Keyword research and tools, P I
High search engine rankings are harder to get these days. There is much discussion if Google sets any entry barriers for new websites. I like one comparison that comes from some online marketer.
Imagine a city block that has a few Chinese restaurants. What the sense to open more when there are a few and they have divided the market into shares. If you are going to open a Chinese market in this block – it is a bad idea – it is hard to take away consumers from already existing and established restaurants. Probably, it is a good idea to open a Russian restaurant in this block if there is no any.
I share this point, but I belong to that part of entrepreneurs who opens a new Chinese restaurant. I guess the answer is evident: it is much easier to imitate that innovate. Yes, I try to add some features to my websites that make them unique to a certain degree and from my point of view, but in essence they just imitate well established websites in the Internet. It is not easy to innovate. Especially when you are a late comer – most niches are taken by those who could realize the potential (=innovate?).
But back to natural rankings, sweet and distant. You need to consider many factors to see your website high in the search rankings: onpage optimization, incoming and outcoming linking structure, website age, etc. I think you will get a much better explanation here.
In this post I would like to talk about keywords. Yes, keywords that are entry doors for natural (and paid) traffic to your website. Why are keywords important? They help your website to get visitors from traditional search engines – Google, Yahoo!, MSN.
Keywords definition:
To achieve a high search engine placement for a relevant search, a website must contain the appropriate positioning and density of keywords or phrases related to the search terms used. This is a critical part of the search engine optimisation for any website.
How do you optimize your web pages for keywords? What factors should you keep in mind?
Your first step is to identify those keywords that are good matches for your website. Your options:
- webpage
- logs
- competitors’ web pages
- brainstorm
- misspellings
- synonyms
- singulars vs. plurals
- hyphenated
So, what should you keep in mind while analyzing keywords?
- Popularity. How many people do search these key phrase weekly or monthly?
- Relevancy. Is it relevant to the content of your page? To what extent?
- Competition. How many web pages are optimized for this very key phrase.
What tools are available to help you with these tasks? There are good free and paid services that will make your life easier.
If we start with free keyword selection tools it is worth mentioning:
- Digitalpoint keyword suggestion tool
- SEO book keyword suggestion tool
- NicheBot
- AdWords keyword tool
- Overture bid tool
If we turn to the paid keyword analysis tools:
- WordTracker – the oldest and most respected service. You need to subscribe to get access to their invaluable data. Where does it come from? From MetaCrawler and DogPile engines (the data accounts just for 0.86% of all search engine watches (about 312,000,000 searches per day). Here is a link to WordTracker keyword research manual (pdf)
- For more paid keyword analysis tools, explore this great brochure ‘Keyword research tools’ (pdf)
Summary: It was my first part of a 3-post introduction to keywords analysis. Do not miss the second one.
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[tags]keywords tools, keywords research, traffic, links bait, social bookmarking, web 2.0, domain names, text-link-ads, links buying, myspace, seo, internet marketing, affiliate marketing, blogs, content generation, google, make money online, work from home, home based job, duplicate content, earn your living online[/tags]
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