So What Exactly Are Keywords?

In the context of the Web, a keyword is a term that a person enters into a search engine to find specific information. Most people enter search phrases that consists of between two and five words. Such phrases may be called search phrases, keyword phrases, query phrases, or just keywords, but they all generally mean the same thing.

Your most important keywords are those best and most relevant search phrases you want your website listing to be found for on a search results page. Good keyword phrases are specific and descriptive. It is better to have 100 highly-qualified visitors who find your site listed in Google under a specific and particular search phrase than to have 1,000 visitors who find your site listed under a generic search phrase and then aren’t that interested in what you offer once they get to your site.

Important: Your ultimate objective shouldn’t be just to get lots of traffic to your site (although this is important), but instead should be to get a high sales conversion. Having a #1 listing in Google means nothing unless you can convert visitors to your website into satisfied, repeat, paying customers.

The more targeted, the more specific, the more unique your chosen keywords are, the greater the chance that visitors to your site will find what they are looking for. You want a high “click-to-sales” or high “visitors-to-customers” ratio. As such, you need to start thinking like your customers. Determine what it is that they need, what problems they have, and what solutions you can offer to help them.

So how do you determine which keywords are most important and relevant for your website? There are two main methods, as follows:

1. By using an online tool called WordTracker at http://www.wordtracker.com. Do this first and spend time doing it right.

2. By analyzing your website traffic statistics. Do this later over time to validate the results of method 1.

WordTracker is an online tool that finds all possible variations and permutations of search phrases, including synonyms and common misspellings that people have actually entered into search engines to find sites similar to yours. In addition, it will also tell you how many people have actually used that particular search term over the last 60 days and over the last 24 hours. There is no other program currently available that offers this much information. Yes, there are other tools out there, like Overture’s or AdWord’s Keyword Suggestion tools, but they simply aren’t as accurate or as good. For this reason, it is the tool of choice for many search engine optimizers (SEOs) and Internet marketers. Indeed, WordTracker has been one of the better-kept secrets around for increasing traffic to websites by finding out the search habits of people on the Internet.

In addition, you should also make a habit of viewing your site traffic statistics to find out which keywords people are using to find your site. This is usually done after your site has been in operation for a while, and is useful for verifying and validating your WordTracker results. For more information, see Monitoring Your Traffic.