Choosing the correct keywords
for a site
By Sumantra Roy
In this article, we focus on the correct way
of finding out the keywords for which you should optimize your
site for the search engines. This article will give you the
formula for the Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI) - a
mathematical formula which I have developed to help you
determine which keywords you should be optimizing your site for.
Step 1: Open your text editor or word
processor and write down all the words and phrases that you
might have searched for if you were looking for a company which
offers products and services similar to yours. For example,
suppose your company organizes packaged tours to Australia.
Here's a list of phrases that I might have searched for if I
were planning to make a trip to Australia:
tourism in Australia
travel to Australia
traveling in Australia
travel agencies in Australia
traveling agencies in Australia
Australian travel agencies
Of course, the keywords that came to your
mind may have been different. But that's not important - the
important thing is to get an initial list of keywords.
You may be wondering why I have not used
single word keywords. Here's why:
Firstly, single word keywords tend to be
hyper-competitive. A search for "tourism" or
"traveling" in any search engine will probably
generate hundreds of thousands of pages. While it is possible
that you may get your page in the top 10 for such a single word
keyword, it is quite unlikely.
Secondly, because of the sheer number of
pages that single word searches can throw up, most search engine
users have realized that they can get more relevant pages if
they search for phrases rather than individual words.
Statistical research has shown that most people are now
searching for 2 or 3 word phrases rather than for single words.
Thirdly, single word keywords won't get you
targeted traffic. When people search for "tourism",
they are not necessarily looking for tourist destinations in
Australia - they may be interested in any other country of the
world. Even if you got your site into the top 10 for tourism,
you gain nothing from such visitors. However, when someone
searches for "tourism in Australia", he/she is your
potential customer, and hence, it makes sense for you to try and
get a top ranking for your site for that keyword. Hence,
whenever you are trying to generate keywords, try to be location
specific. Try to think of keywords which apply to the geographic
area that your product or service is designed to serve.
Step 2: Open any spreadsheet program that is
installed in your hard drive. I assume you are using Microsoft
Excel. If you are using some other spreadsheet program, just
change the spreadsheet related procedures outlined here to fit
your program.
Create 4 columns - one for the keyword, one
for the popularity of the keyword, one for the number of sites
that appear in AltaVista for that keyword and the last for
something I call the Keyword Effectiveness Index (don't worry -
I'll explain what KEI means later on). In order to ensure that
you can follow what I am saying, I recommend that you add the
following column headers to the first four columns of the first
row of your spreadsheet:
Keyword
Popularity
No. of Competitors
KEI
In case you don't want to take the trouble
of creating your own spreadsheet, download the keywords.zip file
from http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/t.cgi?1039&download.htm
The file contains a sample spreadsheet in Excel 97 format.
Step 3: A great way to obtain a list of
keywords related to the ones you have developed in the first
step is to use WordTracker's keyword generation service by going
to WordTracker.
Click on the "Trial" option at the
top of the site. In the page that appears, type in your name and
email address and click on the "Start the trial
>>" button. In the next page, click on "Click
here to start the trial". In the next page, type in the
first keyword that you developed in Step 1, i.e. "tourism
in Australia", in the text box. Click on the "Proceed
>>" button.
Step 4: In the next page, WordTracker will
display a list of keywords related to the keyword that you had
typed in. (Just scroll down the left pane to see the keywords).
Now, click on the first keyword in the left pane which is
applicable for your site. In the right pane, WordTracker will
show a list of keywords which contain the keyword you had
clicked on in the left pane. Then in the table that you have
created in your spreadsheet, copy each of the keywords in the
right pane and paste them in the first column of the table.
Also, copy the number of times those keywords have been used
(i.e. the figure present in the Count column in WordTracker) and
paste them in the second column. In order to ensure that you can
follow me, make sure that you type the first keyword in the
second row of your spreadsheet. Of course, you should only
bother adding a keyword to your spreadsheet if it is applicable
for your site.
Once you have added all the keywords in the
right pane which are applicable for your site, click on the next
keyword in the left pane which is applicable for your site. Once
again, WordTracker will display a list of keywords in the right
pane which contain the keyword you had clicked on in the left
pane. Again, copy the keywords in the right pane which are
applicable for your site and paste them in the first column of
your spreadsheet. Also, copy the figures present in the Count
column and paste them in the second column beside the
corresponding keywords. Repeat this process for each of the
keywords in the left pane.
Step 5: Once you have finished with all the
keywords in the left pane, press your browser's Back button a
number of times until WordTracker again displays the text box
which asks you to type in a keyword. Type in the second keyword
in your original list (i.e. "travel to Australia"),
click on the "Proceed >>" button and repeat Step
4. Do this for each of the keywords that you developed in Step
1.
Step 6: Go to AltaVista.
Search for the first keyword that is present in your spreadsheet
using exact match search (i.e. you should wrap the keyword in
quotes, i.e. you should type a quotation mark before typing the
keyword and a quotation mark after typing it). AltaVista will
return the number of sites which are relevant to that keyword.
Add this number to the third column of the spreadsheet in the
same row in which the keyword is present. Repeat this process
for each of the keywords present in your spreadsheet. Once you
have done that, your first column will contain the keywords,
your second column will show the popularity of the keywords and
your third column will contain the number of sites you are
competing against to get a high ranking for those keywords.
Now it's time to calculate the KEI!
Step 7: The Keyword Effectiveness Index is
the square of the popularity of a keyword multiplied by 1000 and
divided by the number of sites which appear in AltaVista for
that keyword. It is designed to measure which keywords are worth
optimizing your site for. Higher the KEI, better the keyword.
How the formula for the KEI is arrived at is beyond the scope of
this article. If you want to know, send a blank email to mailto:kei@1stSearchRanking.com
If you had used the spreadsheet file that I
created for you (see Step 2), you won't need to enter the
formula for calculating the KEI yourself. The KEI would be
automatically calculated for you the moment you enter the values
in columns 2 and 3. You can go straight to Step 8.
In case you didn't download the file, here's
how you can calculate the KEI.
I am assuming that you have created the
spreadsheet columns in the way I recommended in Step 3 and that
you are using Microsoft Excel. If you using some other
spreadsheet program, you will need to adjust the formula to the
requirements of your spreadsheet program. Click on cell D2. Type
in the following exactly as it is shown:
=IF(C2<>0,B2^2/C2*1000,0)
Then click on the Copy button to copy the
formula, select all the cells in column 4 which have keywords
associated with them and press the Paste button to paste the
formula. The KEI for each keyword will be displayed.
Step 8: Use your spreadsheet program's Sort
feature to sort the rows in descending order of the KEI. In
Excel 97, you would click on the Data menu, click on the Sort
menu item, choose KEI from the drop-down combo box named
"Sort by", click on the "Descending" option
next to it, and then click on OK.
And guess what - that's it! You now know the
keywords which you should optimize your site for. You can now
start optimizing your site one by one for each keyword, starting
with the keyword with the highest KEI. Exactly how many of the
keywords you choose to optimize your site for largely depends on
the amount of time that you can spare from your normal business
activities. But whatever the number of keywords that you target,
it obviously makes sense to go for the most effective keywords
first.
Tying up the loose ends:
The number of related keywords that
WordTracker displays in the trial version is limited. In order
to get all the keywords which are related to the keywords you
had developed in Step 1, you would need to subscribe to
WordTracker's paid service.
Article by Sumantra Roy. Sumantra is one
of the most respected search engine positioning specialists on
the Internet. To have Sumantra's company place your site at
the top of the search engines, go to http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/
For more advice on how you can take your web
site to the top of the search engines, subscribe to his FREE
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