Choosing the Correct Keywords For a Site
In this article, we focus on the correct way of finding out the
keywords for which you should optimize your site for the search
engines. This article will give you the formula for the Keyword
Effectiveness Index (KEI) - a mathematical formula which I have
developed to help you determine which keywords you should be
optimizing your site for.
Step 1: Open your text editor or word processor and write down
all the words and phrases that you might have searched for if
you were looking for a company which offers products and
services similar to yours. For example, suppose your company
organizes packaged tours to Australia. Here's a list of phrases
that I might have searched for if I were planning to make a trip
to Australia:
tourism in Australia travel to Australia travelling in Australia
travel agencies in Australia travelling agencies in Australia
Australian travel agencies
Of course, the keywords that came to your mind may have been
different. But that's not important - the important thing is to
get an initial list of keywords.
You may be wondering why I have not used single word keywords.
Here's why:
Firstly, single word keywords tend to be hyper-competitive. A
search for "tourism" or "travelling" in any search engine will
probably generate hundreds of thousands of pages. While it is
possible that you may get your page in the top 10 for such a
single word keyword, it is quite unlikely.
Secondly, because of the sheer number of pages that single word
searches can throw up, most search engine users have realized
that they can get more relevant pages if they search for phrases
rather than individual words. Statistical research has shown
that most people are now searching for 2 or 3 word phrases
rather than for single words.
Thirdly, single word keywords won't get you targeted traffic.
When people search for "tourism", they are not necessarily
looking for tourist destinations in Australia - they may be
interested in any other country of the world. Even if you got
your site into the top 10 for tourism, you gain nothing from
such visitors. However, when someone searches for "tourism in
Australia", he/she is your potential customer, and hence, it
makes sense for you to try and get a top ranking for your site
for that keyword. Hence, whenever you are trying to generate
keywords, try to be location specific. Try to think of keywords
which apply to the geographic area that your product or service
is designed to serve.
Step 2: Open any spreadsheet program that is installed in your
hard drive. I assume you are using Microsoft Excel. If you are
using some other spreadsheet program, just change the
spreadsheet related procedures outlined here to fit your program.
Create 4 columns - one for the keyword, one for the popularity
of the keyword, one for the number of sites that appear in
AltaVista for that keyword and the last for something I call the
Keyword Effectiveness Index (don't worry - I'll explain what KEI
means later on). In order to ensure that you can follow what I
am saying, I recommend that you add the following column headers
to the first four columns of the first row of your spreadsheet:
Keyword Popularity No. of Competitors KEI
In case you don't want to take the trouble of creating your own
spreadsheet, download the keywords.zip file from
http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/t.cgi?4901&download.htm The file
contains a sample spreadsheet in Excel 97 format.
Step 3: A great way to obtain a list of keywords related to the
ones you have developed in the first step is to use
WordTracker's keyword generation service by going to
http://the-easy-way.com/wordtracker.html Click on the "Trial"
option at the top of the site. In the page that appears, type in
your name and email address and click on the "Start the trial
>>" button. In the next page, click on "Click here to start the
trial". In the next page, type in the first keyword that you
developed in Step 1, i.e. "tourism in Australia", in the text
box. Click on the "Proceed >>" button.
Step 4: In the next page, WordTracker will display a list of
keywords related to the keyword that you had typed in. (Just
scroll down the left pane to see the keywords). Now, click on
the first keyword in the left pane which is applicable for your
site. In the right pane, WordTracker will show a list of
keywords which contain the keyword you had clicked on in the
left pane. Then in the table that you have created in your
spreadsheet, copy each of the keywords in the right pane and
paste them in the first column of the table. Also, copy the
number of times those keywords have been used (i.e. the figure
present in the Count column in WordTracker) and paste them in
the second column. In order to ensure that you can follow me,
make sure that you type the first keyword in the second row of
your spreadsheet. Of course, you should only bother adding a
keyword to your spreadsheet if it is applicable for your site.
Once you have added all the keywords in the right pane which are
applicable for your site, click on the next keyword in the left
pane which is applicable for your site. Once again, WordTracker
will display a list of keywords in the right pane which contain
the keyword you had clicked on in the left pane. Again, copy the
keywords in the right pane which are applicable for your site
and paste them in the first column of your spreadsheet. Also,
copy the figures present in the Count column and paste them in
the second column beside the corresponding keywords. Repeat this
process for each of the keywords in the left pane.
Step 5: Once you have finished with all the keywords in the left
pane, press your browser's Back button a number of times until
WordTracker again displays the text box which asks you to type
in a keyword. Type in the second keyword in your original list
(i.e. "travel to Australia"), click on the "Proceed >>" button
and repeat Step 4. Do this for each of the keywords that you
developed in Step 1.
Step 6: Go to AltaVista. Search for the first keyword that is
present in your spreadsheet using exact match search (i.e. you
should wrap the keyword in quotes, i.e. you should type a
quotation mark before typing the keyword and a quotation mark
after typing it). AltaVista will return the number of sites
which are relevant to that keyword. Add this number to the third
column of the spreadsheet in the same row in which the keyword
is present. Repeat this process for each of the keywords present
in your spreadsheet. Once you have done that, your first column
will contain the keywords, your second column will show the
popularity of the keywords and your third column will contain
the number of sites you are competing against to get a high
ranking for those keywords.
Now it's time to calculate the KEI!
Step 7: The Keyword Effectiveness Index is the square of the
popularity of a keyword multiplied by 1000 and divided by the
number of sites which appear in AltaVista for that keyword. It
is designed to measure which keywords are worth optimizing your
site for. Higher the KEI, better the keyword. How the formula
for the KEI is arrived at is beyond the scope of this article.
If you want to know, send a blank email to
mailto:kei@1stSearchRanking.com
If you had used the spreadsheet file that I created for you (see
Step 2), you won't need to enter the formula for calculating the
KEI yourself. The KEI would be automatically calculated for you
the moment you enter the values in columns 2 and 3. You can go
straight to Step 8.
In case you didn't download the file, here's how you can
calculate the KEI.
I am assuming that you have created the spreadsheet columns in
the way I recommended in Step 3 and that you are using Microsoft
Excel. If you using some other spreadsheet program, you will
need to adjust the formula to the requirements of your
spreadsheet program. Click on cell D2. Type in the following
exactly as it is shown:
=IF(C2<>0,B2^2/C2*1000,B2^2*1000)
Then click on the Copy button to copy the formula, select all
the cells in column 4 which have keywords associated with them
and press the Paste button to paste the formula. The KEI for
each keyword will be displayed.
Step 8: Use your spreadsheet program's Sort feature to sort the
rows in descending order of the KEI. In Excel 97, you would
click on the Data menu, click on the Sort menu item, choose KEI
from the drop-down combo box named "Sort by", click on the
"Descending" option next to it, and then click on OK.
And guess what - that's it! You now know the keywords which you
should optimize your site for. You can now start optimizing your
site one by one for each keyword, starting with the keyword with
the highest KEI. Exactly how many of the keywords you choose to
optimize your site for largely depends on the amount of time
that you can spare from your normal business activities. But
whatever the number of keywords that you target, it obviously
makes sense to go for the most effective keywords first.
Tying up the loose ends:
The number of related keywords that WordTracker displays in the
trial version is limited. In order to get all the keywords which
are related to the keywords you had developed in Step 1, you
would need to subscribe to WordTracker's paid service. We highly
recommend that you do subscribe to WordTracker's paid service as
otherwise, you will miss out on a lot of keywords that can prove
to be extremely valuable to you.