Search engine marketing optimization.

Chapter 2

Expanding Your Traffic Potential - Keyword Phrases

Successful communication with the search engines starts with finding the words and phrases that people might type into the search boxes to find your company products and services.

Remember to start with determining clearly who your audience is. What products and services do you have and what are the exact audiences who would want those products and services? What words would your audience(s) likely to use to find you.

• Your Current Keyword Phrases in your Keyword Focus Grid.
  
  For all your current Website pages, enter into the Keyword Focus Grid a Primary Keyword Phrase and two Additional Keyword Phrases.
  
  Viewing each Website page, what do you think is a phrase that reflects what this page is about? How would the search engine recognize it and index it for people to find when they are doing a keyword search?
  
  Think in terms of a 2-3 word keyword phrase, not individual words. Individual words are too general and yield unfocused results for searchers. Consider your product and brand names, relevant generic terms of your services or business, and any localization such as regions or cities.
  
  You may not target all the keywords you find, but you need to brainstorm and find as many potential keywords as possible and then decide which will drive the most traffic and be possible to target on your site. Now, you won’t target every page, but for every page of your site you should ask yourself, “Is there a keyword phrase I can focus on for this page?” Don’t put any effort into all those pages that are not going to be helpful for keyword phrase findability.
  
  You should only target for one keyword phrase per page, but since you can get some spill over, it’s good to have 2 additional ones in mind for the page.
  
  At this stage of your work, your current Website pages may not have keywords in the text. If not, they decide what you think best reflects what the page is about, keyword phrases that it might be possible to include in your text later.

• Ask your customers and clients. Talk to your employees and get their ideas about what keywords characterize your company products and services
  
  
• Study your competitors.
  
  Search the Web for your competitors, by name and by using the keyword phrases you have selected. The best way to see what they might be targeting on their sites is to look at their source code. In Internet Explorer, go to View->Source and the Title, Keywords, and Description tags. Here is an example of what it will look like.
  
  <title>Search engine optimization Search Engine Optimizer</title>
  <meta name="description" content="Get search engine optimization with Search Engine Optimizer, the instructional optimization software tool.">
  <meta name="keywords" content="search engine optimization, optimizer, website optimization">
  
  Make a list of keywords your competitors are using and include them in your Keyword Focus Grid after the one already list there from your current site.

• Use Yahoo! to search for additional Keywords.
  
  Go to Yahoo! Search Marketing and select the tool on the right called The Keyword Selector Tool and click on the Advertiser Center link. On the Advertiser Center page click on Tools at the top of the page and then chick on the Term Suggestion Tool. Research each of your keyword phrases and see what numbers come up in the Count area to determine which are the best keyword phrases to drive traffic. Be looking at the same time for other suggestion come up that come up for related terms. Select out the keyword phrases with the highest potential traffic and add in these keyword phrases into your Grid.
  
  You may want to keep the research information on a separate page so you can cull out the low traffic keyword phrases you included in your Grid earlier, but still have your good traffic list. Follow this link for an example of a master list to keep your research. (Link here to site and a page I’ll make for this)

• Use Wordtracker to search for additional Keywords.
  
  The most robust tool for determining Keywords is WordTracker. They have a database of 390 Million search terms that are being searched and will give you traffic statistics and competitiveness of each term. There is a free trial that does this for one search engine, Alta Vista. But, you can access for a day or for a week.
  
  You should enter into WordTracker all the keywords you have discovered to date. But, when you start, use single words from your phrases so you get the broadest possible search of alternative words and phrases as possible.
  
  There are three things to do with WordTracker. 1. Discover more keyword phrases. 2. Evaluate all your keyword phrases to discover the kind of traffic you can anticipate for each keyword phrase. 3. Evaluate the competition for each keyword and determine which ones you have a possibility for achieving ranking.
  
  Another way of saying it is that you are looking for keywords that are in high demand, with low competition, that are relevant to your Website theme. Here is a link on our resources page to WordTracker .
  
  Here are two more resources for keyword research. SEM Work Tools and our SEM Article, Site Development for Keywords and Keyword Search Resources

Add into your Grid all the keyword phrases you have discovered from all your research.

You are now ready to start optimizing your Website for increased ranking and traffic. Proceed to Chapter 3, Expanding Your Traffic Potential - Keyword Phrases.

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