subject: Are your keywords helping? [print this page] Are your keywords helping? Are your keywords helping?
Types of keywords for SEO purposes
In previous articles I have discussed that keywords are the foundation of attracting visitors to a website. In order to attract visitors you must know what parties who would be interested in your product or service are typing into a search engine. Only in very rare cases does a potentially interested party type in the exact name of a business or organization. If they know the name, they probably already have the web address.
So you must anticipate what a potentially interested party might type in when searching for an organization like the one being promoted by the website in question. You must also consider all of the possible variations, misspellings, and what traffic volume is associated with the keywords. You should probably also consider how much competition there is for particular keywords.
All of the major search engines provide pretty good keyword research tools, and there are a number of very good premium keyword research tools.
When I am doing keyword research for an organization, one of the first things I like to do is to examine the keywords being used by organizations in the same niche. This gives a very good starter list of keywords to examine for traffic volumes and competition.
When doing keyword research you should also be careful to choose the right type of keywords to optimize your site for.
I consider that there are three basic types of keywords.
1. Browsing keywords
2. Comparison keywords
3. Buying keywords
I hope that it is obvious that the type of keyword that you want focus on if possible are Buying keywords.
Examples are probably in order. If someone types "photography" as their search phrase, I would consider that a Browsing keyword. Typing in "digital camera" would fall into Comparison keywords category. Finally a search phrase like "Olympus Pen E-PL1 12.3 MP" would definitely qualify as a Buying keyword. I hope you can see the differences. We may find buyers in the Browsing and Comparison keywords categories but they will be a much smaller percentage and our conversion rates will suffer.
That does not mean that you should never try to get ranked for Browsing and Comparison keywords. You must simply be aware that your conversions will be lower and that these should not be your initial focus.
I get the following question from many of my customers: "How many keywords should I try to get ranked for?" The only answer I can give them is, stop expanding your keywords when you wish to stop getting new customers.
Of course, when starting with a new customer, you cannot efficiently try to rank for hundreds of keywords at once. So I sit down with my customer after having done some keyword research and we try to find a list of keywords which have adequate search volumes and relatively low competition. These are the first keywords to try to rank for. Ideally, we want to find keywords which are closely aligned with the customers niche as well. From this initial list of keywords, also select a domain name. Having a good Buying keyword in your domain name will help the site rank for that keyword instantly.
After achieving results with a few keywords, go back to the list and expand the keywords associated with the site. When results are achieved, repeat the process. If you can show good results with one or two new Buying keywords each month, in very short order you will see increased traffic to your website. You can then focus more on converting visitors to customers. i will address that in another article.
