Keywords—you know you can buy lists of them or buy help sorting out what yours are—but what are keywords really, what‘s the deal with them, and how can you figure out which ones to use?
Defining keywords, keywords define search
People use keywords all the time. When you put what you are searching for in Google or the other search engines, you are using keywords. Search engines go through enormous data bases and send you results by listing sites that apply to the words you “googled”.
These words are called search terms or keywords. Here’s where it starts to get interesting. If you use a single search term or keyword, you are most likely going to get all sorts of information that is not relevant to what you wanted to know. So you add another word or two in order to tune up the search. The results come back much more what you had in mind.
What’s the deal, getting the deal you want
Keywords help you successfully find what you want with the help of search engines. Imagine trying to find anything on the internet without search engines and keywords. And this is a free service. Now imagine that you have a client looking for you, your service or product. He or she can use search engines like they are a library card catalog and find you despite stacks and stacks of books.
Selecting relevant keywords for selections
So you know that keywords are important both for you to find something and for someone to find you. How do you decide which keywords to put on your site? Pretend you are your own client. What search terms would you use to find that business you seeking? Put the keyword into the google box and try it. Did your business come up on page one or at all?
Look at your blog and sales pages and look at the words and key phrases about your business, service or product. Make a list of the words that you find. This is the basis of a way of optimizing your webpages to rank better on search engines. Be as specific with your keywords as you can be. Remember that experiment I suggested at the beginning of this article? You don’t want to stick with one word keywords, phrases are better.
Keywords-testing 1,2,3
So you have identified you keywords and have submitted them to search engines. Where are all the clients you expected to run to your business? First of all, it takes weeks for search engines to process submissions. Also some of them rank not just your keywords, but also use other factors like site popularity (we talked earlier this week about one way to know your site popularity—Alexa numbers).
A different way to get popularity is by improving the number of sites that link to your site. One way to do that is to join commenting tribes. These include people who reciprocate links. An added benefit to joining tribes is that when you link to their site, your website is noted. So you get a link when someone comes to your site and you get a link when you go to someone’s site.
Another thing to think about is that searchers might not even be googling the terms that you decided were your keywords. You need to be aware of this so you can choose better keywords to attract the search engines.
Here is a free resource you can use to learn what people are looking for when they use search engines. CEBN’s FREE Global Keywords Search Engine URL is http://www.cbn.com/metatags.htm will allow you to research keywords to learn how many times they are used. Plus you can search single words to see the different combinations of words they use with that word when they google.
This information can help you work on your keywords so that they are in line with what searchers are looking for. You want people to come to your site who want to be there, in other words targeted traffic. So the more exact your keywords are, the more likely you are to receive visitors to your site who want to see what you have to offer.
Some other services include Word Market URL: http://www.softwaresolutions,net/free.htm, which provides a free software program that checks what people are looking for on the search engines. The only drawback is that you have to be online for it to run and it can also generate a lot of material.
WordSpot URL: http://www.wordspot.com/ will email you a free report every week of the top 200 search terms. So will Keyword Market Share URL: http://www.mall.net.com/se report/index.html. Both these services also offer paid services to help you get more specific.
Keywords unlocked
The key to keywords is that if you use the right keywords and optimized webpages submitted to search engines, this can bring you free targeted traffic directly to your site. You don’t want to overlook this way to receive traffic.
This article is loosely based on Keywords-What Are They, How To Use Them, And Why They Are Important by Kevin Sinclair, CPA, of Be Successful! Business &Personal Success Resources- http://www.ksinclair.com.
How do you use keywords? Please answer in the box below.
Jaco Grobbelaar, owner of BroadVision Marketing, helps business owners and business professionals put marketing strategies in place that consistently secure new clients. He can be reached at jaco@broadvisionmarketing.com or 707.799.1238. You can “Like” him at www.facebook.com/broadvisionmarketing or connect with him on www.linkedin.com/in/JacoGrobbelaar.
Related articles
- MSS 1: Identifying Keyword Opportunities (blogs4bytes.wordpress.com)
- Search Engine Dominance (ronmedlin.com)
