Importance of Keywords - Wrong Keywords Means No Traffic!Written by Leah West
If your new to internet marketing world, you might not understand how vitally important choosing right keywords for your website is. Most people who put up a website (designers included) don't realize that right keywords on your website will improve your search engine rankability.When a person goes to a search engine like Google or others, they type in a word or phrase that they want information on. This is what we call a keyword. For instance if person was looking to buy a new golf club, he might type in 'golf clubs' or 'golf shop' or another variation. So if you were a golf store you would want to have those and other related keywords within your site. So what if you understand importance of keywords but don't do any keyword research? Instead you simply think about your product or service and come up with keywords that you think people will search for? At first this might sound like a good idea but in reality you risk losing many potential customers. What do you think happens if you pick a bunch of words or phrases that people aren't actually searching for? Or you don't think of all hundreds of other keywords that relate to your product or service and therefore lose potential clients? You might have best of intentions when thinking of your own keywords, but it's better to do a thorough keyword search before beginning any website project. There are a few different places that you can perform these keyword searches. 1. Wordtracker is a great online tool found at www.wordtracker.com You can sign up for a free trial to test it out. This is most thorough keyword research tool that I have found. You can easily find several thousand related keywords in one search. I created a free ebook that you can download that will help walk you through all steps of doing an in depth keyword research with Wordtracker. You can download it at http://www.westmarketing-design.com/wordtracker.pdf
| | Keywords are for humans not search enginesWritten by Ant Onaf
It seems keywords are making the top of SEO list time and time again. The problem is that some optimizers do not understand rightful purpose of keywords. Keywords should not be solely embedded for purpose of reaching top of search engines. Search Engine Optimization should not be primary focus of any website. The primary and number 1 focus should always be visitors. If you create a website for your audience and for your visitors then you should rank fairly. I can't see why any legitimate website can not rank properly within search engines, after time and dedication. Search Engine Optimization main purpose is ranking faster within search engines. Instead of gaining a good balance of traffic within 1 or more years, it is possible to gain a good balance of traffic within 6-9 months with SEO. Keywords play a major factor in SEO and search engines in general, but question is are keywords for search engines or visitors? The visitors are ones who are trying to find your site by typing in a keyword, but search engine is one locating your site and delivering your site to visitor based on searched keywords. Therefore I would have to say, keywords, visitors, and search engines all work hand in hand, but if you focus on visitor and not search engine, then you will reap greater rewards. A webmaster should have a plentiful of quality and researched keywords, which becomes sites core. To receive a good balance of keywords you need to think like your visitors or know how your visitors think. It boils down to research and tracking your visitors. Tracking visitors on your site is business-wise and is not an unethical practice, it’s your website (business). In an offline business you are well aware when a visitor opens door to your business and comes in store, same applies online. It becomes unethical when you continue to track visitors when they exit your site, when you invade visitors’ privacy, or when you intentionally collect personal information about a visitor without their consent or knowledge. Tracking a visitor within your site does not need to be intense, common web log files are helpful enough. With web log files you should be able to track keyword used to find your website, track where a visitor came from to find your site (the referrer), track total number of unique visitors, track total number of all visitors, track how many pages were viewed, track path visitors take within your site, and much more information is available through web logs. There are many tools that can translate your raw web log files into graphical and legible text, such as: Nihuo or Web Log Expert which both offers a free log analyzer download as well as an inexpensive analyzer for more detailed stats and more features. There are other upscale web log analyzers which are mostly for enterprises or larger sites but are extremely detailed and rewarding, such as: Web Trends, Deep Matrix, or Urchin (which has recently been acquired by search engine giant 'Google'). Knowing your visitors can only benefit your site. If you have a new website without any visits then you will not have benefit of knowing your visitors and you will have to create your visitors habits, by using good judgment and research to determine which keywords best suits your site. Your best effort should provide you with at least 250 keywords and keyword phrases, depending on your site category. Once you have tracked your visitors and/or have completed researching keywords, you are ready to make informed decisions and begin process of elimination. Many argue to stay away from popular or general keywords because market for popular and general keywords is flooded and over-crowded, you will never be able to compete. My sentiments exactly, but remember keywords are for humans not search engines...so yes, I recommend including popular and general keywords as long as keyword(s) show room for opportunity. Meaning, it has been used by your visitors...as a solitaire keyword or within a keyword phrase. Creating keyword phrases is important because at least 95% of internet users search using keyword phrases, not many use one word. With that said, you should still include a few solitaire keywords. Use singular and plural expressions for keywords. Once you have gathered all your keywords make two lists, one list can be titled active keywords...keywords which you are currently using or plan to use in near future. The second list can be titled inactive keywords...keywords which have been eliminated and may never be used. Eliminate keywords based on your research, visitor data, and site category. Regardless how general your site is try to have only one focus audience, this zooms in on your target, makes marketing site easier, and more successful. When done eliminating you should have a plentiful of keywords and keyword phrases. Generally, goal should be to have at least a combination of 100 keywords and keyword phrases. This number may be greater or lesser depending on your site category/niche market. Keyword research can be accomplished a number of ways. I would recommend using best judgment and sticking to your site topic. If your site is about “the rules of playing baseball” then anything pertaining to rules of baseball should be included as keywords. Remember think like your visitors, if you were a visitor looking for 'the rules of baseball' how would you search...your search words would probably be something like "rules of playing baseball"...."baseball playing rules"...."playing baseball rules"....rules of baseball"...."baseball rules"...."how to play baseball"...."baseball and rules"...if your site contains 'rules of baseball' then each of those keyword phrases will be sufficient for inclusion into your active keyword list. A few links that can help with keyword research are: NicheBot, Wordtracker, Google Keyword Tool, Digital Point Keyword Tool. Some of main attributes which you want to research is how often keyword/keyword phrase is searched for within search engines, how much competition there is for keyword/keyword phrase, and if you are considering pay-per-click then you would probably like to know average cost per click for each keyword/keyword phrase. You should not rely 100% on any of these reports or other reports from any third-party because there are many deterrence which may offset reports, you should collect data from each of them and derive a census report which will allow you to make an informed decision.
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