Keywords for Beginners

Do you want your blogs and Web sites to rank well in the search engines? Of course you do. It's essential if you want to make money writing online, or succeed in any type of Internet business or niche marketing. But that won't mean anything unless they place high up in the rankings (somewhere on the first two pages on Google, specifically) for words that are important to your business. This is why you need to understand keyword analysis, which allows you to identify keywords that describe your business and are popular with the public. People who overlook this element usually have sites that don't rank well in search engines. If they do rank, they frequently do so for keywords that no one is looking for. (When sites do rank, the hits they receive are sometimes called organic traffic, because the hits flow naturally from search engines, not from paid ads.)

To give you an example of how keyword analysis works, if a realtor sells townhouses in the Marietta suburb of Atlanta and his Web site is "GreatTownhousesYouWillLove.com," the search engines probably would rank the site well for the search term "great townhouses you will love." This is because those words are in his site name and there is very little competition for that exact phrase. But that wouldn't help him much, because it's doubtful anyone would search for those exact words. And a Web site that ranks highly for search terms that no one is looking for might as well be in Outer Siberia.

To allow the largest number of people to find his site, his keywords must be specific. He could try using the search term "Atlanta Georgia Real Estate," which is somewhat specific and has an average of 130,000 people, per engine, searching for that phrase every month. But a search for "Atlanta Georgia Real Estate" in a major search engine also reveals that there are over five million competing sites.

The same applies to any niche. They can be as diverse as college classes online, Denver dog walking, criminal history background check, online chess lessons, movie reviews, adoption celebration ideas, wedding dresses, free beauty samples and literally millions or maybe even billions of other options. And social media is now entering the fray too. As Facebook becomes more important, people are seeking to be found for Facebook-related searches, such as H2Ooo social emissions at Facebook and please LIKE this page.

Keyword analysis is important regardless of the niche. It's essential to find search terms that accurately describe your business, are frequently searched by the public and don't have too many competing Web sites. For example, if you found a keyword that had several thousand or more people searching for it, and the competing Web sites numbered two million or less, your site probably would rank very well. This is not to say that your site wouldn't rank well if the number of competing Web sites were greater than two million. But to do so, your site would have to have all aspects of Web optimization executed perfectly.

Since the number of key phrases anyone can use on a site before diluting their effectiveness in the search engines is limited, it's critical to focus on words that give you the most impact. But here's where it gets confusing: even search terms that are quite specific to your business can be duds. You might think featuring the phrases "Marietta Georgia real estate" or "Marietta Georgia condos" on "GreatTownhousesYouWillLove.com" would help the site rank highly when people search for townhouses in Marietta. But you'd probably be surprised to know that virtually no one is searching for either of those terms. So, although it's important to be specific with your keywords so you differentiate your site, again, if no one is actually searching for the terms you have on your site, it still won't be found.

To analyze your keywords, you need two tools: a keyword finder program, such as Wordtracker, and any major search engine. (Click here for a list of the major search engines. For the most accurate test, though, use Google.) Wordtracker will display which keywords are being searched for most frequently.

Once you've found keywords that are both relevant to your site and have a significant number of people searching for them, you can use the search engine to find out how many sites are competing with yours. Simply enter the final keywords you've chosen into the search field in the engine, one word or phrase at a time, to see how many sites come up under each term. It's not uncommon for there to be a million or more sites competing for any particular keyword. Don't let that intimidate you. A well-optimized site definitely can rank, which is essential for any Internet business to survive.

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