Keyword research may be the single most important factor contributing to your online marketing and SEO success. The keywords you select will determine who can and can’t see your site for any given search. Incorporating the right keywords into your content helps increase your online brand presence, drives targeted traffic to your site, affects what search phrases your site ranks for and more. Missing out on important keywords, or putting the wrong keywords on the wrong pages, means missing out on potential clients and customers. If your site isn’t ranking for the right keyword, you might as well be invisible online.

Sites need to choose keywords on a page-by-page basis based on two things. First and foremost, you have to choose keywords that accurately reflect the content on the page. Search engines rank individual pages, not sites as a whole. Secondly, you have to choose keywords based on the intent of your target audience. That is where the buying cycle comes into play.

When a searcher is at the beginning of their buying cycle, they are usually in research mode. They’re just “shopping around,” bouncing from site to site to gather information from numerous sources, which they will use to influence their future purchase. For instance, first time parents might spend a couple weeks researching baby cribs for their new nursery. Who are the big crib manufacturers? How much do their cribs cost? What kind of reviews have their products received? What kind of crib is best for newborns? First time parents have a lot of questions, so they turn to friends, family and the search engines for answers. They might use search phrases like “baby crib styles,” “top rated baby cribs, “nursery furniture” or “nursery design ideas” to get them started. These are informational searches.

Depending on the kind of information someone is looking for, they may or may not be looking to make a quick transition from research to buying. For instance, someone scrolling through Yelp reviews, trying to decide where to eat lunch that day is going to make a quick decision. Someone looking to make a big purchase (like cars, electronics, furniture, etc) might spend more time researching their options.

As consumers move through their buying cycle, then tend to search using more long-tail keywords. Instead of searching for “baby crib,” the first time parents search for “portable folding crib bedding set.” These searchers have a better idea of what they are looking for and are searching for a specific thing. They might search for a company or product by name or include buzz words like “buy” or “order” in their search phrase. As consumers near the end of their buying cycle, your chance for converting them goes up. They are looking to make a final decision.

So what does this all have to do with your keyword research?

You have to decide what kind of visitors you want finding your site, and then put yourself in their mindset when conducting your keyword research. How would you search to find your site? No matter where they are in their buying cycle, a visitor to your site has the potential to convert. You want to make sure they land on the right page for where they are.

For instance, let’s say you own a jewelry store and are looking to build up your engagement ring business. Someone at the beginning of their buying cycle might search for “engagement ring styles.” This person isn’t ready to buy yet; they don’t even know what kind of ring they want. However, just because they aren’t ready to buy, that doesn’t mean you don’t want them finding your site. If you can position your site as a one-stop-source where they can get all the information they want AND make a purchase, you have a better chance of getting them to convert.

However, having them land on your homepage doesn’t answer their search. Your homepage shouldn’t be targeting “engagement ring styles,” but “engagement ring store” instead. That better reflects the content of your homepage. Visitors to your site want to find the information they need quickly, otherwise they’ll leave. If your keywords don’t match up with the content, they may feel like they’ve been tricked into visiting your site.

Instead, create a page of content that focuses on “engagement ring styles” and other related keywords; build an engagement ring guide for soon-to-be fiancés. You can talk about stone cuts, setting, band types and so forth. You want to position your company as the expert in engagement ring styles, there to make the process of selecting the perfect ring much easier. To keep that visitor more involved with your site, you can link from the ring guide to various internal pages of engagement rings you sell, so they can see the finished product and possibly convert.

You want your site to include a variety of keywords that will match up with searches no matter where someone is in their buying cycle. Obviously you want to target those at the end of their buying cycle, since they are more likely to convert. But you shouldn’t forget about those just looking for information. You don’t know how quickly they are hoping to make a decision and you have the opportunity to leave a good impression on them. They may bounce around to a few sites, but ultimately settle back on yours because you were the most helpful throughout the whole process.

Pay per click is no doubt a very effective Internet marketing technique, if properly deployed. It is particularly effective if the right Adwords keyword list is generated and utilized.

I have only indicated Google Adwords here but the same principle applies to other pay per click services such as Microsoft advertising and Yahoo search marketing.

Keyword Matching Options

There are basically four keyword matching options under which keywords or keyword phrases are classified.

These basically are:

Broad Match
Phrase Match
Exact Match
Negative Match

Since these four keyword matching options determine which searches can trigger your ads to appear, they help you predetermine or control which search users see your ads. By applying the appropriate matching options to your keywords, you can also best meet your return on investment (ROI) goals.

I will use “green tea” as an example keyword in this post to illustrate the use of the various match options.

Broad Match

This is the default option. It allows your ad to show on similar phrases and relevant variations. Under this classification, the keywords are normally shown without any punctuation i.e. green tea. With this option, you’ll enjoy more ad impressions, clicks, and conversions but may end up with a lower return on investment (ROI).

If your ad group contained the keyword/keyword phrase ‘green tea’, your ad would be triggered to appear when a user’s search term contained either or both words (’green’ and ‘tea’) in any order, and possibly along with other terms. Your ads could also show for singular/plural forms, synonyms, and other relevant variations of the keyword ‘green tea’.

Your ads may, for example, show on searches for:

green
tea
buy green tea
decaffeinated green tea
oolong tea
black tea
rooibus tea
free green tea

It can be seen that the targeting is wide and may be off mark and not meet the user’s and indeed the advertiser’s intention.

To mitigate the unnecessary advertising costs that may ordinarily accrue when this match option is adopted, you can use it in conjunction with ‘negative match’ which is explained below.

You have to be careful when setting up your pay per click campaigns because many newbie Internet marketers out of ignorance, start out accumulating a huge pay per click bill by just inserting their keywords without any punctuation which is the default and represents “broad match” even though their intention is for more narrow searches.

Phrase Match

Using this match type, your ad will show for searches that match the exact phrase. In other words, your ad would be eligible to appear when a user searches on the phrase you have specified, with the words in that order. It can also appear for searches that contain other terms as long as it includes the exact phrase you’ve specified. It is more targeted than broad match, but less targeted than exact match.

Under this classification, the keywords are normally shown in quotes i.e. “green tea”. With this option, you’ll generally enjoy more ad impressions, clicks, and conversions than under the “Exact Match” option but generally less than under the “Broad Match” option. You may end up with a lower return on investment (ROI) than under the “Exact Match” option but generally with a higher ROI than using the “Broad Match” option.

Your ads may show on searches for :

decaffeinated green tea
buy green tea
green tea no calories
where to buy green tea
green tea to lose weight

but will not show for searches for :

green decaffeinated tea
tea with green color
decaffeinated tea
oolong tea
rooibus tea

Exact Match

This match type triggers your ad to show for searches that match the exact phrase exclusively.

Under this classification, the keywords are normally shown in brackets i.e. [green tea]. With this option, you’ll generally enjoy less ad impressions, clicks, and conversions than using both the ‘Broad Match’ and ‘Phrase Match’ types but may end up with a higher return on investment (ROI) than for both ‘Broad Match’ and ‘Phrase Match’ types. If you have carefully constituted a comprehensive keyword list, the traffic you are likely to receive may be more targeted to your product or service.

Your ads will be triggered for the search term :

green tea

But not for keywords such as :

decaffeinated green tea
rooibus green tea
oolong tea
buy green tea

Negative Match

This is usually used in conjunction with ‘Broad Match’ keywords. It is used to specify keywords you do not want the customers search query to be triggered for when they search for your ad. This is usually specified with a negative sign before the keyword you do not want your ad to be triggered for.

For example, if your keyword list contains the following :

green tea
-rooibos
-oolong
-caffeinated
-free

Then your ad can be triggered for

green tea
buy green tea
tea
decaffeinated green tea

but will not be triggered for

oolong tea
rooibus tea
caffeinated green tea
free green tea

In conclusion, irrespective of the matching option you use, it’s important to only use keywords that accurately describe your product or service.

A good website builder knows that solid links mean solid rankings, but it’s an ever changing challenge to get them. Learn how to avoid a loss of link juice now.

Links are incredibly important in getting relevant traffic and good position in search results, but links are like any other relationship… they can go sour. Here’s a list of ten reasons why otherwise knowledgeable link builders blow their efforts. Pay attention and don’t fall into any of these traps. As a website builder you have got to get this part right or you are heading for disaster.

1. One Hit Wonder

The worse thing that can happen to websites that stumble onto a source of links or who only rely on one method of building links is for that accident or that plan to actually work. That sounds counter intuitive, but if you convince yourself that only one method is needed, you’re heading for a fall. You need to diversify your efforts and not have all your eggs in one basket.

2. Quantity Not Quality

The link builder who writes an article, spins it and then uses article submission software can easily develop 1,000 links to a web page in no time at all. The only problem is those links will be worth next to nothing. Building links is not just a numbers game. Links gain their value from the value of their source. A single link from a PR 4 is worth 1,000 links from PR 0 websites.

3. Forgetting that the Webmaster is a Human

Email requests for a link that are addressed to “Dear Webmaster” are the first to be deleted. If you want to pitch a website for a backlink take the time to find a name to address the request to.

4. Staying Strictly Digital

If you are an expert in your field don’t be afraid to tell the world… face to face. Volunteer for speaking engagements for your professional organization or even your local chamber. The story on their website will inevitably carry a link to yours.

5. Reliance on Black Hat

Black hat tactics will work. Time after time somebody has found a way to manipulate the system and anyone who has used it has experienced short term success. But the success is short term and sometimes comes with penalties that get your web pages de-indexed. Black hat isn’t worth the loss of listing.

6. Failure to Keep Up with the Industry

Link building, like so many aspects of internet marketing is constantly changing. Don’t allow yourself to get complacent. Don’t rely on a strategy that could become ineffective tomorrow. Take an interest in the industry and stay current.

7. No Support Network

This is a real risk for the small business website in more ways than one. You’re not working in a big SEO shop and you can’t stroll over to a colleague and bounce an idea off them. Try to develop a network of talented website builders that you can call on for help and be ready to help them when they call you.

8. Loss of Creative Spark

There’s more than one way to skin this link cat. Keep your mind open to creative ways to get other quality websites to link to yours. Doing something that is newsworthy for your industry is a sure way to get relevant links back.

9. Building the Perfect Link that Doesn’t Get Implemented

Action and consistency are more important than perfection. If you’re one of those people who are afraid to click on the submit button because you think your link request isn’t absolutely perfect, then just get over it. Live wild and click that button. An imperfect link request has more value in building relationships than a perfect request that is never sent.

10. Becoming Lazy

OK you could change lazy with complacent, but it’s the same thing. Link building is a tough skill and not nearly as much fun as website design or even creating content. If you have built a few successful links don’t count on those being around forever. Continue your efforts and you’ll continue to enjoy quality traffic.

Link building is a task that every website builder has to have at least a working knowledge of. If you see yourself slipping into one of these ten common symptoms of link trouble, snap yourself out of it and double up on the building efforts. The leads and conversions that you gain from the relevant links are your reward for diligently performing this important function.

We discussed earlier the first golden rule in keyword research about finding relevant keywords for your niche. Now that we have obtained our relevant keywords, we now proceed to the second golden rule:

Finding High Traffic Keywords

The only time you actually welcome high traffic is if you generate it because of relevant keywords that drove people to your website. It’s a fact that some keywords generate high levels of traffic while other keywords generate low levels of traffic. Receiving little traffic is not enough and is disappointing.

One of the best ways of improving your traffic that will really make a significant difference is by using the Market Samurai keyword tool.

Let’s discover how this works.

When you enter a word or phrase in the search engine box of Google, for example, it will then generate page results that will display related articles to your chosen keyword or phrase. Generally, a high percentage of people will choose to explore the website ranked number one. A smaller percentage of people will choose to explore the number two ranked website and so on.

According to Market Samurai, the average breakdown of these percentages is as follows:

The number 1 ranked website receives 42% of clicks

The number 2 ranked website receives 12% of clicks

The number 3 ranked website receives 8% of clicks

The number 4 ranked website receives 6% of clicks

The number 5 ranked website receives 5% of clicks

The number 6 ranked website receives 4% of clicks

The number 7 ranked website receives 3% of clicks

And the remaining clicks are shared between all the other sites listed in Google.

Clicks refer to the number of times people actually clicked through your website upon seeing it in the Google page rank results. Clicking through the link will, of course, direct them to your site, ergo, providing traffic. (Just imagine the stark difference in percentages from the number 1 ranked website to number 2. A whopping 30%!)

SEO Traffic

However, lest you get disappointed with a “more or less” results for the traffic you want to achieve and the actual traffic your website is actually getting through your manual efforts, Market Samurai has the nifty tool SEO Traffic (SEOT) which gives you an indication of the maximum daily visitors that the #1 ranked website in Google could potentially receive from each keyword. SEOT features a trends column which provides a visual representation of the monthly traffic trends for each keyword. The graph always provides twelve months of trend information. It is also particularly useful for identifying keywords that are very seasonal.

There are actually easy steps that you could follow in this tool that helps you identify high traffic keywords and are worth targeting:

Set a traffic filter. In SEOT, all you have to do is just click the plus sign (+) next to SEO Traffic and enter a minimum traffic value. The suggested traffic value is 80.

Any keyword or keyword phrases that do not have the potential to deliver at least 80 visitors a day to the number 1 ranked website in Google will be weeded out.

Set a Phrase to Broad match filter of 15%. Also discussed in the first golden rule, this is used to filter out any misleading terms from Google.

Relevant keywords? Check.

High traffic keywords? Check.

What else is in store in keyword research? Find out what’s the third golden rule in the next post!

If you spend a couple hundred bucks on good keyword research software or pay as much as $1,000 to have someone do it for you, you can save yourself thousands. I have clients who have come to me after spending thousands and did not get the results they expected. One that comes to mind was optimizing for the highest search volume rated words and the other one determine the search terms by simply letting the client guess. Both are recipes for disaster.

Keyword research is market research. I can’t stress this enough. And no matter how much you think you know your business, I can adamently tell you that you can’t sit there and guess the best terms for use with your business website. NOTE: I said the best terms. Not the most popular. Keyword research gives you insight into the customer that you have probably never seen in traditional marketing channels.

There are many keyword research tools on the market and for the most part, they all seem to work. That’s mostly because they’re all getting data from the same place. For example, if you type “allintitle:keyword” (substituting the keyword with the one you’re researching), it is possible to determine the number of web pages that use that keyword in the title. Including keywords in the title at least offers a clue that that page is attempting to rnk for that search term. Therefore, that represents some indication of your competition for that keyword. If I just type the same keyword in quotes, Google will tell you how many pages are indexed for that same keyword. If you calculate allintitle/total indexed, you have some index relative to competition for that keyword. The lower the number the better. This is just one of the many competitive parameters you can use to determine if that keyword is something you should be chasing.

This is not all you have to do. You just need to appreciate that there is a lot of information that the search engines will give you relative to your market. Google will even provide search volumes for related keywords used in your market. To find the Google tool to do this, just Google: “Google free Keyword research”. The first organic result will get you to that tool. It’s a pretty cool tool but it doesn’t help you much in the way of correctly targeting competition. Still it’s a good start.

The biggest mistake I see most businesses make, and many SEO firms for that matter is not targeting keywords for which you KNOW you can rank for. I’m not suggesting you choose some really obscure keywords that never get used…anyone with half a brain can make you rank for those. It’s also a devious trick of some less than credible SEO companies. I’m saying that it’s possible for you to rank for keywords associated with your business ONLY IF your keywords deliver on three principles. They are relevant, they produce traffic and they are relatively non-competitive.

There are three factors you need to consider for every keyword. Relevance, volume and competition. A keyword is relevant if your page represents what the visitor is looking for relative to the search. The volume is indicated by the total searches for a keyword. The competition is indicatd by many parameters including those above plus a consideration of the sites in the first page search engine results to see if there is site parity.

Having website parity means that your site carries as much weight as some of the other site in the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages). If you can beat some of the sites in terms of page rank and in-bound links than it is likely that you can optimize to beat at least some of the current sites.

Ultimately, SEO should be a very predictable process. It does not mean you can be guaranteed a first postion but with the right tools you should be able to characterize how difficult a first place position would be to achieve for a particular key word.

I need to start with an analogy to explain the importance of keywords. Your selection of keywords is the ‘heart of your business’ as far as adsense income is determined. The heart, yes the most important organ of your body, not your leg or your wrist, but your heart. If your heart is failing, putting a bandage on your wrist isn’t going to work.

So here is the crunch… If your adsense income has dropped or you need to build an adsense business, then look after your heart. It is the life blood of the system, it pumps the money into your adsense account.

It has taken a few hard lessons for me to understand this principle. This is how I felt the pump, pump, pump send a light bulb moment to my brain. It started when the town I live in lost the internet connection. Phew… I’m sure that everyone has lost a connection for as little as ten minutes and thought their world had ended. But I lost the internet connection for three days. I got on with other stuff as you do, but what I did do is re-read some of the books I had purchased.

Of course, years on from getting more knowledge, to re-read an ebook generally is boring; and most of it was, but I kept stumbling, pausing and contemplating on the keyword section of the ebooks. If keywords are the heart of a business you need to dedicate more time and effort to keep them healthy.

If you are starting out, use the system below. If you already have adsense websites and the income has dropped, you need to be aware that trends change and the keyword you chose a year ago may not be the major one being searched for today. Go through this procedure and add another 250 pages.

We all use the keyword tools available and knock up a 5,000 keyword list in half an hour, spend another hour sifting through and choosing our prime keywords. That’s it we’re done. But… would you take an hour and a half to mould and create a heart and expect to live beyond a few months?

Once your website is up and running, I would guess you must spend 2 or 3 hours a day trying to get traffic to your website. This effort could be a little wasted if your keyword choice is hurried.

Here is the best way to choose keywords to maximize your search engine positions. Let’s assume that you need 250 keywords. Up to 50 of those should be first tier. These should include all the main associated keywords and most important should be ‘high’ paying keywords too. These you can check through either the free Google Keyword Tool or through varying software keyword tools.

These first 50 keywords will be the fiercely competed words and as a consequence you’ll not rank very high for them initially. Yet long term, the optimization, the blogs, social networking and bookmarking should help rise those 50 web pages nearer the top of the search rankings.

The other 200 keywords you choose will be ‘long tail keywords’. You may start with a 1,000 to sift through to finish up with 200. First you need to check each keyword separately. Allocate a day to do this, because the effort you put in now will serve you well. The purpose of checking as I’m going to mention is so that you get onto the front page of Google as soon as the search engines crawl your deep inside pages.

The first thing to check is if that long tail keyword gets traffic each month. Between 50 to 500 hits per month is fine for long tail keywords. Above those hits per month and you’ll probably find that too many other websites are competing for that keyword. Below that amount and you may find the quantity of hits vary from a few hits a month to zero hits.

Once you have a selection that meet the first criteria, then you need to check the competing sites. Is there 2,000 or is there 8? To do this you need to put this search query into Google – inurl:my-keywords – replacing my-keywords with your own of course. Use both variations, with dashes separating the words and without dashes. Make a note of the total of competing websites. Once you gone through them all you can make a decision on which keywords are going to get you on the front page of Google.

Even if your web page isn’t optimized too well, if there are only 8 competing websites, you’ll appear on the front page. This will mean a steady but small flow of traffic 50 to 500 hits per month. Multiply that by the sites with long tail keywords and the minimum you could expect, once the search engines have listed the inner pages, is 200 x 50 = 10,000.

There are also other options to consider if you are adding web pages slowly. Use in the Google search box “allintitle: and allinanchor: keyword”. Extra work, but will pay off in the long run.

A reasonable time limit to expect all 250 pages listed in Google, so long as you’ve done the necessary blogging or bookmarking, should be 4 to 6 weeks; it can be done quicker but more work is involved.

Don’t just rely on Google, you’ll need to submit your site to other major engines as well. Plus if you are by chance one of eight on that first Google page, you’ll need to make sure that your description tag is better than all the other tags on that Google page, as they often use that tag to display to content of the site.

10,000 possible hits per month within the first 10 weeks, not bad for a beginner… Realistically if you shared that with the other sites, you may only get 2,000 visitors enter your site per month, but that is still good. Of course… the visitor who clicks your web site link is relatively targeted by this stage and your conversion rate for clicking on adsense ads could be between 10 to 20%. 10% of 2,000 clicks is 200, which could be worth $50 to $200. The day’s work you spent on sifting these keywords has paid for itself. Then you can expect more of the same the following month. As many adsense professionals have 5 to 20 websites, multiply the expected earning by the websites and suddenly you can see the potential, and I may add this is before you start trying to get traffic. Glory days… if you get the job done right.