How To Find The Right Keywords To Optimize Search Engine Results

[Nelson Tan]

Search engines are the vehicles that drive potential customers to your
websites. But in order for visitors to reach their destination—your
website—you need to provide them with effective signs that direct them
right to your site by creating carefully chosen keywords.

Think of the right keywords as the "Open Sesame!" of the Internet.
Find the exactly right words, and presto! Hoards of traffic will be
pulling up to your front door. But if your keywords are too general or
overused, the possibility of visitors actually making it all the way
to your site—or of seeing any real profits from the visitors that do
arrive—decreases dramatically.

Your keywords serve as the foundation of your marketing strategy. If
they are not chosen with great precision, no matter how aggressive
your marketing campaign may be, the right people may never get the
chance to find out about it. So your first step in plotting your
strategy is to gather and evaluate keywords and phrases.

You probably think you already know EXACTLY the right words for your
search phrases. Unfortunately, if you haven't followed certain
specific steps, you are probably WRONG. It's hard to be objective when
you are right in the center of your business network, which is the
reason that you may not be able to choose the most efficient keywords
from the inside. You need to be able to think like your customers. And
since you are a business owner and not the consumer, your best bet is
to go directly to the source.

Instead of plunging in and scribbling down a list of potential search
words and phrases yourself, ask for words from as many potential
customers as you can. You will most likely find out that your
understanding of your business and your customers' understanding is
significantly different.

The consumer is an invaluable resource. You will find the words you
accumulate from them are words and phrases you probably never would
have considered from deep inside the trenches of your business.

Only after you have gathered as many words and phrases from outside
resources should you add your own keyword to the list. Once you have
this list in hand, you are ready for the next step: evaluation.

The aim of evaluation is to narrow down your list to a small number of
words and phrases that will direct the highest number of quality
visitors to your website. By "quality visitors" I mean those consumers
who are most likely to make a purchase rather than just cruise around
your site and take off for greener pastures. In evaluating the
effectiveness of keywords, bear in mind three elements: popularity,
specificity, and motivation.

Popularity is the easiest to evaluate because it is an objective
quality. The more popular your keyword is, the more likely the chances
are that it will be typed into a search engine which will then bring
up your URL.

You can now purchase software that will rate the popularity of
keywords and phrases by giving words a number rating based on real
search engine activity. Software such as WordTracker will even suggest
variations of your words and phrases. The higher the number this
software assigns to a given keyword, the more traffic you can
logically expect to be directed to your site. The only fallacy with
this concept is the more popular the keyword is, the greater the
search engine position you will need to obtain. If you are down at the
bottom of the search results, the consumer will probably never scroll
down to find you.

Popularity isn't enough to declare a keyword a good choice. You must
move on to the next criteria, which is specificity. The more specific
your keyword is, the greater the likelihood that the consumer who is
ready to purchase your goods or services will find you.

Let's look at a hypothetical example. Imagine that you have obtained
popularity rankings for the keyword "automobile companies." However,
you company specializes in bodywork only. The keyword "automobile body
shops" would rank lower on the popularity scale than "automobile
companies," but it would nevertheless serve you much better. Instead
of getting a slew of people interested in everything from buying a car
to changing their oil filters, you will get only those consumers with
trashed front ends or crumpled fenders being directed to your site. In
other words, consumers ready to buy your services are the ones who
will immediately find you. Not only that, but the greater the
specificity of your keyword is, the less competition you will face.

The third factor is consumer motivation. Once again, this requires
putting yourself inside the mind of the customer rather than the
seller to figure out what motivation prompts a person looking for a
service or product to type in a particular word or phrase.

Let's look at another example, such as a consumer who is searching for
a job as an IT manager in a new city. If you have to choose between
"Seattle job listings" and "Seattle IT recruiters" which do you think
will benefit the consumer more? If you were looking for this type of
specific job, which keyword would you type in? The second one, of
course! Using the second keyword targets people who have decided on
their career, have the necessary experience, and are ready to enlist
you as their recruiter, rather than someone just out of school who is
casually trying to figure out what to do with his or her life in
between beer parties.

You want to find people who are ready to act or make a purchase, and
this requires subtle tinkering of your keywords until your find the
most specific and directly targeted phrases to bring the most
motivated traffic to your site.

Once you have chosen your keywords, your work is not done. You must
continually evaluate performance across a variety of search engines,
bearing in mind that times and trends change, as does popular lingo.
You cannot rely on your log traffic analysis alone because it will not
tell you how many of your visitors actually made a purchase.

Luckily, some new tools have been invented to help you judge the
effectiveness of your keywords in individual search engines. There is
now software available that analyzes consumer behavior in relation to
consumer traffic. This allows you to discern which keywords are
bringing you the most valuable customers.

This is an essential concept: numbers alone do not make a good
keyword; profits per visitor do. You need to find keywords that direct
consumers to your site who actually buy your product, fill out your
forms, or download your product. This is the most important factor in
evaluating the efficacy of a keyword or phrase, and should be the
sword you wield when discarding and replacing ineffective or
inefficient keywords with keywords that bring in better profits.

Ongoing analysis of tested keywords is the formula for search engine
success. This may sound like a lot of work—and it is! But the amount
of informed effort you put into your keyword campaign is what will
ultimately generate your business' rewards.


Nelson Tan is the webmaster behind Internet Mastery Center. Download
$347 worth of FREE Internet Marketing gifts at http://www.internetmasterycenter.com