Internet marketing and search engine optimization hinge on
knowing what keyword or keywords web search surfers are
searching for on the web. By doing extensive keyword analysis
you can zero in on the best keyword terms to use when setting up
pay per click advertising, writing keyword articles, and
optimizing web pages.
Not only is it necessary to know what keywords are searched for
the most but also how many times particular keywords have been
searched. There are a number of effective tools available for
keyword analysis and keyword suggestion.
Yahoo Search Marketing
Yahoo has an excellent tool for helping webmasters and Internet
marketers determine what keywords people are searching for on a
monthly basis. This tool, located at
http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/srch/index.php>http://searc
hmarketing.yahoo.com/srch/index.php is powered by Yahoo
Search Marketing that was previously known as Overture.
Wordtracker
One of the more popular tools for doing keyword research is
Wordtracker. WordTracker can be found at
http://www.wordtracker.com/>http://www.wordtracker.com/.
Keyword results provided by Wordtracker are compiled from
Dogpile and Metacrawler. Wordtracker is not free but with the
ability to do targeted keyword research the results can quickly
pay for the software.
Once you have done some preliminary research you will need to
decide which keywords or keyword phrases to target in your
Internet marketing campaign. It is best to choose keywords that
have a good amount of traffic without too much competition for
placement.
For example, let's say you are marketing a variety of
photography books and you search on photography only to find
that it had more than 1,000,000 searches last month. The
competition for placement with this keyword is probably going to
be pretty tough. Try researching on more targeted phrases such
as nature photography, landscape photography, photography books,
etc.
You will likely find that these terms have less monthly searches
and much less competition. There will be a lower search to
competition ratio. Generally, a keyword with 30,000 to 50,000
monthly searches is going to be one that you can compete for in
terms of placement and being found on the search engines.
Instead of spinning your wheels marketing for those who are
searching for photography instead create multiple campaigns that
market to more targeted keyword phrases.
You can evaluate the search to competition ratio by taking the
number of searchs of a particular keyword and dividing by the
number of web site which return for that keyword when searched.
The higher the number the better. For example, if you have a
keyword that is searched for 100 times in a month and when you
search on that keyword you return 1000 results then the ratio is
100/1000 or 0.10. If you have a keyword that is searched for 100
times but there are 10,000 search return results then the ratio
goes down to 0.01. The larger the ratio the better in terms of
your ability to be competitive.
Finding the best keywords to use in your web site promotion is
vital to effectively driving targeted traffic to your web site.
Take the time to find out what people are searching for and your
efforts will pay off in terms of traffic and sales conversion.
About the author:
Brian Pratt is a 47 year old New Zealander with over 10 years
internet experience. He owns a Plug-In Profit site at
http://www.bestrealincome.com. If you would like to build your
own home based business, be sure to visit his site. You can
contact him at brian@bestrealincome.com
