches from the address bar.

How effective can a marketing strategy of this nature be when the various tools are not interchangeable, there are numerous competitors selling the same key words to different companies, and you are targeting only a small fraction of Internet users? If your ad is being displayed because its similar to the search query, are you paying for irrelevant results? This can happen; If there is not a perfect match to a search query, the next closest match may be displayed.

Competing with these companies is any search engine that offers its own toolbar. You can download a toolbar from any number of engines, and run searches on any key word or phrase quickly and easily. You then get the search engines selection of closest matches, from all the web sites they have indexed. They offer more than just one choice, and dont cost anything

Who Started This?

Started in 1998, Realnames was the first company that tied searching via the address bar to a web browser. At the time, it was touted as a value added solution for businesses around the world who were attempting to get their products found quickly, but didn’t want customers to have to wade through a sea of Web addresses to reach their destination.

In part, it was deemed necessary because so few web site operators were search engine savvy, and fewer still knew anything about search engine optimization and promotion. What the Realnames solution did was allow a web site operator to buy a keyword, and then when any user of Internet Explorer would type that keyword into the IE address toolbar, they would get directed to the web site that owned the keyword.

The company hoped to profit from businesses which wanted to reach Internet users who would type keywords into their browsers address bar instead of remembering the url, or going through a standard search interface.

Unfortunately for the company, the service was entirely dependent on Microsoft; and when Microsoft stopped supporting the technology in May 2002, the company was forced to close. The reason it was so totally dependent was simple; Unlike the new companies on the market today, Realnames did not depend on an end user downloading and installing a plugin, instead it was essentially integrated into Internet Explorer by Microsoft. Therefore everyone who used IE automatically had the plugin.

The Legal Question

Each of the companies offering these services has a policy designed to ensure that a web site only buys keywords related to their content, and their review process is designed to keep cybersquatters from hijacking popular names and products. Unfortunately, there is no way to guarantee that any one of these keyword ownership services adheres to any naming standard, or even ensures that any purchaser has the legal right to any of the terms they are buying. This means that the rights to copyrighted material like “Pepsi” or generic words like “business” could end up in the hands of the first buyer. While Pepsi is a well known brand name, there are millions of copyrighted and trademark protected terms, covered in multiple jurisdictions. It would not be cost effective or practical for these services to police copyright and trademark infringement.

In the summer of 1999, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, denied Playboy’s request for an injunction barring a search engine from selling advertising based on the terms playboy and playmate. In the precedent setting ruling regarding keyword advertising, Judge Stotler of the United States District Court in Santa, Ana, California, dismissed a lawsuit brought by Playboy Enterprises against the search engine Excite, Inc. and Netscape. The ruling limited the online rights of trademark holders, as it recognized that a trademark may be used without authorization by search engines in advertising sales practices.

Playboy claimed that the search engines were displaying paid banner ads from pornographic web sites whenever “playboy” or “playmate” were used as a search term. As the owner of the trademarks for both terms, Playboy argued that the use of its trademarks for a third party sales scheme was trademark infringement and branding dilution.

In the ruling dismissing Playboy’s case, the Judge found that Excite had not used the trademarks “playboy” and “playmate” in an unlawful manner. This was because Excite had not used the trademarked words to identify Excites own goods or services and therefore trademark infringement laws did not apply. It was further determined that even if there was trademark usage, there was no infringement because there was no evidence that consumers confused Playboy products with the services of Excite or Netscape.

What about within Meta Tags?

Is it illegal to use trademarked terms in your meta tags? Sometimes. The problem occurs with how and why you are using the terms. Web sites that use the tags in a deceptive manner have lost legal battles. However, legitimate reasons to use the terms have resulted in successful defenses.

In a case involving Playboy, the firm was able to prove trademark infringement, based on use of their trademark in meta tags, url and content on the web site. The case was filed by the firm against web site operators for stuffing their web pages with the words Playboyand Playmatehundreds of times. Furthermore, the defendants were also using the terms Playboy and Playmate in the site names, URLs, and slogans. In this case the Judge ruled for Playboy, as there was a clear case of trademark infringement.

In the separate case, Playboy vs. Terri Welles, the court refused Playboy’s request. The reason was simple. Terri Welles was Playboy’s 1981 Playmate of the Year. She had used the terms “Playmate” and “Playboy” on her web pages and within her meta tags, and the Court felt she had a legitimate right to use them to accurately describe herself, and to ensure that the search engines could catalog her web site properly within their databases. Playboy’s appeal was dismissed on Feb. 1, 2002.

In Summary

It is clear that if you have a legitimate reason to use a trademarked word or phrase in your web site you can. You may also rent their ownership from one of the keyword ownership companies. Be careful, though, it is possible that may get sued.

Does the technology work? Yes, but only for some of the approximately 3% of Internet users worldwide who have installed any one of a variety of competing plugins that enable this type of searching. I stress a fraction of the 3%, as you would need to buy the keywords from each individual vendor to ensure reaching all 2%.

About The Author

Richard Zwicky is a founder and the CEO of Metamend Software, www.metamend.com, a Victoria B.C. based firm whose cutting edge Search Engine Optimization software is recognized as the world leader in its field. Employing a staff of 10, the firm’s business comes from around the world, with clients from every continent. Most recently the company was recognized for their geo-locational, or GIS, along with their phraseology technology and context sensitive search technologies.

articles@metamend.com

Keyword Research is the first task in optimizing your web site and pay-per-click campaign. Here you need to know what keywords your target group is using.

Your keywords are the words and phrases that people might use to find your products, brands, services, or information, via search engines.

Step 1: Keyword Identification

The first step in your keyword research is to identify keywords. Keyword identification is about finding the keywords that your target group is using. You can probably develop a few ideas very quickly. If you run a pet shop, you may identify keywords such as: “dog food” and “cat food”.

Step 2: Find Keywords

The second step in your keyword research is to find keywords what people actually use and to organize your keywords by their popularity.

To find keywords and their popularities use the keyword search box from Aleksika to learn the search behaviour of your audience. Find out what they call things, how they identify subjects, how precisely or broadly they generally search.

You can also get good keyword ideas from the top keywords collection that contains the top 100.000 keywords of the year or the keyword directory where you can find keywords organized by subject.

Step 3: Choose Keywords

Copy the relevant counts and phrases into a spreadsheet. After you’ve examined all the individual phrases that could apply to your site, your spreadsheet will contain every phrase of importance.

Next, sort the phrases by the “count” column. The resulting display shows the relative importance of each phrase.

You will have to choose keyword phrases that are most relevant to your Web site – two and three-words keyword phrases that best describe your products and services. Many searchers enter one-word queries into the search form but the chance of competing successfully for one-word search engine keywords is fairly remote. The number of competing websites is simple too high.

Instead of wasting your efforts then you choose keywords with one-word, it is suggested that you concentrate on those keywords, which are easily manageable.

You can read more about Keyword Research on Aleksika’s web site.

About The Author

Kim Thaysen, Manager for Aleksika. Experts in Search Engine Marketing. Aleksika is all about helping you do smarter business by increasing marketing Return on Investment.

To arrive at the set of keywords that:

Describe business correctly (are relevant) Attract traffic (are popular & are searched for) Have less competition (are relatively un-optimized for )

Steps

Step I: Lets start by saying that the for the keyword finalization of a web site the first step is to device the theme of the web site. The keywords then should be generated which are in sync with the themeing structure of the site. The home pages & the other higher level pages should target more general(main theme)keywords. The deeper pages (embedded in subdirectories or sub domains) should target more specific & qualified keywords.

Once the sites themes & sub-themes are done, lets start by looking for the keywords

StepII:

The finalization of the keywords for any given site can be done in the following way:

Generation of the seed keywords for the site (theme keywords).

Expansion of the seed keywords into key-phrases by adding qualifiers (sub theme keywords)

Generating a larger set of keywords by word play on the key-phrases generated in step II.(sub theme targeting)

Lets take them one by one:

SEED Keywords/Primary keywords:

The seed keywords can be generated by either of the ways mentioned below:

The client provides the terms he feels are relevant to his business.

The SEO firm generates the seed words by understanding the business domain & the business model of the client.

Some outside domain consultant provides them.

Another way of generating seed keywords is to look for the meta tags of the competition web sites.

WARNING: do not place any unnecessary emphasis on these tags. Use them just to generate you seed keywords list.

If one has certain set of keywords then tools like WT & Overture can also be used to arrive at the other relevant seed keywords.

Typically seed keywords are single word. A good number of seed Keywords is between 10-12.

SUB theme Keywords (add Qualifiers)

Now to these seed keywords add qualifiers.

These qualifiers can be anything location/sub-product/color/part no/activity/singular etc.

By utilizing these qualifiers one can expand the list of the seed keywords. Say a good number would be anywhere between 20-30.

Typicaly a sub theme key phrase could be of 2-3 -4 word length.

One recent study suggests that

The typical searcher often uses longer queries. Many contain more than three words. Within three different search engines, keyword distribution data tells a compelling story:

Words in Query LookSmart (%) Ask.com (%) Teoma (%) 1 27.00 12.76 38.04 2 33.00 22.46 29.59 3 23.00 19.34 18.13 4 10.00 11.89 8.00 5 7.00* 7.86 3.51 6 – 6.19 1.39 7 – 5.47 0.63

LookSmart does not report beyond 5 search terms, instead grouping five or more terms into one category.

Approximately 40 percent of queries in LookSmart have three or more words. About 32 percent in Teoma have three or more. Ask Jeeves has an even higher skew, nearly 62 percent, because of its natural language focus. Within FAST, the database that powers Lycos and others, the average is 2.5 terms. That suggests a similar frequency distribution to LookSmart and Teoma.

Hence we can keep the average length of sub theme keywords at around 3.

Rakesh Ojha is a successful Internet marketer utilizing both pay-per-click marketing and search engine optimization to increase website traffic. To learn more, visit http://sem.mosaic-service.com