By Robin Nobles

If you're in search engine industry, or if you're a Web designer or Webmaster, it's an almost sure thing that you've heard of, and probably used, Wordtracker (http://www.wordtracker.com).

But, for those who may not know about Wordtracker, let's back up for a minute.

What exactly is Wordtracker, and why is it so important?

Most search engine optimizers would agree that one of most important things you can do for your Web site is to target right keywords. If you target wrong keywords, you may get scores of traffic but no conversions to sales, or no traffic whatsoever. Either is disastrous for an online business.

Before Wordtracker, it was up to search engine marketer, or client, to choose right keywords for site. We also had GoTo's Search Term Suggestion Tool, which was one of our only sources for keyword help at that time.

Then Wordtracker (http://www.wordtracker.com) entered picture. With Wordtracker, you can plug in some keywords, and Web-based service will give you ideas for additional keywords that might work for your business. Not only that, but service will also tell you how competitive those keywords are (how many other Web pages have been optimized with those keywords in mind) and how many people have actually searched for those keywords in past 24 hours at each of major engines.

Ideally, your goal is to choose a keyword phrase that doesn't have a huge amount of competition but that (hopefully) a large number of people are searching for. This is where KEI comes in. KEI, which stands for Keyword Effectiveness Index, refers to number of times a keyword has appeared in Wordtracker's data compared with number of competing Web pages, which points to which keywords would be most effective for your search engine marketing campaign.

In other words, higher KEI, more popular your keyword phrases are, and less competition they have. According to Wordtracker, a "good" keyword to target is one that has a KEI of around 100, but an "excellent" keyword to target has a KEI of over 400.

Okay, enough of background into Wordtracker. Most of you probably already know all of that. In fact, your path through Wordtracker most likely looks very similar to mine.

The "old" way to use Wordtracker

In past, I have always started at Keyword Universe, or maybe at Keyword Projects. From there, I work my way through system. Does it work? Yes, very effectively. Is it time consuming? Yep.

But, let's look at an easier, and even more effective, way to use Wordtracker. And with this alternate way, you're actually considering keyword phrases based on your target audience.

Introducing John Alexander

To write this article, I interviewed John Alexander, an authority of Wordtracker who has spent countless hours working through each of features and developing his own unique strategy.

As means of introduction, John is a professional search engine optimizer with Beyond-SEO (http://www.beyond-seo.com) and a trainer of onsite search engine marketing workshops through Search Engine Workshops (http://www.searchengineworkshops.com).

Besides using Wordtracker to find keywords, John actually uses service to target an audience's surfing behavior. Once he determines surfing behavior, he can use that knowledge to target those who are most likely to purchase his clients' products or services.

Unlike most of us, John doesn't get "stuck" in Keyword Universe to where system does all thinking for him. Instead, he begins at Comprehensive Search (found under Multiple Search heading).

How do you sort all this out so you can effectively market your web site to search engines?

My last article (www.isitebuild.com/keyword), discussed, what is a keyword and how to create targeted keywords for your site. Next we will discuss where to place keywords, how many to use and some tips on what to avoid.

Where to place keywords in your web pages?

Title Tag - this tag should contain your most important keyword phrase. Make title interesting enough to grab visitor's attention. Only use 5 to 6 words in your title with your most relevant keyword in beginning.

Description Meta Tag The search engines often use this tag when they display description of your web site in search results. Try to make description inviting for your visitors. The length should be less than 200 characters, including spaces.

Keyword Meta Tag This tag will contain a listing of your keywords and keyword phrases that are relevant to your page and enable a Search Engine to find you. Here are some things to remember:

Don't use same keyword more than 3 times. Use keywords that occur in your Title Tag and Description Tag. Use only 200 characters for all your keywords. Use different keywords for all your pages. Only use keywords that are relevant to your site. Use lower case letters. Use single and plural forms of your keywords. Use commas or spaces between your keywords or keyword phrases.

Heading Tags These tags hold separate topics between paragraphs and range from

, which is very large and bold to