Web Moves Blog

The right keywords
From the outset, any given web site can look successful: it can be large, have plenty of good, relevant content and was designed in a way to help most users visiting the site. It is also listed in most of the major search engines. But the question is, are there any worthwhile visitors finding the web site? Is it possible that, using a very specific keyword or key phrase they cannot find your site in most of the same search engines? Most likely, the usual answer to that question is an affirmative yes.

More than ever web sites and web pages fail in search engine rankings simply because of bad keyword or key phrase optimization. Now some keyword optimization may have been done at one time or another, but was either done incorrectly or some of the keywords used daily by the real searchers have changed over time. The latter is usually the case.

How to find the right keyword combination
The problem is not using the right keyword and key phrase combinations, the very ones used by the large majority of the potential visitors and customers to any given commercial web site. If you were to make a search for a page on the major search engines with relative, specific keywords, the question is what keyword or key phrase combination would be best to use?

“Keyword and marketing”, “optimize keywords”, “keyword ranking” or what exactly? Now maybe it is that your web users are searching for “search engine keyword placement”? To most people, it’s hard to say. Your first guess could probably be wrong. The simple reason to that is most people do not think alike.

If you are really serious in the careful keyword and key phrase optimization of any commercial web site, what you need is a specialized tool that will tell you exactly the specific keywords and key phrases real day-to-day searchers are using when shopping for the services of any given company. You need a detailed list putting the most frequently used keywords and search queries to really begin any effective and serious keyword and key phrase optimization on any given site.

Free keyword suggestion tools
Some webmasters have been using for quite a while one of the free keyword generator sites available. Some pay-per-click search engines, i.e. search portal companies that effectively sell text ads to various search engines, can in fact provide some suggestions or similar tools for some of their clients.

One that is popular is the Overture suggestion site. They could possibly give you a certain number of alternative keywords or key phrase to the search queries you may have entered into the search form. Some results coming out can at times be misleading or misinterpreted, and generally do not give a true realistic picture of what really takes place in the search engines.

For example, if a person is looking for alternative keywords or search queries to optimize a particular web site, some of the above tools may offer some help. One could assume that, if some keyword or key phrase combinations haven’t been thought of by most of these webmasters, some would be inclined in thinking that those particular queries are probably not worth considering for optimization in the first place. Again, we need to investigate a bit more in the subject. Also, in the world of search engine optimization, one word of advice I would give is to never assume anything.

Over time, search engine optimization experts have found that the search engines are not in a position, to supply you with an ordered list of search engine keywords and key phrases relevant to your particular topic. In certain cases, some of them might tell you what could be some of the most popular search queries this month or the month before. But, generally speaking, this kind of information can be rather misleading for most people and could have an impact in the overall ROI of the site.

The Wordtracker professional search tool
If you are like most people, you might find that searching through various databases half of your typical work day could be very time consuming to say the least. Instead, optimization experts use certain tools such as the Wordtracker portal. Today, Wordtracker is the most popular fee-based keyword and key phrase analyzer on the Internet and is used by most serious search engine optimization professionals.

Wordtracker is based on meta search queries made by ordinary people searching the web everyday, meaning the keyword and key phrase combinations found are much more reliable than the pay-per-click listings generated by the Overture suggestion tool. Over time, we have also found that the data generated is also more objective.

Now the people at Wordtracker know that you should not always rely on the most competitive keyword and search query combinations. These are more or less dictated by large corporations that can afford to allocate much bigger budgets on various search engine marketing and sales campaigns. It might be just as sensible to optimize for less popular key phrases or search terms for your industry. But again, there could be exceptions to the rule.

One other way to look at the subject would be to write several articles on a certain topic that is relevant on that web site and have each article optimized for a certain keyword or key phrase. Just make certain they are truly unique articles so as not to use the same basic text, just simply exchanging a few keyword combinations here and there. Failure to do that could be termed as spamming and is certainly frowned upon by most of the major search engines.

Conclusion
Over time, additional tools will be developed to help people find the delicate balance between the total number of competing web sites for each search engine and the exact popularity of each search terms. It is extremely hard at times to consistently come up with alternative keywords or search queries that may seldom be used by competitors but that are used almost daily by the real searching public.

The idea here is to use a combination of carefully selected keywords and key phrases, some trial and error and view the results over and over until a satisfactory level of ROI and sales is achieved. It is a time-consuming approach, but in the end, one that can make a big difference in the search engine results pages. If your web site is bringing in many targeted visitors and has a high conversion rate, you will generally do well overall. In SEO, the keyword is quality, not quantity.

Author:
Serge Thibodeau of Rank For Sales