Introduction to Keyword Selection

Written by Matthew Stone

Sunday, 28 February 2010 11:30

by MatthewStone

One of the fundamental tasks for creating a website that attracts traffic from Google and the common search engines is selecting useful and descriptive keywords for your effort. A good term or phrase that accurately describes your product or service or presents the "need" your company serves is essential to building your website into a sales and marketing tool.

New companies and business start ups usually just guess at what would be a good set of keywords to use - or ignore the process completely. It should be understood though that these words describe for the search engines what the page is about. These descriptive terms or keywords must accurately describe not only the business, but the page content. Juggling these can be challenging as well.

But what really are 'keywords?' The keyword list is found in a section of the webpage that the viewer doesn't generally see. The 'keyword metatags' provide words and phrases to the search engines that describe what your page is about. Readers can't see the meta tags unless they look at the page source code.

Of greater importance however, keywords describe your business as well as the web page and should be used throughout the page. This confirms for the search engines that the page descriptive terms in the keywords are validated throughout the rest of the page. Google can then be fairly sure that the page contains content relevant to the keywords and will therefore improve the search engine rankings.

Keyword phrases, once identified, should be used in the page title, page headlines and reasonably placed throughout the text. Overuse of keywords is awkward and counter-productive as the search engines may see this as something they term 'keyword stuffing.' Pages they believe are overstuffed with keywords are devalued in the search engine algorithms or simply de-indexed.

The process for selecting keywords can take many forms. Google provides a tool within the Adwords suite that helps evaluate keywords and provides the number of possible searches or 'impressions' that a top Google (paid) advertisement could be expected to make. This is useful information even though you are not paying for an advertisement on these pages.

Reading this information, look for the number of searches and level of competition that exists for certain keywords that you propose to the system. Then - especially for new and start up websites - avoid keywords that have a great deal of competition associated with them. This information is provided by the system. These will usually require much greater effort as well as a longer time to start ranking well.

When you believe you may have discovered a good keyword phrase, run a Google search. If major corporate websites appear at the top of the results page, reconsider your choice. If your company page would be up against someone like Bank of America for your keyword term, rest assured that they will ruthlessly compete against anyone using that term - which decreases your opportunity to rank well. (There is a way to compete with the big guys just not head-to-head using their keywords. See the note on including a geographic term below.)

Keyword selection then is the art of finding a good descriptive term or phrase for your page that many people search for, but has a reduced level of competition to compete for. The Google Adwords tool can help here, too. The Google tool lists the relative level of Adword competition for certain terms and phrases, so look for terms with lower competition that still have traffic.

The Google Adwords system displays a 'traffic' number, but these are not exact number of searches or exposures that this search term produces. This tool is useful though for understanding which terms have more or fewer searches than others.

A certain degree of creativity is also helpful. Organizations that do business in a particular geographic area can use the name of that area in their keyword phrases. Setting one's business apart from others by using a geographic term (such as "Banks in Birmingham" as opposed to just "Banks") is a good way to compete with larger organizations. Large companies typically don't compete well on a local level. Users though, won't search for a term as broad as "Banks" but will usually restrict their search to a local relevant area.

Be flexible in selecting keywords. Some that seem to look good may have to be abandoned if they produce traffic and not actual sales. Consumer behavior is an odd game for which there are no set rules. Error, trial and error frequently turns out to be a highly successful methodology for the small or start up business to select keywords.

About the Author:

SEO Consultants in Denver brings years of experience in link building, keyword selection and website optimization to help businesses win new sales. SEO Consultants Denver quickly deliver top page search engine rankings even for new pages. Get a totally unique version of this article from our article submission service

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