Keyword selection and analysis

A few years ago optimizing a web page for search engines meant simply putting keywords into the keyword meta tag in the HEAD content of your web page. However that is no longer the case. Although we still fill the keyword meta tag with the appropriate number of your keywords, Google and some other search engines no longer use that information. While other search engines do use it they now assign it less weight in their page ranking algorithms.

The keywords you choose form a basis for optimizing your web pages and choosing them carefully is a key element in successful search engine marketing. We will work with you to find the best possible keywords for your web pages. When you use both natural search engines as well as pay-per-click search engines you might have two different keywords lists, or perhaps the same list but with different priorities for each keyword.

There are different ways of finding effective keywords. One of the simplest is to find common misspellings of your basic keywords. Another method is to use variants of the stem word, for example plurals, gerunds, or other forms of the keyword. Using keyword phrases rather than individual keywords can be successful. Nearly 50% of all searchers use keyword phrases rather than single words. In constructing keyword phrases we measure the semantic connectivity among the words within the phrase to construct the most effective keyword phrases. Using synonyms of keywords can be another successful keyword strategy as is choosing keywords that, while not synonyms, are related to each other.

Selecting the best keywords is a process of choosing a relevant keyword then analyzing its potential effectiveness. Its potential effectiveness is a comparison of the number of times that keyword is searched for and the number of results that the search produces. The goal is to find a relevant keyword that is searched for frequently but a keyword that has a relatively few associated web pages. This indicates that many people perform searches using that keyword but that they find relatively few web pages. Because there are fewer web pages it is quicker and easier to get a high ranking in the search engine.

The next step in measuring keyword effectiveness is to find the number of visitors who come to your website by searching on that keyword and who ultimately achieve the objective of your website. A particular keyword may bring many visitors to your website, but few "buyers." (There are factors other than the keyword involved, see landing pages and website optimization.) But when your website is optimized for effectiveness and a keyword brings many visitors and few "buyers," that keyword has proven to be ineffective in achieving the goal of the website.



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