SolveYourProblem
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Series
SEO Tools: Choose the Right Keywords
Many SEO experts will tell you that they
have specific ways of choosing the right keywords for a website.
Some do it using SEO tools – software that compares possible
keywords to see which are used the most. Some will give you
Do-It-Yourself methods with spreadsheets. I say,
however, that you should try every method you can in the
search for
keywords. Here are some steps that might help:
Identify
and create a list of keywords from meta tags, research
on your competitors, your highest-converting products and
biggest current traffic sources. For each term (typically
between 30 and 50 terms overall), narrow the field down to
about 15 or 20, choosing the terms you feel are most relevant
to your website. Your higher ranked competitors are probably
up there for a reason so take a look at what they are providing.
Make sure that everything is directly relevant and try to
stretch yourself out into some unchartered water. The less
common that your key words are, the more likely you are to
get the search engine results for these key words.
I
would recommend a piece of software called WordTracker to find out how many searches have been done on a certain
term. You can choose to work with this information however
you want – spreadsheets are good, but you can use anything
that will make it easy reasonably easy for you to track these
keywords. You’re trying to find a popular word that has a
low competition rate. Although this is easier said than done,
it’s very rewarding to find an area where your site can succeed
because of the lack of competition. You should remember,
though, that these search databases are relatively small,
and should be used for comparing keywords against one another
rather than for estimating their true ‘market sizes’.
This keyword selection research should then be compared
with client experience of which keywords may be most profitably
optimized, as well as any current ranking on the target keywords.
Data from PPC campaigns can be helpful for this. The
outcome should be a focused list of, say, 15-20 keywords that are
both strong performers in terms of search volume, as well
as solid candidates for successful optimization.
When determining how profitable your key words are you should
look into your web sites statistics and see what key words
were used for what number of sales. This is called
your conversion rate. The more sales that are associated with a certain key
word, the more valuable that key word is. It is important
to account for all of the variables, however. If ten people
come across your site through a certain key word but only
one of them buys an item this key word isn’t as profitable
as a key word that one person finds your site through and
still orders a product. It is important to work percentages
into your decision of worth of a key word. Your “conversion
rate” is the number of sales divided by the number of visitors.
You probably know who your competitors are,
so go to their site and open the source code of
a few of their pages (select
‘View Source’ from your browser’s menu). Look for the <META
NAME="keywords"> tag to see which keywords they’re
aiming for. Their keywords are often garbage, but if you
look around at a few sites then you can often find keywords
you hadn’t thought of. It is not good practice to simply
copy and paste a list of key words. It would even be concievable
that you would be charged with copyright infringement for
such activities. Whether or not you get charged, it is morally
wrong. Looking through and coming across a few extra relevant
key words is one thing. Steeling an entire list is something
else completely.
Another
approach is to type in the keywords you have in mind
and look at the current top results. Analyze their pages
for keywords, descriptions and content – this will give you
some idea of what kind of keyword density you should be looking
at for your keywords. If the sites that come up are a different
kind of business to you altogether then you’ve probably chosen
a dodgy keyword – remember that you’re trying to get relevant
traffic, not just any traffic.
The general rules that you need to keep in mind when selecting
key words are:
