SUB-Ingredient:
Keyword Building
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Products to Download/Use
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Training Documents (PDF) - Requires Adobe Reader
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Keyword building may seem to most like just a part of Search Engine Optimization, but trust me, it is really much, much more important to that.
Consider for a moment that your site, your product, the whole concept of what you do online must be summed up in a way that a Search Engine understands or it will never have a way to deliver anyone to the places you want them to go. They need things to be condensed into Keywords.
Deep, I know. But bare with me here.
Further, consider that not only the search engines, but everyone online searching for anything at all needs to have the same type of summation, because after using the web for a while we all start thinking “in keywords.”
Therefore, if you don’t know what keywords best represent your online presence or product, you simply aren’t being found.
This all means that no matter what you sell or talk about online, you’ve got to find the right keywords… Not just SOME keywords, but the BEST keywords for your situation, and preferably ALL of the keywords that could fit it as well.
So how do you find them? Phew… There are TONS of software programs and even membership websites designed to do just that for you. The most popular method, Wordtracker, is offering free trials as I write this so you can try them out at your convenience. Better yet, you can try my own personal keyword exploration applicationthat I run here from this server. (Please don’t tell everyone about it or the extra traffic could cost me a bundle!) It’s a great free alternative for ongoing keyword list building, and shows both monthly searches and Google results for a list of terms all in one place.
Before you get carried away with all these toys, don’t forget that keyword list building is only half the answer. You’ve still got to weed down your list by hand in order to ensure that you’ve only got the most relevant keywords left. There are no real shortcuts for that, you have to know your niche and do this completely human task yourself. It simply can’t be automated past putting these lists in a spreadsheet and sorting them.
Luckily, after you know the number of searches and results for each keyword phrase, there won’t be too many left that you have to weed through. This is because a keyword that perfectly describes you that no one is searching for is a pretty worthless keyword. So after sorting your list by best search to result ratios, you shouldn’t have too many to weed out.
How I build and sort my own list
I am currently working on a Camtasia movie to place right here that will walk you through, step-by-step, exactly how I build my own keyword list and sort it for best usage. It will be a real eye-opener to most people how to use these keywords. Unfortunately, it’s taking me longer than anticipated to get it done so please keep checking back with this page for its arrival.
In the meantime, here are the basics:
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Use a program like my Keyword Exploration tool or Wordtracker to build up as large a list as possible on your niche topic. Seriously, the more work you do on this stage, the higher the quality of keywords you’ll get out in the end.
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Export your list to a spreadsheet, like MS-Excel.
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Make a column in it with the function to divide the number of monthly searches by the number of results for that search. For example, if the results are in column B, and the searches are in column C, the MS Excel formula would be “=B2/C2“ for row #2. This outputs a ratio representing how hard it is to dominate the Keyword in Google’s results.
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Sort the whole spreadsheet by that new column, lowest numbers at the top. Hopefully, you should have some zeros, which are your best keywords, after you have manually deleted the non-relevant ones, of course.
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I usually pick a place around .50 to 1.00 in that column, depending on the competitiveness of the niche, to draw a line and look no further for the easy-to-dominate words. After that point, highlight all of the rest of the rows and sort by Number of Searches. (Highest at top)
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All of the top-most-searched keywords, down to around 1000 per month, are important to note, even if you can’t compete for them yet. (Don’t forget to weed these out for non-relative terms as well) You may write articles on these top keywords, as those don’t compete for the same keywords in article directories as your site does in Google.
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If you don’t have any relevant keywords searched above 1000 times per month, then your niche is probably not strong enough to bring you enough traffic. Try broadening your terms to be more general and include your “Parent theme.” (Unless you’re selling platinum-cast yachts & Ferraris, in which case you only need to make one sale per year to be successful.)
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If your remaining keywords, after the ratio line you drew, are still bringing in multiple millions of searches per month, be careful to note the ratio here. The competition is likely to be so strong that you’ll never be able to compete for these terms, even in article directories! Phrases like “Life insurance,” “Viagra” and other high-spammed keywords simply have too many millions of people competing with you offering too many results. In fact, even they don’t compete directly on those words; they’re using sub-sub-sub niches of them like “Discount term life insurance for senior citizens in Idaho,” or “the clinical use of Viagra in test trials at the University of Wisconsin in 1992.” If you feel you must go for such a broad term, make sure that the ratio is no higher than 10. You simply have no control going after anything higher than that unless you’re willing to pay out the nose for a pay-per-click program.
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Anything at all on the list with a ratio higher than 10 can be completely discarded. Yes, I know some go to 10,000 or so, these are completely useless to everyone.
That’s it for now, but as I said I’ll be replacing those 9 steps with a video soon, packed with much more information. Stay tuned.
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