Keywords

  The first thing you need to understand completely is that the keywords that you choose to use on your website is perhaps one of the biggest factors in determining how successful you are online.

Target the right keywords and you'll get a high-quality, ready-to-buy audience, target the wrong keywords, and you'll likely get visitors with only a small percentage of them ready to purchase.

Let's look at the basics of keywords.

What Keywords Are

When someone does a search on the Internet in their favorite search engine, those words and phrases that they type in to the search box are called "keywords".

The reason someone does a search online can be for a variety of purposes:

• Some are simply doing research on a topic.
• Some are simply searching for fun.
• Others are searching to make a purchase and it's this traffic that you want to get to your website.

Why Keywords Are Important

The best way to describe how important keywords are, is to give you an example.

Let's say that you owned an online golf club store.  You sold all kinds of golf clubs, not tees, not gloves, not shoes, just golf clubs.

You've added keywords to your site but even though your site has been online for some time but you're just not seeing the sales you'd like to see.  Not to mention your website isn't sitting anywhere near the top 10 of any search results page.

Chances are, among other things, your site isn't keyword optimized. In other words, the keywords you're using on your site are either too general in nature or aren't focused enough to bring in those buyers you need.

You've optimized already for the following keywords:

• golf
• golf clubs

The reason this may not be getting you into the top search results is that these keywords are not focused enough to drive the kind of traffic you need.

Sure, you'll get a small amount of traffic from the keyword "golf" and the keyword "golf clubs" but when someone enters in these terms into a search engine it could be for a variety of reasons:

• The searcher could be doing research on golf clubs,
• They could be searching to find out how to play golf,
• They could be looking for golf images, golf videos, or any other variation thereof.

A better set of keywords to use for your business would be:

• Ping golf clubs;
• Women's golf clubs;
• Callaway golf clubs;
• Taylor made golf clubs;
• Nike golf clubs;
• left handed golf clubs;
• and so on.

This is because those who are searching on these terms, are specifically looking for a certain kind of golf club.  You know that

A) They aren't searching on how to play golf;

B) They aren't just browsing.

These people know what they're looking for and are looking for someone to supply it for them.

Even better keywords would be:

• Ping G5 golf clubs;
• Ping G10 golf clubs;
• Sumo 2 driver nike golf clubs;
• Titleist left handed golf clubs;

The reason most website owners tend to stick with the more general terms, in this case, golf and golf clubs is because those terms do get a lot more traffic.

As a website owner, and one who is looking to make a profit from their website, these "general" surfers aren't likely to purchase your products.

You need to focus on those keywords and phrases that will drive in targeted, ready to buy, traffic.

You can find out what keywords would work well for your website by doing a little research yourself.  Here are a few resources you can check out:

http://www.NicheBotClassic.com

http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com (free version)

http://www.WordTracker.com (free trial of full version)

http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html

Here's another great tip...

If you want to know whether or not the terms you're choosing for your website have commercial quality, in other words, if the searcher using that term is looking to purchase something, use http://adlab.msn.com/Online-Commercial-Intention/oci.aspx

When you get there, choose the radio button that says "query" then enter in your search terms.  If, for example, we use the keywords "Titleist left handed golf clubs", the tool above will return a percentage, in this case, .97759 which means that there is nearly a 98% chance that the person searching on this term is looking to buy.

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Kristine Wirth offer free SEO tips and advice that are gathered from an online career spanning over 10 years.  You can get these same tips and advice at http://www.SlingBrain.com.  Or by signing up to the SEO Tips & Traffic Advice Newsletter at http://www.slingbrain.com/SlingBrain-SEO-Newsletter.php

Like this article?  You're free to use it on your own site or blog so long as you include the Author's resource box.

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