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
travelling in Australia
travel agencies in Australia
travelling 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 "travelling" 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/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 http://www.wordtracker.com
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,B2^2*1000)
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. We highly recommend that you do subscribe to
WordTracker's paid service as otherwise, you will miss out
on a lot of keywords that can prove to be extremely valuable
to you.
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 newsletter by
going to http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/wsletter.htm
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