Keyword Selection
Dec. 2004 (all links accurate at date of Publishing)
© R-Design, Inc.


After months of setup, planning, designing, and redesigning, your web site is finally live and ready to rake in the cash. In order to fill those money bags, however, you first need to do everything you can to ensure that your would-be customers can find your site. Naturally, this means optimizing your site's content for search engines and the people who use them, which in turn means making frequent use of your site's keywords throughout your content. You have to convey to the search engines (and their users) that your site is about the keywords they're searching for.

But which words are those? How do you know which terms your customers are typing into Google when they look for sites like yours? You can do an impeccable job optimizing for "ballcaps," but that won't do you any good if everyone is searching for "baseball caps."

Though this question can seem daunting, no actual mind reading is required to find the answer. The search engines themselves won't come out and tell you how many people search for particular keywords (that would make it too easy for unscrupulous types to cheat the system) but there are simple tips and tools at your disposal that will put you on the right track.

1. Do It Yourself. The best way to get started is a little simple brainstorming. Without limiting yourself, make a list of any phrases you believe are popular or important, then take those preconceptions and do searches for them in places like MSN, Yahoo and Google. Each of these engines will tell you how many results there were for your search. If "baseball caps" turns up 1.5 million web pages and "ballcaps" turns up 8,000, chances are good "ballcaps" is not a popular enough keyword to optimize for, simply judging by the fact that nobody else seems to think so. This method is also useful for finding out which phrases are too competitive to optimize for; if your keywords turn up 20 million other pages, you may be competing with all 20 million of them for a top listing in that search engine. It might be wiser to direct your resources to another phrase.

2. Play Before You Pay. In addition to the type of search engine listings most people are familiar with, several companies also offer "paid listings" that are basically keyword-based advertisements. Through Yahoo's Overture.com and Google's Adwords program, site marketers can place "ad" links in these search engines for certain keywords. Since no one wants to waste ad money on ads nobody will see, Overture and Google provide prospective advertisers with tools that give them a rough idea how popular those terms are.

Luckily, you may use these tools for free whether you intend to spend money on ads or not. Google's Keyword Sandbox (https://adwords.google.com/select/main?cmd=KeywordSandbox) will offer up all sorts of related terms you may have forgotten about and give you a general idea of the terms' popularity. Overture.com's Keyword Suggestion Tool (http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/) is even more specific, giving you related terms as well as a count of how often each term was searched for in Overture during the previous month.

3. Get Serious. If you like the free tools that Overture and Google provide, you may want to consider doing even more in-depth analysis using Wordtracker.com. Wordtracker maintains a detailed popularity database using data from a number of search engines. It uses that database to calculate a given phrase's competitiveness and feasibility as a search term. Like all good web sites, Wordtracker offers a free trial that will help you determine what your next step will be.

4. It Never Hurts To Ask. You will have all sorts of opportunities to communicate with your customers as your site grows. A vital question to ask in any survey or contact form you send out is, "How did you find us?" A follow-up question about the search engine or keywords your visitors were using will give you valuable insight into which of your efforts are paying off.

5. Don't Panic; Your Site is Fluid. Though choosing keywords is important, don't drive yourself crazy trying to find that one perfect set of keywords that will single-handedly guide your site to prosperity. There is no final, empirically correct answer to which keywords are right for your site, and choosing the wrong ones won't doom you to failure unless you stick with them for a year. As a web site, your content should be in a state of evolution, and your keywords will reflect that.

Brainstorm, try what you think will work best and then reevaluate your efforts in a few months. Keep what's working; change what's not. Using your common sense and the tools listed above, you should be right where your customers can find you in no time.