How to Select Keywords | Keyword Analysis Series - Part I

By Ryan McCann and Shruti Gupta
August 25, 2005

Keywords are the search terms that target customers typically use in search engines to find the service or product being offered on the website. Hence, the first and the most crucial step for optimizing a website is to research and define the best keywords.

This may sound simple, but there is more to the process than meets the eye. Say one has a website selling various types of shirts. Quick thinking says 'shirts' is the best keyword to target. Although shirts is an appropriate keyword, it is probably not the best keyword to optimize for. "Well how come? I sell shirts!" you ask?

Let's use another example to illustrate the importance of selecting the right keywords on your website. In this example, the website we need to optimize offers wigs for women. It makes sense to optimize this website for "women's wigs". Yet, a quick keyword analysis reveals that target customers rarely type "women's wigs" in the search engine. The popular search term used by target customers in this industry is rather "wigs for women". So, which keyword are you going to optimize your website for? Obviously, "wigs for women".

By running an effective keyword research campaign one can see that user habits via the search engines can vary dramatically. Therefore, we can not assume that a certain keyword is the most popular strictly because it is, "What I would use". Also, it is better practice to create a list of keywords many people use as opposed to focusing on one or two keywords people generally use. We'll have more about that area of keyword research in another article though. For now, let's move on to the process of analyzing keywords.

How to Analyze Keywords?

1. The first step is research and creating a list of potential keywords. Various methods and ways to build the list of search terms are:
   
   
   • Discuss the likely search phrases used by your customers or ask customers directly if possible.
     
     
   • List all the keywords your competitors are using on their websites.
     
     
   • Discuss the likely search phrases used by your colleagues and friends.
     
     
   • Study the log for current traffic to your website and list all the keywords that brought traffic to your website.
     
     
   • Refer Thesaurus.
     
     
   • List all your primary products and services offered on the website.
     
     
   • If your website sells branded products and services then list all the brand names. For example, if you sell designer shoes all the designer names should be in the list along with the product name such as "Michael Kors Shoes".
     
     
2. The second step is using the tool below to analyze all the keywords that are in the list. Type all the keywords from your list one by one. This tool will inform how about how much traffic a particular search term generates. Also, it provides similar search terms used by target customers. Using this, you may expand and condense your list of keywords.

Note* The numbers provided with tools such as the this are not 100% accurate. If you do not see results for a specific search term this does not necessarily mean nobody has searched for that term. True search numbers are not given out by the major search engines. So take these numbers you do see with a grain of salt. Use the tool as a reference only.

Get Suggestions For Phrase:

Brought to you by Digital Point Solutions
3. Now, the final stage is to decide which keywords to target from the list of researched search terms. My suggestion is to consider the level of competition for these phrases. It may be more worthwhile (lead to the same levels of traffic) to concentrate on scoring highly for three less popular search phrases than on one highly popular search phrase, if there is heavy competition for the most popular phrases and reaching the top for these is less likely.