Choosing the right keywords

22 August 2009

If you want to understand how to choose which keywords to optimize, it will make the most sense if you think of it as buying them. That is because the primary consideration when choosing keywords is ROI (return on investment).

The effort required to get high rankings for a keyword is directly proportional to how competitive the keyword is. Therefore the "cost" to "buy" a keyword is partly determined by the number of other websites that are competing for it.

If you want to be 100% certain which keywords get searched on the most, you'll want to use this method. Set up a Google Adwords (pay-per-click) campaign and have it tie into web analytics that will show you exactly what words were typed into the search engine. Start out by setting your keywords to "broad match" which means that a variety of keywords will trigger your ad.

For example if you apply broad match to the keyword "selling business" your ad will show up when people search for the following (and many, many more) keywords:

• selling your business
• sell your business
• sell my business
• business to sell
• broker to sell my business

Your web analytics report will track each and every different specific search term that resulted in a click on your ad for the broad match keyword (e.g., "selling business"). From that you will observe for yourself what the most popular search terms really are!

Now that you know how to pick the right keywords out of a group of keywords you are considering, you may want to know how to come up with keywords to consider in the first place.

• Make a list of all the keywords you think people might find you with
• Ask your customers to make a list of all the keywords they would try to find you with
• Once you start doing keyword research on the list you have, the research tools will make additional suggestions. Get keyword suggestions from the Overture tool, WordTracker and your Google AdWords PPC campaign.

Your overall search engine optimization strategy will be determined by the picture that emerges from your research. Given a list of attractive keywords, SEO strategy is quite different from pay-per-click (PPC) strategy. With PPC you have a specific cost per click. The result is immediate, but traffic stops when you stop paying.

With SEO, the work you have done now will produce results for years to come, so the cost is amortized over time. Furthermore, SEO is most effective when undertaken as a long-term strategy. Start by setting up a good, solid foundation for SEO in your website architecture. Then keep building over time toward high rankings for more competitive keywords by expanding your website into what Google considers an "authority" site.

Your web analytics will show you your increasing traffic and help you to determine which keywords and which strategies are producing the highest number of new customers. Based on that perspective you will mold your website into a search engine magnet for an ever increasing number of competitive keywords.