SEO Guide on Keyword Research and Selection
A Website Marketing Guide to Keyword Research and Selection
Our website marketing firm has assembled 20 tips that you should keep in mind when dealing with keywords. Considered together, they may help you make good choices, achieve high rankings and bring more traffic (and leads) to your web site, all a large part of your total website marketing efforts.
1. Pace Yourself.
As we mentioned, most companies lack the link popularity status to grab broad keywords that would be great to use. With that in mind, spend some time adding links while devoting your energies to 2- to 4-word phrases, as part of your website marketing strategy.
OneStat, an expert in web analytics, in 2004 tracked the seven most popular ways people search:
- 2 word phrases 32.58%
- 3 word phrases 25.61%
- 1 word phrases 19.02%
- 4 word phrases 12.83%
- 5 word phrases 5.64%
- 6 word phrases 2.32%
- 7 word phrases 0.98%
2. Get a subscription to WordTracker.
The popular website marketing service (www.wordtracker.com) collects and documents samples of actual searches. Popular ones include "Pamela Anderson" and funny jokes. But many Internet users also look for "background music," "office supplies," and "skin care products." Read WordTracker's directions carefully to understand how to use the website marketing tool.
3. Know your link popularity.
First you need to know your competitors - compare their link popularity to yours. How far do you need to go to catch up? Study who else links to their site. Would those web sites be willing to link to your site? Our website marketing staff recommends you add a links page to your web site (it doesn't have to be part of your main navigation, but it should be in a logical location). Use a Link Popularity Check (www.checkyourlinkpopularity.com) service to ascertain how your site is faring with link popularity.
4. Get a handle on your saturation (number of indexed pages).
Marketleap, a large site full of website marketing resources, (www.marketleap.com) has a great tool that includes historic data about how many pages are indexed by search engines.
5. Think through your business goals and objectives.
Like fuel in an automobile, keywords power website marketing campaigns. Yet, certain keywords will take you only so far because their audience and subsequent traffic is minimal. Take the broad road with extremely generic keywords and you may never rank highly. Go the specific route and you may cruise right past your core audience.
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