Trinh Hieu Trung

Keywords are of primary significance in any SEO or SEM project, but to determine which keywords perform best is always tricky. From a list of hundreds or may be thousands of keywords, that you may have gathered using your favorite Keyword Selection program, it is always a challenge to pick the ones most appropriate for you.

In my opinion, the keywords are of three basic types:
1- The ones you desire for
2- The actual phrases that people type in search boxes
3- The keywords that stimulate searchers for action or in other words which perform Call To Action.

It is important to realize their value and use them the most appropriate ones in each scenario, to maximize your keyword conversions and improve keyword rankings in SERPs. The following point are not worthy in this respect:

1-Consider the Search Volume:

After you have compiled your initial research and gathered tons of keywords, simply log in to Google’s Keyword Selector Tool (my recommendation) or Word Tracker or any other tool that gives you search volume comparison.

Now, put one by one all your keywords or preferably phrases in these tools and note down the search volumes, advertiser completion etc. After the list is compiled you need to arrange it by ascending or descending number of search volume. The ones with negligible search volume or no volume at all should be neglected at this point and you should focus on the ones that have the search volume.

It should be noted that now you have two choices, if you have a big SEO budget or you want to go slow. If you have a big SEO budget just focus on the ones with most search volume and try to optimize your pages for these. If you will place write SEO strategy then you will soon getting visits and with the time your rankings will improve.

Another benefit with High Search Volume Keywords is that they somewhat represent the actual behaviors of people searching online and hence you will have better chances of getting clicks.

2-Consider Advertiser Competition:

Right from the above compiled data you can get another important factor to consider, the Advertiser Competition. Whether you are looking for keywords for organic search optimization or adwords, it is always important to consider the advertiser completion. Higher advertiser completion is a way to judge the actually performing keywords, the keywords that drive conversion. Actually this technique is based on the theory of “following the competitors” the more the competitors the higher the conversion value that keyword/phrase contains.

3-Using Google Analytics:

If you have a relatively old website and you are receiving some traffic , you can quickly identity the keywords that bring you not only the traffic but the traffic that is converting. In Google Analytics segmentation of reports and setting goals is an ideal way to learn the best performing keywords , it works both for Adwords and Organic SERPs. Google has set up a You Tube Channel for this purpose.

4- Be informal:

It is not a good idea to only focus on the keywords related to your product and marketing, rather you should use keywords that include the use of your products, in this way there is a better chance of getting quality traffic and also your rankings in SERPs will be far better due to less number of competitions.

5- Be Informative:

Although people use Internet for shopping but a lot of them do a kind of research before making a purchase. Conscious customers always do some credibility research about the brand and product they are going to buy. Keeping this approach in mind you should also focus on keywords and phrases in your title tags that contain“information” tone. Remember it is the title tag that is first visible to your visitor in SERPs, if you succeed in making visitor believe that you are the best source of information for their desired keywords, you are on the winning edge.

6- Keyword Suggestion Tools use them properly:

Keyword Tools have variety of usage and are often overlooked by newbies. Apart from the keyword search volume there are good Keyword suggestion tools that provide you good alternatives and synonyms for the keywords you are looking for. When using the keywords suggestion tools always remember to do a search volume and competition research as I mentioned before to get only the keywords that convert. SEOMoz has some good tools for this purpose.

7- Understand User Behavior:

MSN ad center has launched good tools that let you calculate the buying intention of the searcher, now whenever you are about to finalize keywords for your products, always remember to calculate what buying intention probability is related to this particular keyword.

8- Consider the Demographics:

It is always important your target and ideal audience. Although anyone can buy anything but there is always a best age group, community, industry etc. related to your niche. When focusing on keyword selection always keep in mind the target audience and use words and synonyms related to that particular group, the more you are accurate in your research the more chances of conversion you have.

9- Do not change keywords too often:

Never change your keywords very often, allow at least six months before you take action to choose the different keywords. Keywords success depends heavily on other factors e.g. It is possible that you have the right keywords in your title and meta but the audience that is getting the results might not be the best one to convert or their may me a market recession related to your niche and although you are getting traffic, conversion might not be enough, but this doesn’t mean your keywords are not good rather it is just a temporary glitch, be patience.

10- Using Analytics Efficiently, Live Monitoring:

Google analytics is not always the best choice for your business there are many other analytic tools that allow you to monitor your website traffic live. And I think it is the very important aspect of analytics. If you are able to see in actual that how your visitors find you in SERPs and what is their response after they see your landing page, I think there is no other better way to find the keywords that really drive conversions.

Keyword rankings and Keyword conversion depend on several other factors e.g. there is an alternate approach known as the “long tail”. Now it is up to your SEO to decide which strategy to adopt.

Source: Mohsin’s blog