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.

There are many different ways to find keywords for your website. Some good
keyword ideas are the following:
• Words people would search for to find your product
• Results from data mining your site-level search information if you have
a site-level search.
• Mind map problems your prospective customers may be trying to
solve with your product or service (even if they do not know you exist)
• Keyword tags on competitors’ websites
• Visible page copy on competitors’ websites
• Related search suggestions on large search engines (such as Ask or
Yahoo!)
• Related term suggestions at smaller engines such as Gigablast,
Vivisimo, Become.com, and Snap
• Keyword groupings via tools such as Google Sets or the MSN
clustering technology preview
• Lexical FreeNet: helps find related terms and ideas using a large
database of related terms (this is well beyond the scope of needs for
most people trying to do SEO)
• Tag Cloud: Tag Cloud is a free folksonomy tool showing related terms.
If your product name or brand are related to other common terms in
your market, then you are doing a good job working your brand into
the semantic language. For example, when I search Yahoo! for seo
book, sometimes they show a see also result for seo book aaron.
Sometimes Yahoo! recommends seo book when I search for seo.
• Keyword suggestion tools, which are covered in the next section

Keyword Selection Tips

The goal of keywords is to choose terms that will bring well-targeted traffic to your
website. Each page on your site can be targeted for a few different keyword
phrases. Typically I like to just do about one to two primary phrases and, at most,
two to three secondary phrases.
Overlapping Keyword Phrases
It makes sense to optimize the same page for keyword phrases that share some of
the same words. A page that ranks well for search engine marketing should easily be
able to rank well for professional search engine marketing or search engine marketing services.
Only Use a Few Keyword Phrases per Page
A note of caution–you cannot optimize a page for 20 different keywords. As you
add more keywords to the mix, you lessen the focus of the page. The page can
start to sound robot-created if you optimize for too many terms. Remember that
converting eyeballs is what matters. People are not likely to link to or buy from a
page that reads like rubbish.
Misspelled Keywords
You usually do not want to use misspelled keywords in your body copy or page
title on sites you want to do well long term as they will look somewhat
unprofessional. But a large volume of search queries are misspelled, and that
market is easier to compete in than the core related keywords.
Some sites use “Did you mean…” pages, focusing the page title and heading tag on
the misspelled versions of the keyword and then underneath it say “Oftentimes
Internet searchers searching for xxx misspell the word as blah or blah. If you are
looking for xxx you are in the right place. Learn more about our blah blah blah…”
Search spelling correction will get more sophisticated over time. Search engines
want to correct for misspellings in the search results pages before the users get to
your site. I spoke with a search engine product manager who stated that
misspellings can flag pages for relevancy reviews and usually misspellings for SEO
are not recommended for most websites.
If you are using throw-away domains in competitive environments, then
misspellings might help you get some targeted traffic without requiring as much
effort. Also, if you have a community-driven site, it will naturally include many
misspellings from various bad-spelling authors.
About.com includes “common misspellings” in their page copy in a way that does
not sound or seem spammy. On definition pages they define a word, give its
pronunciation, link to related resources, have a section called “also known as,” and
a section titled “common misspellings.

Many of About.com’s sections are probably more useful to bots than humans, but
they help draw in traffic. Their site is established enough and the format is
legitimate enough that few people question it.
There is no right or wrong way to play misspellings, just risks versus rewards.
Consider your brand strength, your goals, and how legitimate you can make the
misspelling usage look.
As an example of a creative way to play with misspellings, if you want your page to
look professional but want to get misspellings in the page copy, maybe you can
target that keyword on a page with consumer feedback, and leave misspelled
consumer feedback yourself.

Plural Keyword Versions
Some search engines use stemming, but usually the search results for singular and
plural search phrases are at least slightly different. It is recommended that you
optimize for common versions of your popular keywords, while occasionally using
other versions of the words throughout your copy.
Capitalized Keywords
Most major search engines are not case sensitive. Cars is typically treated the same
way as cars.
Hyphenated Keywords
Most search engines treat hyphens as a space. E-mail is different than email. If a
word is split in half by a hyphen then you should check to see which version is
used more frequently and optimize for whatever versions are commonly searched
upon.
If one version of a term is more commonly searched for but is hyper-competitive,
it may make sense to optimize for the less competitive term first.
If a hyphen is sometimes placed between two words, then using either version
(with or without a hyphen) will cause your page to rank better for both versions.
Localized Keyword Research
People use different terminology in different countries. In the U.S., we want taxi
cabs. In London, they look for a car hire. Make sure that if you are not from the
country of your target market, you know what words are commonly used to
describe the products or services you are promoting there. It is typically also
important that your copy sounds local if you are targeting local markets.

What are Keywords?

Keywords are phrases under which you would want your website to be found in
search engines. Keywords are typically two-to-five-word phrases you expect
people to search for to find your website. Oftentimes, corporate climates force
people to refer to things using special phrases. Keywords are not about what you
call your stuff. Keywords are what Joe average surfer (or your prospective site
visitors) may type in a search box.

How do You Learn Best?

Some people learn better from video than from reading text. If you like video, you
may prefer to look at the Dan Thies keyword research video he mentions near the
end of his post on this page:

http://www.seoresearchlabs.com/blog/2005/10/seo-controlling-entry-pages.html

Emarketingperformance also offers a free quality 22 page PDF about keyword
research.

http://www.emarketingperformance.com/download/Keyword%20Research.pdf

Focusing a Keyword

When people tell you to target the word free, they are out of their minds. That
single word is too general and has too much competition. I just did a search on
Yahoo! for free and it returned 749,000,000 results. That is over 10% of the web
trying to use free as a sales pitch.
I am not saying that free should not be on your page; it is a compelling offer on
many of mine. I am saying that keywords should define the product or idea. Free
alone just does not get this done.

Keyword Phrases

If free isn’t a keyword, then what is? Keywords are typically two-to-five-word
phrases you expect people to search for to find your website. What would youexpect people to type in the browser to find your site? If you were looking for
your product, what would you type? What types of problems does your product or
service solve? Those answers are likely good keyword phrases.

Keyword Length

A longer search phrase is typically associated with better targeting and increased
consumer desire. Some people say shorter keyword searchers are shoppers and
longer keyword searchers are buyers.
As you add various relevant descriptive copy to pages, you are more likely to
appear in search results similar to your keywords that do not exactly match your
more generic root-term keywords. Most good keyword phrases are generally two
to five words

Keyword Value Pyramid
One of the most fatal flaws of many SEO campaigns is that people think they need
to rank well for one term or a few generic terms. Generic terms may occasionally
convert, but most strong-converting search terms are specific.
If you read SEO forums you often hear many posts about something like a San
Diego real estate agent no longer ranking for a generic term such as real estate.
Since the term is too generic for most of his target market (and his service would
not be fitting for most people searching for that term), it makes sense that search
engines would not want to show his site in those search results. As search
continues to evolve, it will get better at filtering out untargeted or inappropriate
sites.
Targeting generic terms outside of your area means that you need to use aggressive
techniques to try to rank. There are several problems that can go along with being
too aggressive:
• Targeting exceptionally generic terms may not add much value, since
the leads are not strongly qualified. Paying extra to rank for more
generic terms may not be a cost that is justified unless you can resell
those leads at a profit.
• Being exceptionally aggressive raises your risk profile and makes your
site more likely to fluctuate in rankings when new search algorithms
are rolled out.
• Some of the best value is at the bottom of the keyword pyramid. If
you spend too much time focused too broadly on the top you may
miss some of the exceptional value on the bottom.

Where On the Pyramid Do I Start?

Usually, most sites are designed from the top down, starting with a generic concept
and working their way down through specific topics. Another way to look at the
pyramid concept is to look at where the top of your pyramid should start.
Some people will always start at the top with a term like travel, but in doing that they
have to work a long way down to get to the specific categories. If you are not wellfunded,
that may be impractical.
If you start your pyramid with more specific terms at the top, your site will have a
stronger theme, and it will be easier for you to dominate your niche market. As
your link popularity spreads from the home page, it does not have to go far to
reach Honolulu beach wedding packages if your site is about Hawaii weddings or Honolulu.
I am not suggesting that most webmasters should make hundreds of 3–5 page
websites, but what I am saying is that it is better to have 100 useful pages about
Jamaica than to have 1,000 lower-quality pages about travel in general.

You have to be able to evaluate how competitive your market is, what resources
you have available, and whether you can compete in that market. A large reason
many websites fail is that they are too broad or unfocused. If the top sites in your
industry are Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity, Hotels.com, and other well-known
properties, you need to have a large budget, create something fundamentally
innovative, or look for a better niche opportunity in which you can dominate.
WebmasterWorld has a useful theming thread here

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum34/68.htm

Keyword Density (KD)

Keyword density analyzers end up focusing people on something that is not
important. This causes some people to write content that looks like a robot wrote
it. That type of content will not inspire people to link to it and will not convert
well.
In March of 2005, Dr. Garcia, an information retrieval scientist, wrote an article
about keyword density. His conclusion was “this overall ratio [keyword density]
tells us nothing about:
• the relative distance between keywords in documents (proximity);
• where in a document the terms occur (distribution);
• the co-citation frequency between terms (co-occurrence);
• or the main theme, topic, and sub-topics (on-topic issues) of the
documents.
Thus, KD is divorced from content quality, semantics, and relevancy.”
Later on I will discuss how to structure page content, but it is important to know
that exact keyword density is not an important or useful measure of quality.

Why Focusing on Keyword Density is a Waste of Time

About half of all search queries are unique. Many of the searches that bring visitors
to your sites are for keyword phrases you never would have guessed. If a site is not
well-established, most search traffic will be for long, multiword search phrases.
When webmasters start thinking about keyword density, many of them tend to
remove descriptive modifiers and other semantically-related terms. Since some of
those terms will no longer appear on the page, the “optimized” site no longer ranks
well for many queries.
People write, search, and use language in similar ways. Thus, if you write naturally,
you are going to be far better optimized for long-tail searches than some person
who wastes time on keyword density will be.
If the content sounds like it was designed for engines instead of people, then less
people are going to want to read it or link to it.

Time spent tweaking keyword density would usually be better spent creating
additional useful original content.
Internal-Speak
A major cell phone company refuses to use the terms cellular phone or cell phone
on their site because, in their words, “We don’t just sell analog phones, we sell
digital phones as well. ‘Cellular’ is old technology.” In engineering-speak, ‛cellular
phone’ is a phone that uses ‘cell towers’ to move voice back and forth via analog
frequencies. They didn’t seem to understand that most customers refer to their
mobile phone as a ‘cell phone’ or ‘cellular phone,’ and they don’t give a rip about
the technology that makes the phone work.
Make sure you research how customers search. Do not rely on what the company
prefers to call things.

Create a Baseline

Many web hosts maintain free server logs which show you what pages were most
frequently requested and what keywords people searched for to find them or what
pages site visitors came from. In addition to web hosts, many analytics products
like Google Analytics, Clicktracks, and HaveAMint.com are available for
reasonable prices.
If you run a commercial site you can also use Google AdWords, Yahoo Search
Marketing, and Microsoft AdCenter to buy traffic for your site. If you track what
keywords convert that will help you know what types of keywords you should be
focusing on with your organic SEO campaign.

Rank Checkers

There are a number of free rank checkers and commercial rank checkers
applicatations available (like Agent Web Ranking and Advanced Web Ranking) that
check your rankings for keywords in major search engines.
It is easy to get lost worrying about shifts in rankings, but what matters more is if
your traffic streams are growing as your site matures and you market it.
Some of the major search engines like Google and Microsoft are sharing data with
webmasters about what keywords their sites rank for and what keywords send
traffic to their sites. You can sign up for Google Webmaster Central for a look at
this type of data