Determining Good Search Engine Keywords

What keywords are best for my site?

A keyword is not a single word. It should consist of a 3-4 word phrase. Thus, a keyword is really a carefully worded phrase.

Determining good keywords is a critical step for your website's success. If the text links to your website do not contain good keywords, the effectiveness of your inbound links diminishes greatly.

You will need to locate keyword phrases that are popular and relevant to your site, but not highly used among your competitors. The optimal keywords should be phrases that a potential customer would use when searching for a website like yours. Use keyword phrases that are descriptive, exactly related to your website content, and which receive a fair amount of searches. The caveat, of course, is that you want to find phrases where there is little competition, so you quickly achieve high ranking in the important search engines. Don't go for for the most popular terms, you have little chance of competing with those. Try going for the terms that exactly describe your content and get a fair number of searches. Remember: 100% of very qualified searches is better than 0% of the large searches.

Relevant + popular with searchers but not with competitors = success

Markets saturated with other sites competing for search terms make it difficult to find quality keywords. Sometimes it is better to optimize for a less popular term, one that is more targeted at your visitor, as it will likely have a higher conversion rate than a less specific popular term. The first step to determining keywords is brainstorming a list of logical terms and phrases that relate to your product or offerings. This should be done by a number of individuals; sometimes people have very different ideas for search terms and by identifying a variety of people and their search terms you may tap words that hadn't occurred to you. There are a number of free online tools below that will allow you to expand and research terms that have been brainstormed. The results typically vary with the tools but overall the tools will assist you in determining where to focus your keyword efforts. The goal is to not have to pay-per-click to rank well on search engines.

More Keywords Isn't Better

Decide on only 4-5 keywords. This way, these important keywords are not diluted with less important ones and you can concentrate your efforts where it counts. Find specific keywords with 3-4 words that you really want to rank well with. Include the words that make your business different from the competition.

Handy Keyword Selection Tips

1. Take time to research your keywords and select very specific phrases that describe your site.
   • Put yourself in your customer's shoes. If you wanted to find a service like yours, what would you type into a Google to find it?
   • Ask your friends what they would type into Google to find a service like yours - you might be surprised at what you did not think of.
   • Once you have a list of 10 or so potential keywords, use the Google Keyword Selection tool (below) to narrow down your list to 4 keywords.
   • Do not choose the most popularly-searched keywords, it is too difficult to rank well with them. Choose keywords that get a good number of searches, but are not the most popular. It's far better to attract "most of the few" than "none of the many".
2. Select no more than 4-5 keywords, each keyword having 3 to 4 well-chosen words. It's to difficult to give more than 4 keywords the attention they will need. Don't try to cover everything, just cover the customers you most want to attract - your "ideal" customer.
3. Use additional words in your keyword to fully describe your desired customer and your locale:
   • Use your Geographic location: If your services are limited to a specific geographic location, be sure to use the location in the keyword; like "denver colorado chiropractor", or "denver chiropractor".
   • Use customer demographics: Who do you service? What clients are you trying to attract? If your business caters to children, use something like "child dentist colorado" and "dentist colorado kids" - even if you also cater to adults, you know that if you attract children, the rest of the family will follow.
4. Avoid "marketing" words. Do not use "best", "super", "greatest", etc. Search engines don't care how great you are and people will probably not search for those words - anyone can claim to be the best.
5. Avoid using your business name in keywords. New customers don't know your business name and will not type it into a search engine.
6. Be accurate in your keywords, describe in 4 words or less exactly what your website is about.
7. Be patient! Select good keywords and stick with them. It will take months to gain a good ranking with your chosen keywords. If you change them, you will have to start all over. This is called "Natural Search Engine Optimization" or "Natural Search Engine Positioning" - you won't have to pay for a high position in the search engine search result list. Other companies pay thousands per week in Pay-per-click just to get a higher rank. If you are patient, you can get a good rank it without paying for it.

Good / Bad Keyword Examples

Any 1-word keyword is bad, and so are most 2-word keywords. Be sure all your keywords have at least 3 words in them to add specific information that sets your website apart from others.

Bad Keyword: chiropractor
Good keyword: denver colorado chiropractor

Bad keyword: dog groomer
Good keyword: south dallas dog groomer

Bad Keyword: jigsaw puzzles
Good keyword: photo jigsaw puzzles

Bad Keyword: job placement
Good keyword: job placement for women

Plurals, order of words, and capitalization in keywords

Lucky for us, search engines are pretty smart. They know that a search phrase can be worded one way and yet understand that an opposite order of words can match as well. For exampe, your keyword: denver colorado chiropractor will probably match a search that someone types in as Chiropractors in Denver Colorado. Also, there is no need to state your keywords with and without plurals, capitalization or as individual words, such as denver,colorado,chiropractor - in fact, you should not do this. Choose a good 3-4 word phrase without plurals and capitalization and don't worry about ordering the words every which-way.

Keyword Tools

Google Suggestion Tool

- The Google Suggestion is a new online tool. As you type into the search box, Google Suggest guesses what you're typing and offers suggestions in real time. For example, if you type "bass", Google Suggest might offer a list of refinements that include "bass fishing" or "bass guitar". Similarly, if you type in only part of a word, like "progr," Google Suggest might offer you refinements like "programming", "programming languages", "progesterone", or "progressive". You can choose one by scrolling up or down the list with the arrow keys or mouse. The tool provides a number that indicates the number of searches a specific word or phrase has had.
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Overture (Yahoo) Keyword Tool

- After entering a keyword or phrase, Overture provides a list of related phrases that have been searched on. The tool provides a count that indicates the number of times the phrase has been searched on.
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

WordTracker

- Wordtracker helps you choose the right internet marketing keywords that will help your search engine placement and ranking. Use Wordtracker for keyword research. Web marketing is all about search engine ranking, and that starts with the proper internet marketing keywords. Get a free keyword report and web site promotion information!
http://www.wordtracker.com

KeywordTumbler

- KeywordTumbler takes existing keyword phrases and generates multiple variations, reordering the words. This allows you to build a keyword list in seconds.
http://www.keywordtumbler.com

Keyword Suggestion Tools

- A handy little tool will show you the results of your query from both Wordtracker and Overture for determining which phrases are searched most often. Enter a search phrase below to see how often it's searched for, as well as get suggestions for alternate (but similar) keywords.
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/

Keyword Ranking Tool

- This utility can be used to check search engines for keyword ranking and track search engine ranking for your various keywords over time, which, as you probably know, is critical when doing search engine optimization.
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/keywords/

Topword Tool

- Topword Tool is a free online tool that analyzes a complete web page and counts keyword occurrences, as well as keyword phrases (number in brackets), equal to or above that set in the Minimum Occurrences setting. It supplies a list of keywords and keyword phrases which are most likely to achieve the highest rankings on a major search engine. The tool will also analyze your meta description/keyword and title tags and then, through color coding, inform you of words/phrases which should be included. The main use for this tool is checking your optimization and tweaking existing web sites to rank well.
http://www.abakus-internet-marketing.de/tools/topword.html

Keyword statistics give webmasters a way to tap into what is on the minds of Internet consumers. When you can match your marketing efforts to the various ways people locate their items of interest on the web, potential customers will be streamed to your site.