Understanding Keywords

Keywords are the foundation of your search marketing account and help lead customers to your website. The keywords you select can have an impact on future traffic and sales.

Here are some guidelines for choosing keywords:

1.) Look for keywords on your own web site.
Think like a customer and pick the words that your customers might be searching on to find you.

2.) Use one of our keyword suggestion tools.
Click the “Add Keywords” link in your account for helpful suggestions. This feature provides three easy options that can help you generate keyword ideas: “Quick Add,” “Choose from List” and “Research Keywords.”

3.) Think about keywords that attract customers at each stage of the buying cycle.
The buying cycle has three major phases: research, shopping and purchase. The closer someone is to buying, the more specific your keywords should be. For example, customers may search for “guitar” during research, “Fender guitar” while shopping, and “American Standard Fender Telecaster guitar” when they’re ready to purchase.

4.) Pick a mix of broad and specific keywords.
Keep in mind that using more generic keywords, like “guitar,” can cause you to go through your budget and may not lead to sales as often, but can be helpful for driving traffic from prospective customers who are in the research phase. Selecting more specific keywords may deliver fewer clicks, but they may be more likely to result in sales.

To begin, I have to say that Search Engines are just like another area in this business (Link lists, TGPs, Pic Post, etc.), whatever area you choose, you have to learn as much as you can about it and then keep trying until you master it. So if you are completely new to Search Engines and don’t know nothing about the way they work, I recommend you to go to Search Engine Watch and read every article explaining how Search Engines work. But after reading about Search Engines you may be a little insecure about what are the right keywords to use.

To find all the related keywords to your main keyword, go to Google and do a search. You will get a list of all the keywords related to the word or words you wrote. At the results page you will see that the number on the left sorts the terms returned from higher to lower. Those are the number of times a search for that specific keyword was done on Google Search. Now you have a list of terms related to your main keyword, so how can you choose the best ones for you? If you are a newbie to Search Engines, you should try to stay away from the top terms and go down to the less searched terms, why? Because those top terms are searched a lot of times and you will find a lot of competition (real good competition) if you try to create pages with good ranking for them.

As a newbie to Search Engines you need to feel like you are having success in what you are doing or you may get disappointed and give up.

If you go for the less searched keywords you have more chances to get good rankings, very good rankings and your confidence will grow up and you will stay working with SEs.

Another tip is that you should select the keywords with at least three words in it because is easier to get good rankings with larger phrases than with short phrases, for example, to get a good ranking for one word: “affiliate” takes a lot of experience while getting good rankings for “mastering affiliate marketing” is much easier. It is true that larger terms get fewer searches but we are trying to balance some hits with good rankings while you build confidence in what you are doing.

The last tip is: it is easier if you go with less general terms. I mean, going for “affiliate” related terms is going to take more hard work than going for “unmastered affiliate” related terms. If you search in Yahoo for “affiliate” you will find 150,000 results while a search for “unmastered affiliate” returns about 12,500 results. The less competition you will have, the easier for you.

Source: Web O is an author over at WebOverDrive.com