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Free Website Content - Determining Keywords
Determining Keywords
By S. Housley
Determining keywords is a critical step in
web design. If your website and meta tags do not contain
related keywords, web surfers will be unable to find your
website when they conduct searches.
The formula is a little tricky - you will
need to locate terms that are popular and relevant to your
site. These terms may or may not be terms that *you* feel
are relevant terms. The optimal terms in a site should be
terms that a potential customer would use when searching
for a website with your content. In order to achieve success
your website should be optimized with terms and phrases
that are descriptive, related to your content, and which
receive a significant amount of searches. The caveat, of
course, is that you want to find terms and phrases where
there is little competition, so you quickly achieve high
ranking in the important search engines.
relevant + popular with searchers but not
with competitors = success
Markets saturated with other sites competing
for search terms make it difficult to find quality keywords.
Sometimes it is better to optimize for a less popular term,
one that is more targeted at your visitor, as it will likely
have a higher conversion rate than a less specific popular
term. The first step to determining keywords is brainstorming
a list of logical terms and phrases that relate to your
product or offerings. This should be done by a number of
individuals; sometimes people have very different ideas
for search terms and by identifying a variety of people
and their search terms you may tap words that hadn't occurred
to you. There are a number of free and low-cost tools available
online and for download that will allow you to expand and
research terms that have been brainstormed. The results
typically vary with the tools but overall the tools will
assist you in determining where to focus your keyword efforts.
The tools will often assist with pay-per-click engines,
creating expanded, related keywords or phrases that can
be bid on.
In addition to examining log files to see
what terms customers are using to find a website, visit
competitors’ web sites and examine their meta tags for
additional terms, use a thesaurus to find related terms,
include misspellings of keywords in your meta tag keywords,
and optimize for various forms of nouns and verbs, including
tenses and plurals.
Keyword Tools -
KeywordTumbler - KeywordTumbler takes existing keyword
phrases and generates multiple variations, reordering the
words. This allows you to build a large keyword list in
seconds.
http://www.keywordtumbler.com
TheDowser - Overture Keyword Tool, Google Keyword
Sandbox, Keyword Harvester, Google AdWords report analyzer,
Google AdWords optimization tool, log file analyzer, conversion
tracking and optimization tool.
http://www.thedowser.com
WordTracker - Wordtracker helps you
choose the right internet marketing keywords that will help
your search engine placement and ranking. Use Wordtracker
for keyword research. Web marketing is all about search
engine ranking, and that starts with the proper internet
marketing keywords. Get a free keyword report and web site
promotion information!
http://www.wordtracker.com
Keyword Suggestion Tools - A handy
little tool will show you the results of your query from
both Wordtracker and Overture for determining which phrases
are searched most often. Enter a search phrase below to
see how often it's searched for, as well as get suggestions
for alternate (but similar) keywords.
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/
Keyword Ranking Tool - This utility
can be used to check search engines for keyword ranking
and track search engine ranking for your various keywords
over time, which, as you probably know, is critical when
doing search engine optimization.
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/keywords/
Overture Keyword Tool - After entering
a keyword or phrase, Overture provides a list of related
phrases that have been searched on. The tool provides a
count that indicates the number of times the phrase has
been searched on.
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
Topword Tool - Topword Tool is a free
online tool that analyzes a complete web page and counts
keyword occurrences, as well as keyword phrases (number
in brackets), equal to or above that set in the Minimum
Occurrences setting. It supplies a list of keywords and
keyword phrases which are most likely to achieve the highest
rankings on a major search engine. The tool will also analyze
your meta description/keyword and title tags and then, through
color coding, inform you of words/phrases which should be
included. The main use for this tool is checking your optimization
and tweaking existing web sites to rank well.
http://www.abakus-internet-marketing.de/tools/topword.html
Google Suggestion - The Google Suggestion is a new
online tool for webmasters. As you type into the search
box, Google Suggest guesses what you're typing and offers
suggestions in real time. This is similar to Google's "Did
you mean?" feature that offers alternative spellings for
your query after you search, except that it works in real
time. For example, if you type "bass", Google Suggest
might offer a list of refinements that include "bass fishing"
or "bass guitar". Similarly, if you type in only part of
a word, like "progr," Google Suggest might offer you refinements
like "programming", "programming languages", "progesterone",
or "progressive". You can choose one by scrolling up or
down the list with the arrow keys or mouse. The tool provides
a number that indicates the number of searches a specific
word or phrase has had.
http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en
Keyword statistics give webmasters a way to tap into what
is on the minds of Internet consumers. When you can match
your marketing efforts to the various ways people locate
their items of interest on the net, potential customers
will be streamed to your site like ants to a picnic.
About the Author:
Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com
software for creating, editing and publishing RSS feeds
and NotePage, Inc. http://www.notepage.net
a wireless messaging software company.
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This article may be used freely in opt-in
publications and websites, provided that the resource box
is included and the links are active. A courtesy copy of
the issue or a link to any online posting would be greatly
appreciated send an email to sharon@notepage.net
.
Additional articles available for publication available
at http://www.small-business-software.net/free-website-content.htm
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