There are a few common problems with keyword selection:

Some people use their internal corporate catch phrases versus focusing
on what people actually search for.
• Sometimes words have a more commonly used different meaning that
elevates the estimated traffic and competition level without actually
bringing in any more sales. This especially holds true for shortened
words (examples: pics, cams).
• Some people use really generic words that are not very relevant and are
extremely competitive. Optimizing my site for search engine would be a
good example of this. Lots of competition to attain traffic
disinterested in my services.

Keyword Selection is a Balancing Act

You want the words to be descriptive enough for you to qualify the person and
describe your product. You also want the search term to be general enough to be
something that is frequently searched for. The definition of “frequently” changes
depending on industry and the value of a lead, but common sense should help
guide you in finding what keywords are the right ones to target. Sales usually are
far more important than just the quantity of traffic you get. The power of
keywords is in their precise targeting.
Sure you can list well for a really long search term that is present only on your site,
but you want it to be something your prospects are searching for. On the flip side,
it is usually hard to list for a single word such as outsourcing. Selecting keywords is a
balancing act. Most good keywords are two to five words long.
Use your home page to target a primary keyword and use the other pages to target
other keyword phrases. The keyword phrases targeted on each page should also be
terms that describe the contents of that page and terms that are likely to yield
conversions.

Frequently Asked Questions

A great way to find targeted prospects is to find what ideas and concepts are
important to them in the buying cycle. Why do they buy? Why did they choose
you? What are common questions they may have during the buying cycle?
You can create a page focused around each of the common buying questions to
show up in the search results when people are about to buy and are focused on
those ideas. Answer the questions as best you can and then place your ads or call
to action near the answer.

Ignoring Keyword Research? When to

For some pages, like customer support pages, it makes sense to optimize them for
the problems people might have with your products, but you want to make sure
that in the attempts to optimize the pages you do not hurt the readability.

Not every page needs optimized for keywords. Others may be optimized more for
client usability or linkability.
If you can spread a great idea that other people will link to and reference, then that
is a good thing. Sometimes you can get keywords in great article headlines, but if
making the title keyword rich means that few people will link to it, then I suggest
choosing to go with the story that spreads over the story that ranks. You could
always go back and change the title later after the story spreads.

Keyword Suggestion Tools
There are a variety of tools on the web that do a good job of helping you find
which keywords get searched for and how frequently they are searched for. I will
cover a variety of them, although if you use the free SEO Book Keyword Research
tool and the Google AdWords keyword suggestion tool, you probably do not need
to spend money on any of the other tools.
I typically use keyword suggestion tools just to help find common phrases and
common modifiers. I do not look at the search volume numbers on any of them
as being quantitative, just qualitative. This is especially true when you consider that
much of the relevant search traffic is going to be three-, four-, and five-word
queries, and you might not think of which ones may not show up on any of these
tools.

Keyword Intelligence

Keyword Intelligence is HitWise’s keyword research product. It is a bit more
expensive than the other tools with a subscription fee starting at $89 a month.
HitWise partners with Internet service providers and search engines that allow
them to track user behavior of 25 million users. In tracking the behavior and clicks
from various sources, this data is likely to be cleaner than most of the other tools.
Additionally, they track the actual click-through rate of the completed searches to
know what percent of searchers were happy with the results of their search queries.
Having tried Keyword Intelligence, I can say it seems a bit top-heavy (only listing
most of the more generic type terms). The only keyword research tools I usually
use are Google Suggest, Google’s Keyword Tool, my keyword suggestion tool, and
WordTracker. Some of the other tools may be useful, but I get the most value
using all the free tools from the engines and WordTracker. What makes
WordTracker well worth its price is the lateral search and thesaurus features, which
help you think a bit broader about keyword terms.
Another great option for figuring out keywords is to use a broad match Google
campaign and use negative words to filter out obvious bad traffic. As you collect
the various search referrals you can mine that data for deeper keyword sets.

Checking Keyword Competition

Many people will look at the number of pages listed for a phrase and think that that
is a fair estimate of competition level. It is not. That is just a measure of how
many pages have those words somewhere in the content or in links that are
pointing to their pages.
A better measure of competition is to search for keyword A keyword B, as that will
at least give you the number of pages that have that phrase on it. You also can
further target your competition estimation by searching Google for “allintitle:
keyword” “allinanchor: keyword”. Pages that have your keyword phrases in their
title may be optimized and pages that have them in their inbound links stand a
good chance of being fairly well optimized.