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Search Engine Keywords Selection
(C) Michael Rasmussen
All Rights Reserved
http://www.search-engines-revealed.com
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
specific and effective signs that will direct them right to your
site. You do this by creating carefully chosen keywords.
Think of the right keywords as the Open Sesame! of the Internet.
Find the exactly right words or phrases, and presto! hoards of
traffic will be pulling up to your front door. But if your
keywords are too general or too over-used, 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 you 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.
Michael Rasmussen is a successful Internet Marketing Consultant
and author of many top-selling eBooks. Michael has been marketing
online since the early days and he knows what it takes to make
money and succeed online. Stop by his Web site and subscribe to
his Free monthly newsletter full strategies and techniques for
successful web site promotions that can help YOU!
Go to http://www.search-engines-revealed.com
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Everyone
knows the best source of traffic to your websites is from
the search engines; this is because:
- 80% of visitors to websites still start from a
search engine query
- There are 250 million searches each day !
- The visitors to your site are 100% targeted because
they are searching specifically for your products
- Best of all, these visitors are 100% FREE
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