Article printed from SiteProNews: http://www.sitepronews.com
  HTML version available at: http://www.sitepronews.com/archives.html

  
  
  

Determining Keywords
By S. Housley

Determining keywords is a critical step in web design. If your
website and meta tags do not contain related keywords, web
surfers will be unable to find your website when they conduct
searches.

The formula is a little tricky - you will need to locate terms
that are popular and relevant to your site. These terms may or
may not be terms that *you* feel are relevant terms. The optimal
terms in a site should be terms that a potential customer would
use when searching for a website with your content. In order to
achieve success your website should be optimized with terms and
phrases that are descriptive, related to your content, and which
receive a significant amount of searches. The caveat, of course,
is that you want to find terms and phrases where there is little
competition, so you quickly achieve high ranking in the important
search engines.

Relevant + Popular With Searchers But Not With
Competitors = Success

Markets saturated with other sites competing for search terms
make it difficult to find quality keywords. Sometimes it is
better to optimize for a less popular term, one that is more
targeted at your visitor, because it is more likely to have a
higher conversion rate than a less specific popular term. The
first step to determining keywords is brainstorming a list of
logical terms and phrases that relate to your product or
offerings. This should be done by a number of individuals;
sometimes people have very different ideas for search terms and
by identifying a variety of people and their search terms you
may tap words that hadn't occurred to you. There are a number
of free and low-cost tools available online and for download
that will allow you to expand and research terms that have been
brainstormed. The results typically vary with the tools but
overall the tools will assist you in determining where to focus
your keyword efforts. The tools will often assist with
pay-per-click engines, creating expanded, related keywords or
phrases that can be bid on.

In addition to examining log files to see what terms customers
are using to find a website, visit competitors' web sites and
examine their meta tags for additional terms, use a thesaurus
to find related terms, include misspellings of keywords in your
meta tag keywords, and optimize for various forms of nouns and
verbs, including tenses and plurals.

Keyword Tools -

KeywordTumbler - KeywordTumbler takes existing keyword phrases
and generates multiple variations, reordering the words. This
allows you to build a large keyword list in seconds.
http://www.keywordtumbler.com

TheDowser - Overture Keyword Tool, Google Keyword Sandbox,
Keyword Harvester, Google AdWords report analyzer, Google
AdWords optimization tool, log file analyzer, conversion
tracking and optimization tool.  http://www.thedowser.com

WordTracker - Wordtracker helps you choose the right internet
marketing keywords that will help your search engine placement
and ranking. Use Wordtracker for keyword research. Web marketing
is all about search engine ranking, and that starts with the
proper internet marketing keywords. Get a free keyword report
and web site promotion information! http://www.wordtracker.com

Keyword Suggestion Tools - A handy little tool will show you
the results of your query from both Wordtracker and Overture
for determining which phrases are searched most often. Enter
a search phrase below to see how often it's searched for, as
well as get suggestions for alternate (but similar) keywords.
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/

Keyword Ranking Tool - This utility can be used to check search
engines for keyword ranking and track search engine ranking for
your various keywords over time, which, as you probably know, is
critical when doing search engine optimization.
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/keywords/

Overture Keyword Tool - After entering a keyword or phrase,
Overture provides a list of related phrases that have been
searched on. The tool provides a count that indicates the
number of times the phrase has been searched on.
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

Topword Tool - Topword Tool is a free online tool that analyzes
a complete web page and counts keyword occurrences, as well as
keyword phrases (number in brackets), equal to or above that set
in the Minimum Occurrences setting. It supplies a list of
keywords and keyword phrases which are most likely to achieve
the highest rankings on a major search engine. The tool will
also analyze your meta description/keyword and title tags and
then, through color coding, inform you of words/phrases which
should be included. The main use for this tool is checking your
optimization and tweaking existing web sites to rank well.
http://www.abakus-internet-marketing.de/tools/topword.html

Google Suggestion - The Google Suggestion is a new online tool
for webmasters. As you type into the search box, Google Suggest
guesses what you're typing and offers suggestions in real time.
This is similar to Google's "Did you mean?" feature that offers
alternative spellings for your query after you search, except
that it works in real time. For example, if you type "bass",
Google Suggest might offer a list of refinements that include
"bass fishing" or "bass guitar". Similarly, if you type in only
part of a word, like "progr," Google Suggest might offer you
refinements like "programming", "programming languages",
"progesterone", or "progressive". You can choose one by
scrolling up or down the list with the arrow keys or mouse. The
tool provides a number that indicates the number of searches a
specific word or phrase has had.
http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en

Keyword statistics give webmasters a way to tap into what is
on the minds of Internet consumers. When you can match your
marketing efforts to the various ways people locate their items
of interest on the net, potential customers will be streamed to
your site like ants to a picnic.

================================================================
Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll
http://www.feedforall.com software for creating, editing and
publishing RSS feeds and NotePage, Inc. http://www.notepage.net
a wireless messaging software company.
================================================================

Copyright © 2005 Jayde Online, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.

SiteProNews is a registered service mark of Jayde Online, Inc.