To build a foundation for your website, especially for SEO optimization and SEO copywriting, a fair amount of effort researching and analyzing your search engine keywords is necessary, but very worth it.
To start with, take the time to brainstorm what keyword terms and search phrases your target website visitors are likely to use. While we can make suggestions and recommendations, client input is invaluable in this area. Ask your customers, your friends and your family what terms they would use to find you. Website tools like Google Webmaster Tools or Google Analytics and other site traffic packages can provide you with a list of the most popular search referral terms used for your site.
Some Search Engine Keyword Terminology
Keywords are the words typed into a search engine to find something on the web. Keyword phrases are two or more keywords together.
There are two critical elements of search engine keywords - frequency and competitiveness.
Frequency is the average number of times per day a search engine keyword phrase is used to conduct a search. Competitiveness is the number of search results returned for a search engine keyword phrase.
The relationship between frequency and competitiveness is known as Keyword Effectiveness or Keyword Efficiency, resulting in the KEI acronym (with "Indicator" or "Index" added on the end, depending on with whom you are speaking).
KEI is not particularly magical, it's just a mathematical formula, but the formula itself can vary so comparing KEI across two keyword research tools may not yield the same result. Is it reliable? Not necessarily.
Confused? See KEI and Reality in the right column of this page.
Importance of Keyword Frequency
You certainly wouldn't want to spend a lot of time and money targeting search engine keywords and phrases that no one is likely to use in a search. It's very possible, that your past website promotion and SEO efforts have focused on the wrong keywords and that's why you're not seeing the kind of website traffic you'd like to see. But frequency isn't everything. For example, it's exceedingly difficult to rank on most one-word keywords, such as "soup" or "t-shirts" because of the competitiveness of those terms.
Keyword Competition or Competitiveness
When it comes to keyword competition or "competitiveness", the more sites that are competing for ranking against your targeted keyword phrase (and the more sites that use the same search engine keywords - together or separately - even if they aren't intentionally targeting them), the more difficult it will be to attain top rankings.
For example, if a search on Google returns 80 million results for your keyword phrase, that phrase is likely to be much tougher to get top rankings for than a phrase that yields only 70,000 results.
Ranking in the top 10 search results for highly competitive keywords can be done - with extensive effort at considerable expense over a long period of time. Large corporations with dedicated SEO staffs and assistance from outside experts often focus on these keywords and may spend millions on their SEO campaigns and be able to secure hundreds of thousands of incoming links using those keywords.
Most of my clients don't have the patience, the time or the budget for such intense SEO campaigns. Many smaller website operators think their only chance for good search engine rankings is to focus solely on "long tail" keywords that are far less competitive. It's very easy for SEO firms to claim credit for great rankings on keyword phrases that have no competition and many are led astray.
Search Engine Keywords and Conversion
Another factor that's not always considered is the potential for conversion. That is, the likelihood that a searcher will see your site in the search engine results, click the link and make a purchase or take some other desired action - sign up for a newsletter, etc.
If you had a store that sold only women's brown shoes, even if you ranked well for the highly competitive term shoes, your conversion rate is going to be low because of all of the people that were looking for men's shoes, black shoes, etc. So when selecting the ideal search engine keywords for your website, you also need to consider conversion.
Let Us Help You Find the Perfect Search Engine Keywords
I've never been more amazed when a client approaches me for SEO services and says, "I already know what keywords I want to target." And yet the client doesn't realize that either no one is searching for those search engine keywords or they are so competitive (often a single word) that tying to accomplish strong search engine rankings is simply out of the question.
Take the time and make a small investment for professional keyword research before you add content to your site and before you spend any money on SEO campaigns. Contact PremiereWeb Design today for your search engine keywords needs. You'll be glad you did!
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