The Key to Success With Keywords

In the beginning there was a word, and that word was KEYWORD.

To begin your journey to finding winning keywords, lets explore the the thinking process that goes into selecting, refining and creating a final list of keywords for your company based on the industry, business, services offered, target audiences and the competition faced.

As the CEO of a company you would obviously want to excite any user or a company who is seeking products or services you offer on a search engine like Google to find your website easily.

Eg. You are a property developer in Dubai, so you would want anyone typing in that phrase in the search box to reach your website.

Adding location in the keyword is very important. In the above example since the company is based in Dubai, it's highly probable it will attract the users who want to find a property developers in close vicinity. So property developer in dubai is primarily a KEYWORD.

It's the KEYWORD that will drive potential customers to your website or blog that will translate into traffic, and eventually sales.

As the CEO your plans do include going global, but having the location in the keyword ensures targeted traffic from the city of your business, and that's a good start. Any SEO expert will tell you that targeting common terms like property developers without location would be very difficult to achieve as the website will have to compete with thousands worldwide for that keyword.

The individual keywords should also form part of your domain name. Having your primary keyword in your domain name is one of the key factors in achieving high rankings for a particular keyword phrase.

For those who are cringing about now, thinking they already have a domain and it does not include the keyword, don't worry, there are ways of getting around, one of them being, you can setup sub domains.

Simply put search engines rank sites higher which contain the keyword the user is searching for in their domain name. There are various other factors like optimizing each page around a keyword, building quality links and fresh content that will influence search engine rankings, but that's another story.

Since Dubai is located in UAE it also makes sense for you to target users who are searching for property developers in uae, so you now have another important keyword.

So you can see how you started with one keyword, and additional keywords phrases got created in the process of reading this article.

You should also target mis-spelt words like proprty developers in dubai which means that even when a user mis-spells by mistake you ensure your website comes up. This is becoming soon out of date with Google suggest and their new browser Chrome that suggests possible keywords based on each letter you type.

This is just the beginning into a wonderful journey of finding the right powerful keywords that will generate business for you, where you start with one keyword, and eventually create hundreds of powerful keywords that become traffic funnels to your website.

Having hundreds of focused keywords around your business would mean... you do the maths.

Analyze your Services/ Products

Now how would someone searching for residential properties in dubai find the website? You got it, by searching for residential properties in dubai or buy home in dubai. In this way you can list out all the services offered and create compelling keywords that the user would type to reach your website. The above list could have been created based on products you offered as well.

As you can see, by adding the services in the keywords you have created focused keywords based on services that you can actually offer. There is no point in targeting keywords just for the additional traffic and then having no value for the user on the link. The search engines dislike that and many websites that capture keywords, but have no content are soon being banned from the listings.

Don't think that you have to focus ONLY on your products or services. What are the other USP's you have (Unique Selling Proposition), something you offer and no one else can? What are your customers looking for when they come online?

Give them the information they're looking for and you'll be pulling in targeted traffic from keyword areas that you may never have considered before.

And, most times, those keyword areas are much less competitive than trying to target your individual goods and services. That doesn't mean that you should not target your service/products - only that you need to look at other avenues from which to pull traffic as well.

Analyze your Target Audience (TG)

The next step for you is to create new keywords focused around the users you expect to visit the website and use the services you offer. Always ask yourself questions like why will the target segment come to your site, what do they expect when they reach the website, and do you have the content/services required to satisfy their needs and questions.

Each target segment may belong to different age groups, different vocations, different mindsets, and different requirements.

Additional tips for choosing keywords:

1. Use powerful two word or three word phrases
2. Use distant related keywords
3. Use mis-spelt keywords
4. Go regional, think global
5. Use longest variations of your words
6. Use industry specific short forms or less popular terms for the same word

Analyze your Competition

While analyzing the competition for the purpose of finding new keywords that could drive traffic to your website, keep in mind that competition in life is rather unnecessary and a futile attempt "one" makes to feel better that the "other".

You need someone to lose, to feel you have won! Have you ever considered why? Somewhere within there is someone who feels rather small, and to feel bigger, it needs to become better at something, and to become better at something, someone needs to be smaller than you. So we compete in the workplace, in our homes, with friends, in love and in life. If that seems lame, it is, look within and you find that someone small inside you trying to make itself feel bigger, by making someone else look smaller.

Now let's see check the competition:

1. Study the keywords your competition has used and are ranking well, and why?

2. Check to see if you have those keywords in your list of winning keywords. If the competition has used a keyword and you have not, analyze why you did not come up with the keyword. Is your competition using services of a seo expert, keyword analysis tools and insights that you are unaware off?

3. Study the top 5 to 10 sites for each of your keywords (what seo strategies have they used, is the keyword placed in the meta tags and body content, is their title and description inviting you to click the link)

4. Check your optimized pages, are they missing something - then ask why is the competition ranking higher than you? Have they done something different? What page optimization strategies have they used? Have they used link building strategies?

There will always be keywords you would have missed out, so why not steal a few from the competition. It's the easiest thing to do. Right click to view the source for the page and check for the keyword tag on that page.

From the keywords list created so far:

1. How many users are actually searching for your keywords?

2. What is the search trend and search volume for your keyword over the past 4 years across top search engines?

3. What competition are you up against for your keywords?

How important do you think it is to know the above metrics? How will the above data assist in planning a seo strategy for your website? How will the above data affect your rankings?

If you are still reading further, you have obviously understood the importance on knowing the metrics of success. So here goes...

Each keyword you target becomes a funnel of traffic to your website, each keyword will have its own competition, and each keyword targeted is potential business.

Till so far you have managed to create a list of keywords that are focused around your business, products/services, target audiences, and the competition.

The key to successful search engine optimization begins with a simple keyword phrase. Everything depends on that keyword phrase. You'll be including those keyword phrases in your META tags, your title and other important tags, as well as in the body content of the page itself.

So the KEY to SUCCESS... is in the KEYWORDS you select!

Tools for finding Keywords

Google Insights:

Google's recently launched Google Insights offers search marketers and online businessman a chance to look at the vast amount of user search volumes in Google universe over the past 4 years. With Google Insights for Search, you can compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, and time frames for a keyword, and even compare it against other keywords.

Wordtracker:
Wordtracker is a Web-based service for anyone who is serious about identifying the right keywords. Be sure to check out WordTracker's KEI, Keyword Effectiveness Index, which is an index factor built into WordTracker that compares the 24-hour results (the *potential* for traffic) with the number of competing Web pages to help identify which keywords are most effective. The higher the KEI factor, the more effective the phrase will be, based on the phrase being both popular but having low competition.

Thesaurus:
Use a thesaurus to discover keywords and phrases you've never considered.

Yahoo! Search Marketing (Overture):

Offers a Search Term Suggestion Tool, which is available through the advertisers' area. Simply enter your keyword phrase, and you'll learn how many people actually searched for that term during the previous month. This tool won't tell you how many people are searching for your keyword phrase at other engines, but give you an idea of how popular the keyword phrase is.