Selecting effective keywords

Keywords are the words and phrases that people will search for when trying to find your type of product or service in a search engine. Selecting effective keywords should be the first step for anyone planning to build a high ranking Web site. After all, it makes no sense obtaining a good search engine placement for keywords that rarely will be used by anyone.

But how are you supposed to know what keywords to optimize for? How can you figure out which keywords are the most popular among those looking to buy your product or read your site? What exactly are all those people typing into the search box?

Understanding keywords

Before you start to brainstorm your list of keywords and keyword phrases, it is important to understand in general how people uses keywords. Here is one place where you can "spy" on people as they enter keywords into a real search engine: Meta Spy

Do you notice any patterns? One important ting to notice is that most people don't just enter single keywords into the search box. They are using keyword phrases. Instead of just searching for single keywords like "books", most people will search for keyword phrases like "search engine books", search engine optimization books" or "books about search engine placement".
This is important to understand when you select keywords for your own site. Keyword combinations can be much more effective compared to single keywords.

Finding effective keywords

Wordtracker automatically generates the best possible keyword list for you -- without you ever having to lift so much as a finger. OK, OK, you have to lift a finger... Wordtracker does more than just brainstorming. It will tell you which keywords are the most profitable -- which is where you should focus your efforts! Profitable keywords are terms that are popular (or are in fairly high demand) but return few listings at the search engines (low supply). It is the keywords with the greatest combination of high demand and low supply that will generate the best profits.

But we will also have a look at how you can do the same job manually:

Brainstorming: Sit down with pen and paper for a couple of minutes and write down all the keywords you can come up with, related to the subject of your site or the product you are going to sell. Do not be critical at this stage. Write down all the words you can think of.

Asking other people: Ask your family, friends and colleges what kind of words they would use to describe your product or the subject of your site. They will usually be able to come up with keywords and phrases you have missed.

Log file analysis: Site stats and logs will tell you exactly what keywords already has been used to find your site. Combine those words into new keyword phrases.

Surfing the Internet: Have a look at the meta keywords and text used in other Websites about the same subject. However, don't be tempted to paste the code from other sites straight into your page. You do not know if the other Webmaster has done proper research before adding his keywords. Use this method for keyword research only.

Search suggestions: When you are typing popular keywords into the search engines, you will often get suggestions for keywords or key- phrases related to the original word. Not all search engines have this feature, but some do.

Going regional: Keep in mind that people from other parts of the country, or from other English speaking countries, might be using different keywords. How are people from UK and Australia saying things? Using such additional keywords might open a completely new market for your site. If your site deals with a particular region only, remember to include that in your keywords list. Many people refine their searches by inserting regional keywords like "UK search engine optimization" versus searching for the more general phrase "search engine optimization."

Catching misspellings: Some keywords are frequently misspelled. If you can find a popular misspelling, you have a very easily ranked keyword that will bring a lot of traffic.

Using a thesaurus: This is an excellent tool for coming up with more keywords similar to those you have already found by your own. Try the Merriam-Webster's thesaurus.

Making keyword phrases

Combining single keywords into keyword phrases will make it easier to rank well, and you will be targeting your visitors more effectively. Very general and highly competitive single keywords will most likely not make it into a top #10 search engine placement.

If you have a list of single keyword, try linking some of the keywords together into phrases. The more specific your keyword phrases are, the better the chances that people who search for them will actually benefit from your site's content.

Keywords not to use

Do not worry about optimizing for ALL CAPS versions of your keywords. Most people are using lowercase only when searching, and most search engines will treat uppercase and lowercase keywords the same.

Superlatives are another group of keywords usually not suitable for our purpose. Millions of competing pages are all claiming that their sites are "best," "amazing," "fantastic," "awesome," etc. However, nobody actually searches for such keywords.

And there is one more thing... "stop words". "These are common words that are usually ignored by search engines (like: a, an, and, for, the, of, that, it, to, if, you, etc). If your keyword phrase contains "stop words", it will be ignored.
How can you tell if a word is a stop word? Go to a search engine and search for this particular keyword. If the search engine tells you "no document matches your query," (or something similar) you will know this is a stop word for that particular engine.

Using a keyword spreadsheet

If you have carefully followed all the steps outlined above you have managed to find a huge list of keywords for your site. But chances are you still have too many keywords. It's time for the final keyword optimization step.

When selecting keywords the trick is finding the balance between keyword demand and keyword supply. A spreadsheet is an excellent tool for this:
Your keywords Demand Supply

(These numbers are not accurate - For illustration purposes only)
flowers 1.000.000 100.000.000
cheap flowers 500.000 5.000
flower 500 1000

Enter all your selected keywords into the first column, one by one. In the next column, enter how many times that particular keyword has been searched for. Then you can easily see what keywords are in highest demand (most popular). In the last column you must write down how many other Websites you will have to compete with for this keyword.

To figure out the supply of Web sites for a particular keyword, go to a search engine like Google and perform a search for your keyword in quotes: "my keyword". The results will show exactly how many other sites are containing this keyword. This is the number of sites you will have to compete with for a top position.

Now have a good look at your spreadsheet and try to spot any keywords in high demand (lots of people are searching for those keywords), but in low supply (few sites are containing the keywords). These are the keywords that most likely will give you the best chance of success.