subject: Nail down winning keywords: four tips to help people find your web site [print this page] Nail down winning keywords: four tips to help people find your web site
You have a message you want to communicate to the online world. You already know that just setting up a web site isn't a guarantee that people will find it among the millions of sites out there. This article is going to show you how to help people find your site by choosing and using properly targeted keywords. It will help you nail down winning keywords.
1. Get specific
Most of the broad keywords have a lot of competition, or a lot of sites that already target them. Internet users are also getting more savvy about how they search for information. This means that when you target a keyword that addresses a specific topic, the people who enter a search using that keyword are already very interested in your topic. Those are exactly the people you want to find your site. For example, if you wish to sell golf clubs online, you should not attempt to target the keyword "golf clubs." You should instead target a keyword for the specific golf club you are trying to sell. Perhaps it's a putting club made by a specific manufacturer. Your targeted keyword should contain all that information.
2. Research your competition
This simply means you find out how many results a search under a given keyword turns up. Once you have selected your keyword idea, enter it with quotes into Google. After Google runs the search, it will indicate the number of results just under the search box. For example, the keyword "nail down winning keywords" which this article targets turns up zero results. The fewer results the exact keyword phrase turns up when searched, the lower your competition in trying to target that keyword. Aim to choose keywords with fewer than 2,000 results to give your result a good chance of showing up on the top of the search page.
3. Get more ideas
Sometimes it can be difficult to think of specific long tail keywords. If you are stumped, Google Adwords has a great keyword research tool that you can use to generate ideas. You can start by entering your broad keyword ideas and see what additional ideas it generates. For example, typing in the phrase "golf clubs" suggested "left handed golf clubs," "mizuno golf clubs," "ping golf clubs for sale" and 797 other ideas. It becomes much easier to nail down winning keywords when you have some suggestions to look at.
4. Estimate search volume
The above mentioned Google Adwords tool also estimates how many monthly searches each keyword generates. A general rule of thumb is that keywords with high search volumes are also keywords with a lot of competition, but that is not always the case. If you find a high volume keyword that is specific to your message, definitely look it up and see how many results it generates. If it turns out to be a low competition keyword, you have hit the keyword jackpot. The most likely scenario is that you will need to target several low competition, relatively low search volume keywords to start generating traffic to your web site. You can simply add up the search volumes for each keyword you choose to get an idea of how many people will come into contact with your campaign.
It may seem like a daunting task to nail down winning keywords but it's very simple when you break it down into several steps. These steps involve focusing your keywords to specifically match your topic, researching the competition on each keyword, getting additional keyword ideas, and estimating search volume. All of these steps can be done easily using your imagination and readily available online keyword research tools.
