Keyword Development; The path to internet success - page 2

by David Harry, 8/11/2006

Factors affecting keyword selection

Relevance

It may seem obvious, but be sure to be relevant. Don't use company branding phrases or phrasing that is not 'simple' in terms of best describing your offerings. Also don't forget to capture niche searches. If you sell only 'gold' jewelry on a certain page, optimize for 'custom gold jewelry' instead of merely 'custom jewelry'. More on 'Phrase building' in a bit.

Competitive analysis

A major issue to consider when choosing your keyword phrase is keyword effectiveness. While there are a few ways of measuring this, I like the KEI (keyword effectiveness index). It is a simple formula that has to main parts. The first is raw number of searches for a given keyword phrase. using a tool such as Overture's 'Keyword Selection Tool, (http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/). It is certainly not the most accurate of tools, but for a beginner it gives a good base-line.
For the second part, head over to a major SE (search engine) such as Google and search the potential term inside of quotations ("search term"). Conversely the 'intile:' operator can be used for a finer scope. At the top of the results you should see 'Results 1-10 of 1 200 000' or something of this nature. This is our competition.

To find the KEI (plenty of software out there for this), we divide the 'searches' by the total 'competition' (KEI= S/C). The resulting number is your KEI. The higher the KEI,
the more viable the KW/P.

The main point is to find viable combinations that can be obtained without major effort and expense. Dig deep and find some hidden jewels.

Phrase building

As I have already mentioned, the term 'keyword' can be a bit misleading. We're really looking to 2-5 word 'phrases'. A 'Key Phrase' really. Considering we have a bit of latitude, look into combining keywords/phrases, I noticed that on my site I had targeted 'Affordable business development' and 'internet business'. So I put them together as ' Affordable internet business development'. It does well for me and I can split it to work on 'keyword density' throughout the page. I get search results on both terms and they work together well marketing wise.

This is much like the 'gold jewelry' example earlier. If you have targeted 'custom jewelry' as well as 'gold jewelry' it makes sense to look into optimizing for 'Custom gold jewelry'. You will find great many uses for this tactic. It does bear fruit.

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