Choosing the correct keywords for a site
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.
search engine marketing site.
Just fill in your keyword and hit the button, check off the relevant words, click
the button and you get the list of the keywords you should optimize your site with.
Very easy.
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
keyword.zip
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
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.