06 Oct 04

Careful research into keyword phrases is an essential step in proper SEO. All the site optimization in the world will do nothing for sales rates if the proper phrases are not targeted. Because single keywords are so general, and usually so competitive, it is important to research "keyword phrases" consisting of two to five words to optimize for on each page of a web site.

Keyword or Keyword Phrases?

Consider the keyword "cars." A quick search for this phrase at Google reveals nearly 20 million web sites competing for a ranking for this phrase. Since studies show that few consumers make it past the first few pages of search results, that means that all but about 30 of these web sites are unlikely to see any traffic from this phrase.

Apart from the fact that even the most skilled SEOs would be hard pressed to earn top rankings on this keyword, it's also not a very targeted phrase to optimize for. Will the searcher who types "cars" be looking for pictures of cars? Car sales? Car events? New Cars? Old Cars? The list could go on and on.

Web surfers tend to learn very quickly that in order to find what they are looking for, they need to target their search queries more carefully. So…get specific with your keywords.

Perhaps you sell muscle cars from the 70's. Your keyword phrases would go along the lines of " classic muscle cars," "classic muscle car for sale," and perhaps "classic muscle car dealer." A search for the last phrase reveals only about 25,000 results on Google. This makes it a lot more realistic for the average webmaster to work their way into the top positions.

As an added bonus, each of these phrases should bring highly targeted traffic to your site. Provided you actually offer this product, your visitors should be happy to surf through your site, and perhaps even become a paying customer.

Choosing Targeted Keywords

Another issue that often comes up when selecting keywords is the marketability of certain phrases. For example, the owner of a high-end used car dealership is likely to prefer that his web site copy be filled with phrases like "pre-owned Lexus," while actual keyword research shows that the phrase "used Lexus" is searched for ten or fifteen times more often.

It's important to keep in mind that not everyone thinks the way that marketing departments think. What sounds good in a sound byte is unlikely to match the generic phrase that the average individual will search for.

The question is how do you know what phrases people use when they search for information online? This is where "keyword research" tools come in. These tools allow a user to type in a keyword or keyword phrase and find out how often those phrases are searched for on various search engines and directories. The best of these tools will also offer up alternate, but similar phrases that the user may not have considered.

Some of the most popular keyword research tools include:

Overture Suggestion Tool

This free tool shows the number of searches for a particular phrase across all Overture partners over the previous month. It also provides slight variations of your original phrase and the number of searches for them. It's important to keep in mind that because the Overture provides paid advertisements through it's search engine, the actual "searched for" results include searches made by automated bid tracking software. This can skew the numbers and result in the most popular phrases showing slightly inflated results. However, this tool is an excellent free resource to get you started.

Word Tracker Paid Service

Although Word Tracker offers a free version of its service, most webmasters prefer to use the more feature rich paid service. Subscriptions start at about $6US for a day's use and run up to about $225US for a year of unlimited use.

Users with subscriptions enter a keyword phrase and are provided with an extensive list of similar phrases that can also be researched. The user can then find out how often each phrase is searched for on the most popular engines, how many competing sites actively optimize for that phrase, and a little handy number called the KEI that is created through a mathematical formula comparing the competing sites to the search inquiries. The higher the KEI, the better the chance your site has of scoring some serious traffic from that phrase.

Narrowing the Field

Now that you have all of this data sitting in front of you, it's time to decide which phrases you are going to optimize your site for. Depending on the popularity of your site's subject, you may have anywhere from a dozen to several thousand phrases to choose from.

How many phrases should you use?

This depends on how many pages are going to be on your site. A webmaster with a five page web site should not try to optimize their site for one hundred phrases. Likewise, a webmaster with a five thousand page web site shouldn't limit themselves to twenty.

A good rule of thumb is to optimize each page of your web site that will have a reasonable amount of content on it for one to three keywords or phrases. There's no need to go out of your way to optimize your "Contact me" page, but you shouldn't pass up an opportunity to optimize any page that contains a reasonable amount of content on it.

Which phrases should you use?

Usually, the phrases that can deliver the most traffic are also the most competitive and difficult phrases to optimize a web site for. Clearly the more people that are searching for a phrase, the more company there will be trying to capture that traffic.

If you are just getting started with search engine optimization, it's generally a good idea to start by optimizing your page for some of the less competitive phrases that can still delivery a reasonable amount of traffic. These phrases will be easier to achieve a high ranking for and thus will likely end up delivering more traffic than you would receive if you tried to optimize for a more popular phrase without achieving a high ranking.

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