Herrington Web Creations

Everyone who has sat down and designed a web site and tried to optimize the site runs into the same challenges with Keywords and Keyword Phrases. What keywords or keyword phrases should I use and how popular are those keywords in any given category are questions we all ask. Without the use of relative keywords in your source code and content of your site, you probably won’t get to far with trying to obtain good page ranks with the search engines. You probably won’t get ranked at all. Relative keywords and keyword phrases are imperative if you want to succeed online.

There are certain recommendations that apply here for choosing the right keywords or phrases for you to accomplish a successful marketing campaign. Getting the right keywords is probably one of the most crucial parts of any campaign you may be involved in. To perform this function effectively, you will spend hours or even a couple of days searching for the right words, putting them in a priority list, using other research sources, figuring out what your competition is using for their good page rank and more. However, without this step of the process being very precise in it’s final format, you may spend an incredible amount of time later on. It’s better to spend the time up front than trying to repair the problem later on.

After you’ve made a long and detailed list of the keywords you feel best describes your business opportunity, then start narrowing that list down to the most targeted keywords that apply to what your web site is all about. The goal here is to laser focus your keywords to best describe your site and gain top page ranks with the top search engines. If doesn’t make a difference whether you like Google, Yahoo or MSN, the keywords will be what each of these engines are looking at.

If you have several competitors that uses some of the keywords you’ve chosen, your journey to top position with the search engines may be difficult to achieve. Don’t get discouraged here, even though you may have to work a bit harder you can still accomplish your goals if you try hard enough. There is only one top position on any search term you look for, however, getting a ranking on page one is fantastic, page two being good, or page three just fair, you can possibly get some better positions with less popular keywords or keyword phrases. Remember, keywords are critical for success and the end result is well worth the efforts put forth in this vital part of the search engine optimization process.

Many sites with lower page ranks can get high traffic from the search engines. Like anything else….the higher you rank the farther you can fall. Sure I love the page one, position one with the search engines, but I have learned to be content with a lower page ranking and by working hard, keeping a presence on page one with maybe two or three positions on the first page.

To give you an example…this morning like every other morning I checked to see where I stand on Google for a particular keyword phrases I started promoting about 4 months ago. It is a very competitive keyword phrase. Out of 375 million listing showing….my primary business site was NOT #1….Bummer Right? Not necessarily….because one of my 3rd level domain sites was Page #1…position #1 on google….in position #5 was an article I wrote a couple of months ago and in position # 8 was one of my blogs I post to everyday…..What? Three page ranks for my opportunity on page #1 of Google! All of these page #l ranking positions was pointing to my primary business with links from each of these sites. I think you’re beginning to see the point here. I got a Gold…a Silver…and a Bronze Medal, all in the same day. Sure a #1 position with my primary business would have been great, but tell me which scenario will give me the most online exposure when promoting my business opportunity. I think the answer is obvious.

The key here is to be persistent. Every single day I write at least one article linking to my primary business opportunity. I post that article on numerous blogs, hand index the URLs to the search engines and promote the my information in various other venues using the intenet as my only source of promoting. Folks, I’m just a retired country boy that does the same process over and over everyday with new keyword rich content in articles sharing information about how to promote an online business. If I can be successful online, so can you if your put forth the effort to learn the process and be willing to do whatever it takes to do it right.

Learning how to search for the best keywords and taking the time to use those keywords in my writings has been a never ending challenge but well worth the rewards that it affords. You to can earn “Top Positions in Google” and other search engines by following the process we’ve been talking about here today. If you don’t know how to do this process, then buckle down and do some research about this crucial process of finding the right keywords before you just throw something out there on the internet regarding your opportunity.

Finding the right keywords or keyword phrases for your web site is a never ending process. Just because you thought up some cute words you think might work, won’t really matter, if no one is searching for that particular keyword or phrase. It is recommended that you take some time and do a search of your own, on some keywords for a specific product or service of interest. Let’s say, you are interested in a new cat….just searching the keyword “cat” is going to give you an overall query reply of millions of results. You can narrow the search to “black cats”, and your search results will be considerably less. If you would search for “bobtail black cats” your results would be even less.

The point here is to use terms that the everyday individual person searching for a specific item, can narrow that search down to maybe a few thousand in their query results. Choosing the right key words, you can optimize your search engine optimization campaigns to exactly what people are looking for. You may get fewer leads, however, the leads you do get, are going to be a premium quality lead for follow up, and possibly a nice sale.

There are numerous ways you can determine which keywords you may want to start with. Compile a list of what you think maybe a nice group of keywords. Now narrow that original list down, to the keywords you think that are really laser focused, describing your business opportunity. Now you can search those terms, and you will possibly find that someone else is already on page one of Google with your keyword. Not a Problem!! View your competitors web site source code, see what keywords they are using to have such a high page rank. Add some of your potential competitions keywords into your list. Do some more research if you’re still not comfortable with your choice of keywords. Make sure you save your original keyword list, because you will probably being changing some of your keywords or keyword phrases sometime in the future. If you’re lucky, you may hit it just right on your first try, however, having a backup list here will save you a lot of time in the future, if you really need to do some changes later on.

If you’re searching some of the most popular ad sense keywords with Google, you may not want to go for some of the higher search words they suggest. You may want to try to gain top positions with the search engines, using some less popular words for now. Once you learn the process and have some of your keywords in good positions, then you can start experimenting with the more popular words and phrases. Dream High….but, not to high. Once you gain page rank….then add a popular keyword in your source code every now and then. Try to keep the total character count, in your keyword section of your source code, to about 300-500 characters.

Your goal here, is to earn “Top Positions on Google” and some of the other fine search engines. Page one is the goal of every one out there on the internet, so it’s going to take a lot of hard work, fine tuning and writing those keyword rich articles and point some links to your business opportunity web site every single day. By following this process you should gain popularity with the search engines rather quickly.

Don’t believe for a minute, that all of the good keywords and keyword phrases are already taken. With hard work and fine tuning to your site, you may be able to gain those top spots from your competitors. Some of the low volume keywords can be just as effective as some of the most popular words. Add your touch of genius to a keyword, and make it a powerful keyword phrase. Never get discouraged. Just a word of encouragement here, If I can do it, so can you.

There are some tools available online that may help you with this ongoing task of finding good keywords. This author doesn’t recommend or endorse any particular tool here. Search the internet and see if there is one or more tools that you can incorporate into your own arsenal of marketing tools, to help you with this ongoing task.

As you may already know, keywords are an essential part of search engine optimization (SEO). And the usual approach recommended to finding the right keywords to target with one’s site involves the ideas of demand, supply and KEI (and/or CID). I would like to propose that one thing is missing in this research approach.

What is missing is a consequence of one of the major advantages of the Internet. Let me explain… When I use the Internet to look for information, or software,… I don’t care about what country is hosting the site, nor do I care about the nationality of the owner of the site. I am only concerned about finding what I am after. So, for me, when I use the Internet, the fact that the world is made up of countries is not something I think about, nor is it an issue because the Internet has in some ways effectively removed the existence of country borders.

Yet, it is this very positive aspect of the Internet that, I believe, leads us to perform incomplete keywords research when we look for keywords to target with our site.

You see, while the Internet has helped us forget about the existence of countries, when it comes to keywords, we must not forget that the world is made up of countries. The reason for this is that the demand for keywords can be country specific. This means that a keyword in high demand in one country, may not be in the same demand in another country. And in some cases, a keyword in demand in one country will not be in demand anywhere else.

To illustrate this idea, consider the following demand numbers for the stated keywords, as reported by Overture (the research being done in June 2005).

Using the keyword “keyword”,

- Australia: 669

- Canada: 17

- United Kingdom: 10,770

- USA: 125,177

Another example, looking at the keyword “meta tag”,

- Australia: 127

- Canada: 15

- United Kingdom: 2,653

- USA: 10,851

And still another example, looking at the keyword “meta keyword”,

- Australia: 10

- Canada: 0

- United Kingdom: 57

- USA: 552

If you had a web site that dealt with SEO and you were looking for keywords to target, then surely the above results would prove interesting. For example, you could see which of the 4 countries above had an interest in what your web site is about. This in turn would tell you which countries you should target, and which you could safely ignore.

In case you are wondering how we obtained the above results… We did some basic research at the Overture site and found that it wasn’t all that difficult to do. We also found that Overture provides the demand data in 19 countries around the world, covering Europe, Asia, North America, South America and Australasia. We need to point out that some areas were better represented than others. South America, for example, is represented by 1 country only, while Europe is covered by 11.

By going to the Overture site, anyone can likewise discover how to use Overture to research the demand for keywords in any of the 19 countries it supports.