0 Building Keyword Lists

Building Keyword Lists

The first step in search engine marketing is determining the right keywords for your business. These are the words and phrases your potential customers type in to search engines when they’re looking for the products you sell. They’re also the first thing search engines look for when determining the most relevant web pages to list in search results.

Building an accurate keyword list is critical to the success of your search engine marketing efforts. Successful search engine marketers develop their keyword list first, and then build a single, highly relevant web page for each keyword phrase. 

Types of Keywords  Before you being to create your keyword list, it’s helpful to understand the different types of keywords people use in search engines:

• Generic Keywords – The most basic words used to describe a product or service category, such as “digital camera” and “accountant.” 
  
• Descriptive Keyword Phrases – Generic keywords modified with adjectives to narrow their focus, such as “two mega-pixel digital camera” and “ Seattle accountant.” 
  
• Targeted Keywords – Keywords that apply to one and only one product or service, such as “Coolpix 2100” and “tax accountant.”

As you build your keyword list, it will be important to brainstorm all three types of keywords, as each one has a unique purpose. Generally speaking, home pages are optimized for generic keywords, product category web pages are optimized for descriptive keywords, and individual product pages are optimized for targeted keywords.

Brainstorm To start the keyword selection process, sit down with other people in your company and try to think of a few words and phrases that best describe your site, company, and products. Ask each person to come up with at least 50 keywords – the more the better. If you’re a one-person company, then ask your friends and relatives for help. You may also want to look at your internal search data for keyword ideas. If your web site has internal search functionality, mine that data to uncover phrases your customers use to describe the products or services they are looking for. Most importantly, ask your customers what terms they use when searching for specific products. Getting this feedback from them is crucial, as they will probably have a different, and possibly more accurate, idea of what keywords your potential customers are using.

Get Help Online Also take advantage of free keyword-enhancement tools online. One of the most popular applications available is Yahoo! Search Marketing’s (formerly Overture) Keyword Selector Tool. The tool works as follows: enter your site’s main keywords and phrases into the system. You then receive a list of related search phrases in the order of popularity. The list will tell you how exactly how many people searched on each particular phrase in one month, giving you a clearer idea of what words work and what don’t.

You can take this process an extra step by incorporating fee-based tools like Wordtracker by Rivergold Associates Ltd. Wordtracker works in a similar fashion to Yahoo! Search Marketing’s Keyword Selector Tool, but offers additional options at prices starting at around $7 per day.

Be Descriptive Once you have your initial keyword list in place, expand on it as much as possible by adding descriptive and specific terms to each phrase. Including colors, geography, or location, plus brand names and model numbers will enable customers to find product pages more easily when they conduct searches. The more detail you can provide, the better results you’ll achieve.

Be Relevant One of the most common mistakes people make in brainstorming keywords is including non-relevant keywords. Words such as “weight loss” and “Brittany Spears” may be highly searched, but if they are not relevant to your business, you should not include them in your list. In fact, you can easily be penalized for keyword stuffing by using these words.

Check Your Work Once you have your list in place, ask yourself the following questions:

• Are the keywords and phrases relevant to my business?
• Have I brainstormed all of the descriptive terms?
• Are the page-specific keywords relevant to those pages?
• Are there any pages that are more suitable for a particular phrase than others?
• Is there another way to phrase this term?

Once you’ve verified that these words match your marketing objectives and are the right keywords to target, you need to review the following to make sure that the keywords are actually supported:

• Page titles
• Product titles
• Product description
• Page content

Remember, the keyword selection process is the most critical step in the optimization process, so doing you homework up front can go a long way to ensuring your success. Take advantage of your peers, customers, and online tools at your disposal to make sure you’re not forgetting any critical terms. It’s also important to update your list often, especially when adding new products or services to your site.