WELLNESSEO.com

Search Engine Optimization strategies are critically, if not entirely, dependant on Keywords. A keyword is what is entered into a search engine by a user, that may want to locate a service provider, product or a firm or for that matter, any information he or she is looking for. Hence the process of researching and choosing a keyword will determine your overall Search Engine Marketing Strategy, and this is why keyword research and analysis form the base of Search Engine Marketing.

The best keywords would be keywords that are correctly targeted, high volume and generally provide results where competition is less fierce or is very low.

Choosing the right keywords involves researching your target market or in this case your users. The out come of the research would be the keywords that are generally punched in the search engines by your target market. For e.g. if you are selling health insurance online, the keyword “health insurance” would be ok, “health insurance online” better and “buying health insurance online” would be the ideal keyword.

Why? Well, firstly with the first two keywords, the search results are already crowded and have a lot of competition. Secondly, the first two are generic keywords, research has proved that if a user wants to buy something, he or she will search for the product or service using a well framed and sensible keywords, for e.g. if I stay in Florida and would like to apply for health insurance online I would ideally search for “buying health insurance online in Florida”

Ideally, keyword research involves finding out how many users have searched and are searching for a particular keyword. A very good tool to use here is the Yahoo Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool. This tool generally will tell you how many people have used the keyword for searching something over the Yahoo network. Another such tool would be WordTracker. There are plenty of keyword suggestion tools online, some free and some commercial. Research about these before using them, since some of them may display outdated or in-accurate data.

While selecting the right keywords, another point to keep in mind is the competition level for the particular keyword. Keyword Competition Levels or KCL may be little complicated to determine. Competition level of your keyword plays a very important role, because the more general a keyword the tougher the competition and this is especially true for PPC campaigns.

While short listing keywords, always search for those keywords on Google and Yahoo atleast. Always note the number of sites returned for those keywords and the page ranks of those websites, in a nutshell the first “organic” website(search result) shown on Goolge should have a page rank of 4 or less. Also enter “allintitle: [keyword-phrase]” in the search engine to get more accurate results of your competitors. Yahoo and MSN are important because using them you can check backlinks of the top ranking websites shown by Google for your keyword.

It is generally a good idea to hire keyword analysts to manage keywords for you. Also keep in mind that you may have to change your keywords and keep optimizing your content and keywords on a regular basis.