Building Your All-Important Keyword List

Keyword Selection

Keywords are words - or more often phrases - that describe the contents or theme of your Website, and a proper understanding and use of them is essential in securing an optimal search engine ranking. Finding the right keywords can help you achieve greater amounts of traffic with less effort on your part,  and more traffic means more sales! On the other hand, if you target the wrong keywords, all your efforts could be in vain.

To compile a list of effective key words the first thing you should do is put yourself in the shoes of a person or persons looking for a site that offers what your site offers. What words or phrases would they type in to locate your site? Spend some time brainstorming various words and word combinations, until you come up with a top ten or twenty list. (If you come up with more, that's no problem, you'll simply have more to work with.) 

Try to avoid choosing keywords that are too general or obvious. Selecting words/phrases that are overly broad poses two problems. First, they're more popular so you'll have more listing competition, and it will require more work to achieve a top ranking. 

Second, the traffic you'll receive will not be as highly targeted as it would be with a more precise or selective keyword phrase. Also, most internet users use targeted word combinations in their searches rather than single words, so you should do the same. In fact, its a good idea to use popular terms in combination with more selective terms.

TIP: If you want the search engines to return results based on whole phrases you should surround them with quotation marks. On the other hand, if you are listing your keywords, you might want to omit the quotes so the engines will list the words individually as well as in combination.

Your ultimate aim should be to come up with what Ken Evoy calls "profitable keywords," ones for which there is high demand and low supply. 

Once you've compiled your initial keyword list and narrowed it down to the words you think are the best, you can improve upon it further by doing some research. There are many online resources that will help you to prioritize your list by cluing you into the most commonly searched for words and phrases in your particular field. I've listed some of the best below.

Keyword Research Tools

WordTracker  This is my personal pick - and I'm hardly alone. WordTracker is, hands-down, the best keyword research tool available on the Net today, and if you take a look at this partial list of some of the many things it does, you'll understand why.

• It will estimate the amount of "projected" traffic you can expect from each search engine, if you achieve an optimal ranking for the keyword you input.

• Like Goto.com, it gives you a count of how many times a keyword was searched over a period of time, however, WordTracker's database is always up- to- the- minute. It also lets you see the 1000 most popular keywords for both the last 36 hours and the last 54 days.

• It has the ability to brainstorm for you! It will take a single keyword or phrase from you, do a search for Websites matching that keyword and then extract keywords from their meta tags.

• It then assembles a list of dozens of keywords, many from your competitors or related sites, doing what would take you hours of effort in mere seconds!  

• Once you've gone through this list and selected the words you deem appropriate to your site, you can have WordTracker go out and do a "competitive analysis" and rank the keywords based on how often they are searched AND how competitive they are. It estimates the competitiveness of the term by how many times it appears on the Web for a search on over a dozen major search engines. 

• When doing a competitive analysis, keywords that are searched often yet appear on the Web fewer times ("profitable keywords") are ranked the highest. If you select any of the Pay-Per-Bid engines like Goto.com, WordTracker will give you a list of what the current bids are for all the "popular" keywords that you choose. 

• You can do this for each service, in order to compare results. 

• Wordtracker displays the results in a compact grid format that allows you to quickly locate "bargain" keywords, where the bids are lowest yet where the keywords are more popular. 

• In this way you can easily locate and target highly popular keywords for which relatively few Websites are competing. 

• If you optimize your site for these keywords, you gain MORE traffic for LESS work.

WordTracker offers both free and paid options. The paid options are based on how long you wish to use the service. Pricing starts at around $19.95 for a one week subscription.  However, this is plenty of time for you to brainstorm and build your optimal list of keywords to target, since it makes this so easy to do. Or, you could go with the free trial that takes you through a wizard style interface to select and find keywords. It's limited in how many keywords it will return at one time, but it lets you run through the trial as many times as you like. 

TIP: When using this tool, as well as any of the others, you're better off going with keywords/ phrases that rank in the top ten, not in the top two, as these combinations are likely to be too popular to achieve a top listing.

Ad Word Analyzer  Another great tool is Jeff Alderson's new Ad Word Analyzer. With a few simple clicks it allows you to search for keywords AND their related Google AdWords and Overture campaigns, which will save you a ton of time and money on your Pay-Per-Click campaigns. But the software doesn't stop there. 

With this tool not only do you get a comprehensive list of all RELATED keyword phrases, along with the number of searches that were conducted throughout the previous month for each keyword phrase, but it can tell you how best to market your product. You will see if an idea is popular based on the number of searches (# 2) how much competition exists based on the number of ad campaigns under way now (# 3) and the exact keywords you can use to bid cheap to lock in the maximum profits! (# 1)  Think about it! With those three results alone, you've just shaved hours off the time it would normally take to conduct this type of research. 

But it gets even better... Ad Word Analyzer ALSO displays the number of websites that are associated with each keyword. Then, it takes that number and divides it by the amount of searches that have been conducted, giving you the exact search to results ratio! So what does that mean to you? Armed with the results/search ratio for any given keyword, you can immediately gauge the actual supply and demand. The lower the R/S Ratio, the better the odds of you making money in that particular product or service niche! So there you have it. ONE program, a few clicks, and all the keyword ad campaign information you need is right at your fingertips! It doesn't matter what you sell... Ad Word Analyzer will help you sell more of it!

Overture's Search Term Suggestion Tool  Since the premise behind this "bid and buy" search service is to sell the best keyword listings to the highest bidder, the powers that be at Overture know exactly what the most popular keywords are, and you can utilize this knowledge to refine your list. 

• Not only does this tool tell you how many times in the previous month people have searched for any keyword you input, it also tells you what the best keywords are relating to your selection and which variants of the best keywords are the most popular. The results are listed in order, with the most popular searches at the top. (See our Pay-Per-Click tutorial for more information.)

TIP: To use this tool to build up and refine your keyword database simply enter one of your keywords and when the results come up, highlight and copy them. Then open any text editor (Microsoft Works Word or Notepad) and paste the keywords you copied into the document. Repeat this process with all your other keywords, inputting them into the Search Term Suggestion Tool and copying and saving the results in your document. When you’ve finished with your list, open your keyword document and delete all the irrelevant terms. From the remainder, select ones that are the most appropriate and input them into the Suggestion Tool. Repeat this process as often as you like.

Other Keyword Research Resources include:

1. Good Keywords  This Windows freeware tool utilizes data from several search engines to generate keywords and phrases.
2. WordMarket  This freeware and it will build a valuable database of real time searches being done on on several of the most popular search engines.
3. Jim Tools  This tool is helpful for generating keywords that do not necessarily contain your search term in them. Just click where it says "Research Keywords" and select a search service. It's best to use a search engine (like Google or AltaVista) and a directory (LookSmart or OpenDirectory) to get the most well-rounded results. 
4. Keyword Wizard  Enter a few keywords and the Keyword Wizard will generate a whole bunch of appropriate keywords to put in your meta tags.

5. Mall-Net Search Engine Keyword Reports  A great resource that gives you tons of up-to-date info on what keywords are being searched for, so you can determine what keywords or phrases you ought to be targeting. A virtual mega-repository of valuable, keyword related information (they also do special reports for a fee). Be prepared to spend some time here.

6. Searchterms.com  Another great site for finding commonly searched words or phrases. They maintain a listing of the current top 100 search terms that they update monthly.

7. If you're really a keyword research hound, you can sign up to receive a Free Weekly Top 200 Keyword Report, a comprehensive listing of the most searched for keywords every week.

TIP:  If all of the above - brainstorming, researching, building up, narrowing down, tracking and bidding on keywords sounds like a lot of work, there is a way around it. SiteSell's Ken Evoy (has come up with a terrific, time-saving tool Site-Build It Manager that takes care of every keyword related task for you - and whole lot more!

"Borrowing" Keywords - a not so uncommon practice

Another way to generate profitable keywords is to do a bit of sleuthing.  You can use any of the major search engines for this, but Ken Evoy recommends you use the multi-site search service Ixquick as a fast way to check all the major engines at the same time. 

The good thing about Ixquick is that it rates its search results. A site gets one star for every major search engine that scores it in their Top 10 (on the first page of their listings). So you know that the Webmaster of any site on the first page of Ixquick with three stars or more really knows his stuff.  

Go to Ixquick and enter in your keyword or phrase.  When the results come up click on the links with three or more stars.  When you get to the homepage of each site, go to the menu of your browser (assuming your are using Microsoft Explorer or Netscape Navigator) and click VIEW > SOURCE. This will bring up the HTML source code for the page.  Look for the META keywords tag and see what they've got. 

"Borrow" the best words that fit your site concept, return to the Ixquick database and click on the next three star link.  Repeat this process for all links and any keywords you want, until you're getting a lot of repetition.

Once you've refined and narrowed down your keyword list to your satisfaction, you're ready to begin using it to optimizing your pages. But, first, you need to learn a little bit about Meta Tags and HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), as your keywords will be featured in these. 

Secret to Search Engine Success

The quickest and easiest way to design a search engine friendly site is simply to carry your "View Source" keyword research a bit further than mentioned above. Start with one engine at a time and follow these steps:

1. Enter your primary keyword or keyword phrase into one of the top search engines to see what sites are currently listed in the Top 10 for that particular word or phrase.

2. Go to the Number 1 listed site and do a "View Source" (To do this with Internet Explorer, choose the "View" and "Source" commands. Using Netscape Navigator, choose "View" and then "Page.") This will allow you to check the HTML code behind their page. You will see what they are using for keywords, META tags and META descriptions, along with a host of other strategic variables. 

3. When you find a particularly well done page, copy and save it to a file. You can either refer back to it when designing your page or you can use it as a template (simply delete their information and insert your own). Make sure you note which search engine the page appeared on and which search word or phrase you used to draw it up.

4. Repeat this process with each of your keywords or phrases. After a while you'll probably notice that certain types of pages keep showing up. These are the pages you have to beat, so these are the ones you should copy or use as a template. Your "View Source" will give you the code to beat them!

5. After you do this with one search engine, move on to another and repeat the entire process.

6. Do not over-submit to any of the major search engines.  The more you submit, the greater the chance you have of being red-flagged for spamming, whether you submit manually or using an automated service.

This may seem like an awful lot of work, and it is, but believe me it is the most rewarding promotional work you can do online. Not only will you learn what works and what doesn't with the various search engines but, if your Website is worthy of your efforts, you'll be successful in gaining a "top ten" ranking, which should propel your business straight into the profit-stratosphere.

Because of the tremendous amount of work involved in getting and staying on top of the search engine rankings (believe me, it is a full time job and even when you try your hardest, you don't often get the results you deserve), you might want to look into Search Engine Optimization & Placement Services or take advantage of some top-notch Search Engine Submission Software.