How to Find Valuable Keywords
Valuable keywords are the very backbone of a successful search engine optimization program. All websites need visitors to be a success. The goal of optimization is to increase traffic to the site through high rankings in the Google and other search engine's search results pages. Valuable keywords must be relevant to the site and have a good balance between search volume and competition from other sites. If keywords are not relevant enough, the site will have a high bounce rate: if they're too competitive, good rankings will be difficult to obtain.
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Instructions
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Imagine you are a web user, a potential visitor for your site. What sort of keywords and phrases would you expect people to type into a search engine when looking for a site like yours? Think about the products you sell, the cause you back or your location. Write down your ideas on a piece of paper and keep them to hand.
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Check which keywords are working well for the already, if you have an estbalished site. You can do this if Google Analytics has been set up on the site. Visit http://www.google.com/analytics/ and log in with your Google account details. Once logged in, click on the name of the website for which you are searching for keywords to view its Analytics profile. On the left hand navigation, click "Traffic Sources" and at the bottom right of the page, you'll see "Keywords." Click "View full report" and you'll be presented with the top ten keywords currently sending traffic from search engines to the site. Add these to your list: they are already working well for the site so should not be ignored.
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Create a table in MS Word or a similar word processing tool. This will help you record your data to help you find valuable keywords. The table should include 4, 5 or 6 columns: keyword, search volume and one or two columns for estimated competition. Current ranking is an additional, optional column which can be used for established sites.
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Check search volume using yhe Google Adwords Keyword Tool which is free to use and is widely used in the industry. Type each of your keywords into the "Word or Phrase" box, one per line and complete the captcha then press "search." The tool will then produce a list of your keywords and other suggestions, with data on search volume.If your website is targeting a national audience, pay attention to the "Local search volume" column, for an international audience, look at "Global search volume."
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For simplicity click on the measure (local or global) measure of search volume you are looking at. This will order the search terms in descending search volume order. Work through the list, adding any relevant keywords and their search volume to your table in MS Word.
Establishing Ranking and Competition
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Search each of the keywords in Google, with the settings showing 100 results per page and use the search function of your browser to find the site's current ranking for each keyword, record it in the MS Word table. This is only necessary if the site is already established.. If the site is new, it is unlikely to rank for any keywords yet, so there is no need to establish current ranking. . This may affect a decision later. For example if a keyword appears very competitive, but the site already ranks relatively well for it, it may be obtainable. Record details of any rankings in the table in MS word.
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Establish competition for each keyword. One way of getting an idea of competition relating to a keyword is to use Google to search: allinanchor:"keyword". Google will then give you a number under the search box, for example "Showing 1-10 of 459,000 results." In this case the 459,000 is the number of other sites Google can find using that keyword in their anchor (linking text) and is therefore a good estimate of the number of competing websites. Record this figure in the table.
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Check estimated competition using a second tool, if desired. SEOmoz's keyword difficulty tool gives each keyword or phrase a percentage score: the higher the more competitive. Users must pay subscription to use this service.
Interpreting the Results
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Look over the keywords in the completed table. Acceptable levels of competition depend on the niche of the website, but generally an allinanchor number of under 300,000 and an SEOmoz keyword difficulty score of under 70% suggest a keyword is obtainable.
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Highlightt any keywords which fit these criteria of relatively low competition, using MS Word's highlight function. Using your own discretion you should then choose from these keywords a selection which are most relevant and have good search volume.
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Check whether the site is ranking for words and phrases which are highly competitive but very relevant. If it is, then this suggests that optimization could bring about improvements in ranking, despite high competition levels.
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Tips & Warnings
Longer keyword phrases which are more specific are very targeted, meaning that although they may not be searched as much, they will send very qualified leads to your site. They are also less competitive, so consider a few longer phrases as well as single keywords.
Search volume and competition scores presented by these tools are never 100 percent accurate, so discretion should be employed when choosing keywords.
Optimize each page of the site for two or three of the most relevant keywords and be sure that each page is optimized for a different set of words. This gives a clear message to the search engines of what your site is about.
