Keywords are the foundation of 'search engine optimization' (SEO) strategy. Strong keywords will help your website, blog or article to get found and ranked highly by search engines like Google.
This article will explain FREE techniques to help you find keywords that people are actively searching for on the internet.
Definition of "keyword":
A term that captures the essence of a topic. Note that I used 'term' not 'word'. This is important. A keyword can include one or many words.
For example:
Let's say you're interested in "ways to make money". What would you type into the Google search bar to get your answer?
Some people might type in "money" as their keyword and get a huge of responses back from Google - many not related to their real question.
So, they might type in "ways to make money" as their keyword. This will return responses that are much more relevant to their question.
Instructions
- 1
So, the first step to finding strong keywords that are relevant to your website, blog or article is to "think like your intended customer thinks".
If your website is selling a book about a new business opportunity, who is your target customer? Define them. Then learn to think like them.
Let's say your target customer is aged 20-30, female, with some college experience. These folks will have a different thought process than someone aged 50+, blue collar, with a high school education -- right?
So, you need to consider what sort of keywords your target customer would be searching for. Then, you would need to incorporate those keywords into your website, blog or article. This will help the search engines determine your site's relevance with the keyword search that your target customer is conducting.
Desired result? When they type in your targeted keyword (e.g. "ways to make money"), your website, blog or article will appear in their search results on Google.
2Wordtracker FREE Keyword Suggestion Tool:
So, let's say you've now got a handle on your target customer and the type of questions they might be seeking answers for on Google.
Go to http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/ for a FREE keyword suggestion tool from Wordtracker. (See Resources Section below for a link to this website.)
This site is pretty self explanatory. Simply type in a keyword just like you would on Google and click on "Hit Me". Wordtracker will then display the top keywords related to the keyword that you entered PLUS the of times this keyword was searched worldwide in the past 24 hours.
For example:
I typed in "money" as my keyword. Here are the top 5 results from Wordtracker:
33141money
4096money talks
1402unclaimed money
1233msn money
1065cnn money
This tells me that the keyword "money" was searched for 33,141 times in the last 24 hours. The keyword "money talks" was searched for 4,096 times and so on.
Now let's try the keyword search for "ways to make money". Here are the top 10 results for this Wordtracker search:
273ways for teens to make money
134ways to make money
120ways to make money bookmarks gadgets site area beta
56ways for kids to make money
56ways to make money online
55easy ways to make money
53ways for teenagers to make money
49best ways to make money http;
47ways to make extra money
45ways to make fast money
As you can see, the results are become more focused and closer perhaps to what you are targeting for with your website, blog or article. Also, the of searches conducted for each keyword is getting smaller. (E.G. "Ways to make money = 134 searched in the past 24 hours.)
The beauty of this FREE Wordtracker tool is that you can AND SHOULD spend a great deal of time trying to find relevant keywords - at no cost to you!
3Identify Your Competition Using Google
OK, now you know how to find keywords that people are actually searching for and how frequently they are doing so. Next, we're going to check out the competition.
Go to http://www.google.com/
Now, let's search on Google for your keyword. First, we'll type this keyword in WITHOUT parentheses: ways to make money.
On the first page of the Google search results, you'll find several important things:
At the top right hand portion of the page, you'll see something that looks like this:
Results 1 - 10 of about 225,000,000 for ways to make money. (0.37 seconds)
This tells us that this page is showing the top 1-10 results for the keyword: ways to make money. ALSO, it is telling us that there are 225,000,000 results for this keyword! In other words, there are 225 MILLION competing websites, blogs and articles with relevance for this keyword. That is a LOT of competitors!
Why is that important?
First of all, most people who search on Google don't usually look at more than first page of results for their keyword search. So if you are not ranked in the top 10 results posted on Google for this keyword, your website, blog or article won't be seen.
Solution?
You need to be considered by Google to be extremely relevant for the specific keyword being searched. To tell you how to get ranked in the top 10 results is beyond the scope of this article, but at the bottom of this page in the Resources Section, I have provided a link to Brad Callen's SEO Elite website if you would like more information (includes a FREE 7-day series of SEO tips that really work!).
4Now, still on Google.com, let's type in the keyword "ways to make money" WITH the quotation marks.
Now the results have changed to:
Results 1 - 10 of about 2,600,000 for "ways to make money". (0.38 seconds)
See? Now there are 2.6 MILLION results for this keyword WITH parentheses. (Down from 222 MILLION) Why did the number of competitors go down?
This is because, when you put quotation marks around your keyword in Google, it commands Google to only show the results for searches that used the keyword EXACTLY as you entered it within the parentheses. However, in Step 3 above, we did it without parentheses, so Google reported any combination of the words included in the keyword I provided.
NOTE: It's important to do this both ways (with and without parentheses) when researching your keywords. This is because most people who search on Google won't use parentheses, so it's good to know how much competition you are up against both ways.
5What do I do with this information?
Well, this can be a time-consuming process. But if you are serious about getting your site 'found' on the internet, it's critical!
This process should be conducted on numerous keywords that your target customers might be asking that are relevant to what you have to offer, sell, etc. via your website, blog or article.
What you are seeking initially are the strongest keywords with the smallest number of competitors. So you want a high of searches on the Wordtracker tool and a low of results (competitors) on Google.
Here's why: if noone is searching for your keyword, you won't be found. Likewise, if people ARE searching for your keyword, but you have millions of competitors for that keyword, you'll have a hard time being found (at least initially).
So, to better your chances of success, using Wordtracker, find a keyword that is relevant and which has a decent of searches (e.g. 40-100 isn't bad). Then on Google, you're looking for a low of competitors (e.g. I prefer 0 - 2,000 competitors -- using parentheses).
** Wordtracker also offers a 'for-pay' service that saves you time by doing the Google search steps for you along with other SEO information.
