How Many Keywords?
Here we are, in the midst of some serious keyword research. We
have gone ahead and created a nice list of keywords we've found
people to be typing into search engines. So now what? Do we
choose three to four of them.. five to eight? How many keywords
should we be targeting? Initial instinct may say either one of
the above ranges is appropriate, but let's ignore our instincts
for a minute and give it some more thought.
Before we go any further please bookmark the following tools
http://www.geekwebtalk.com/tools/keywordresearch/
http://www.geekwebtalk.com/tools/extractor/
http://www.geekwebtalk.com/tools/keyworddirectory/
http://www.geekwebtalk.com/tools/relatedkeyword/
ok now! For this discussion, let's assume our site sells women's
clothing. We have our list and we see that the top 5 searched
for keywords are:
women's clothing - 9,282 women's clothing shop - 3,885 plus size
women's clothing - 638 women's sport clothing - 420 women's
clothing catalog - 322
(Numbers shown are approximate searches per day provided by
Overture)
For our purposes, four out of the five keywords listed relate
well to what we are trying to sell. Our clothing is general
women's clothing so we can remove plus size women's clothing
from the list. So, here we have four keywords that are very
relevant to our sites topic, receive lots of searches and
everything looks just peachy.
So what's the hitch? Well, unless your store name is Macy's,
Wal-Mart or some other big name clothing retailer, you've got
many problems if your strategy is to only target these four
phrases. The biggest one being the amazing amount of competition
you will be facing to achieve top rankings for these words, but
that's not what we're talking about here. Keyword competition is
only one aspect of selecting good keywords. The aspect we're
focusing on today is very simple in concept but for some reason
many people/site owners don't get it or choose to neglect it.
First, let's get some perspective here. The five keywords listed
above, after doing some quick math, bring in an approximate
total of 15,000 searches per day according to Overture's numbers.
9,282 3,885 638 420 + 322 ----- 14,547 total searches per day
That's a lot of potential traffic, IF you rank highly for EACH
one of those phrases. I can tell you now that if you spend the
next 2 years tailoring your website for those phrases alone
you'll be lucky to exist in the top 40 results for all of them
when the 2 years is up. That's a lot of time and work for
mediocre results that will bring maybe .01% of those searches to
your site. If we know anything by now about search habits it's
that users don't like to stray much farther than page one then
they move on to a new search term. Which just so happens to tie
in perfectly with the concept we're about to explain.
Search habits show that a user may initially type "women's
clothing" into a search engine to find what they are looking
for. Once the search is complete and the results are displayed,
they will probably click to a few of the top 5 ranking websites
as well as some of the paid listings. What the user generally
ends up realizing after this process, is that the results being
shown are entirely too vague in nature to find exactly what they
are looking for. So what do they do next? They narrow down their
search of course. Instead of women's clothing they now type in
something like "women's tank tops".
What's this? They're not searching for women's clothing anymore?
Of course they are, but instead of such a broad term as women's
clothing they search for more specific items to get better, more
relevant search results. This process continues until they find
exactly what they are looking for (pink women's tank top with
silver sequins) or give up trying. So, with this knowledge in
mind, let's move on to the concept at hand.
When it comes to your website, what is it that you are actually
trying to sell? Is it women's clothing? Yes. But is that all? I
should hope not. In addition to the overall theme of women's
clothing, you might have women's tank tops, women's jeans,
skirts, shirts, accessories and many other individual products
and categories that exist in the realm of women's clothing. This
is where we get into the 'more keywords' is better idea. Every
product, category and more importantly, page in your website
should be targeting something different. If you have a category
for women's jeans, that page should target women's jeans and two
or three other variations of that search term. If you have a
product within the women's jeans category name seven jeans A
pocket style, that page should be targeting keywords consistent
with seven jeans A pocket style. The goal here is to get
specific with our keywords where appropriate.
Now, you may say, "But when I do my keyword research it shows
hardly any searches for seven jeans A pocket style, so why would
I target that keyword?" Well, regardless of what those numbers
say one can never know for sure every search queried in the
search engines.. So be honest with yourself and think, "If I
wanted a pair of these jeans, what would I type in to Google?"
Me, personally, I'd search for seven jeans A pocket style or A
pocket seven jeans, etc. And chances are my site will rank much
higher for that more specific/less competitive keyword than it
would for something as competitive as women's clothing.
Now, take this concept and apply it to all of your
categories/products/pages and, depending on your inventory,
you'll begin to see why you should be targeting possibly
hundreds of keywords at a time instead of three or four site
wide.
To give us further reason to apply this method to our website,
let's look back to the previous numbers mentioned above. We saw
approximately 15,000 searches a day for the top five women's
clothing searches performed according to Overture. How does at
best, a few searches a day for these very specific terms even
compare? I'll show you.
Using our search term suggestion tool we see approximately 10
searches a day performed for seven A pocket jeans, 45 searches a
day for earl jeans and similar numbers down the line for all of
our specific products and categories.
In the essence of time, let's say on average our specific
keywords get about 20 searches a day each, and we have a list of
120 specific keywords based on our products and categories.
So again, we'll do some quick math. 20 searches per day X 120
keywords = 2,400 searches per day
We can see from these numbers that with high rankings for our
specific keywords we could potentially see 2,400 searches a day
coming to our site. This is by no means 15,000 but the truth is,
you can eventually equal that number of total searches by
expanding your keyword base over time and get much more targeted
traffic in the process. I'll take 2,400 targeted visitors to my
site over 15,000 general searches any day. Remember, the users
searching for women's clothing usually end up modifying their
search to something more specific anyway. So much of that
traffic generated by a search for women's clothing ends up in a
quick visit then a quick click on the back button. Whereas a
user typing in seven jeans A pocket style clicks to your site
and sees exactly what they are looking for.. That type of
traffic is much more likely to end up in a sale, which is the
ultimate goal for all of us.
If we lock down all of our specific products and categories with
high rankings in the search engines we are ensuring that most of
the traffic generated by our optimization efforts is highly
targeted to what our site offers.
Women's clothing is a great theme for your site, and should be
optimized for (we will go over how to do this in another
article).. But as far as sales, rankings and overall targeted
traffic is concerned, we need to spread our reach well beyond
women's clothing to all areas of women's clothing. Make sense?
About The Author
___________________________________________________________
Sydney Adams, Sydney Adams is expert in web development and
search engine optimization. www.GeekWebTalk.com
http://www.geekwebtalk.com/tools/keywordresearch/
http://www.geekwebtalk.com/tools/extractor/
http://www.geekwebtalk.com/tools/keyworddirectory/
http://www.geekwebtalk.com/tools/relatedkeyword
_____________________________________
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