The wrong keywords bring lookers; the right ones bring willing
buyers. Keywords are how search engines index and classify
your website. Keywords are at the heart of any search engine
optimization (SEO) campaign. Choosing the right keyword phrases
for your website is critical to success. The right keywords
will bring targeted traffic.
All of your other SEO strategies won't help you at all if
you choose the wrong keywords. This is because all these
strategies are built on top of the keywords.
So how do you pick the right keywords? You have to think
like your customer. People search for solutions to what they
need. They look for the product or service that satisfies
their need. They do this more often than looking for the
person who supplies the service.
If a business owner is looking for help with their business,
they search for business consulting rather than a business
consultant. A person will search for carpet cleaning much
more often then carpet cleaners.
If your products or services are local or regional, be sure
to include your state or city within your search phrases.
People will search for area codes and zip codes when looking
for local suppliers.
To create a list for your website’s keywords, start
with listing out your company’s products and services.
Use the language that your customers would use. A frequent
mistake is to use language from the industry you are in.
People who sell booths for exhibitions refer to them as “pop
up displays”. Yet their customers will search for “trade
show displays” four times more often.
Competitors are a great source of intelligence. Go to your
competitor’s websites and look at what terms or keyword
phrases they are using. Look at their keywords Meta Tag,
and read through their page text. What specific search terms
are being used?
If you currently have a website, analyze how your visitors
are finding you.. Look at your website statistics and see
what search terms are generating traffic. Most hosting companies
provide you the ability to analyze your website’s log
files. We recommend using a log file analyzer such as AwStats,
Webalizer or Urchin. The new Google Analytics are another
great tool.
There are a number of good keyword research tools available
to help in selecting the right phrases. An excellent one
is Wordtracker (www.wordtracker.com). Wordtracker has allows
you to search a Thesaurus that will list keywords that you
may not have considered. They show daily search volume and
the number of competing web pages by search engine. There
is a charge for this service, but it is well worth it.
There are several free tools available such as Overture
(http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion)
and Google Adwords (https://adwords.google.com/select/main).
Buyer vs. researcher: Is you website an informational website?
Then you want to attract researchers. Are you selling a product
or service? Then you want to attract buyers. Researchers
tend to use general keywords and buyers tend to use very
specific keywords.
The Buying Cycle has three phases. Let’s show how
this can work with someone looking for video games:
1. Research: People gather information
to learn what is new, latest trends and what is popular.
They are looking to learn and gather information. They will
tend to use general terms such as “ Video Games”
2. Shop: In this phase they are comparing
and narrowing their choices. They are looking at availability,
pricing, shipping, etc. Buyers in this stage reveal their
preferences, so more specific keywords (for example, "Video
Games Xbox 360") are needed to cover all possible search
terms.
3. Buy: Visitors have now decided on what
they want and are now looking to purchase. They usually are
looking for a specific product or a model number. The keywords
you use to attract buyers at this stage are very specific;
for example they may search for: "XB360 Call of Duty 2".
Buyers tend to use highly specific phrases as well as singular
rather than plural forms. A person looking for new furniture
is more likely to type in “leather sofa” rather
than “leather sofas”
It may be tempting to go after the general high volume keyword,
but this usually isn’t a good idea. Many times the
websites that rank well for the general term are not the
ones that actually close the sale. They educate the buyer
only to lose the sale to someone else who chose more specific
keywords.
More specific keyword phrases almost always have fewer competitors
and it is much faster to get top rankings.
Once you choose your keywords, place them strategically
and prominently on your web pages. Make sure they are used
in a natural way and make good marketing sense. The language
you use needs to be action oriented to convince your visitors
to buy.
How often should these keywords be looked at? We recommend
analyzing your website every 6 months. The markets change,
traffic patterns shift and what works today, may not work
tomorrow.
Copyright December 2005
Doug Williams is the founder and president of Doug Williams
and Associates, LLC. DWA (www.dougwilliams.com)
is an Internet marketing and search engine optimization firm.
DWA operates a managed linking service “Don’t
Worry About Links” at www.dwalink.com.
Doug Williams is the founder of Doug Williams and Associates
(DWA). Doug, a results oriented business consultant, is experienced
in designing and implementing strategic plans and business
systems. His key strength is the ability to originate and
implement change. Doug has expertise in financial, operations
and general management in companies experiencing rapid change
in both high growth and start-up situations. He has served
on the Board of Directors for 2 companies.
Since 2002, Doug Williams has focused on Internet marketing
and search engine optimization. Doug has developed a number
of specialized web applications and tools for search engine
optimization. He specializes in ethical SEO that does not
spam the search engines, but rather focuses on building traffic
within the search engine guidelines.
