Many people set up their websites with only a vague idea of how keywords and search engines work.

They say "Wow! I'm on the first page of Google for my Keyword.

But really, it means NOTHING. Let me explain.

Lets say you set up a website about ferrets. You publish your site and eagerly wait for it to come up on the first page of Google when people type “ferret” into a search engine.

You’ll be waiting for ever.

Because there are currently 3,200,000 pages on google that contain the word “ferret”. And there’s very little reason your site should be listed higher than they are.

So you try to think of something that will give you a better chance of getting a higher rank on search engines.

So you make a page about Rex, your performing Ferret, which comes up as the number 1 listing on Google when you type in Rex the performing ferret. But you’re still not getting any visitors.

This is a classic case of why being number 1 on google for a search term means NOTHING if the only person in the world searching for it is YOU.

The “Long Tail”

A search can be made more accurate by using more words. Often, the term “Long Tail” is used for a keyword search of more than one word.

For example, “Ferret” is a keyword. People search for this term 74,000 times a month. Long tail keywords usually have less searches, but are much more specific:

• “How To Train a Ferret” has 480 searches a month

• “Ferrets as pets” has 1600 searches a month

• “Ferret Diseases” has 590 searches a month

• “Ferret Foods” has 390 searches a month

There are often thousands of long tail keyword phrases for ANY topic. So a bit of research is definitely worthwhile.

The Keyword game

Success on Google is a balancing act between finding a search term that is used by a lot of people, and at the same time not being used to optimise too many other websites.

Google is in the business of trying to provide people with exactly the content they are seeking when a search term is typed into their browser. They have developed VERY sophisticated ways of matching up the content of a page with a search request, and most times when you search on google the top few results will contain the information you are seeking.

In general, if a search term appears in the title of a page, the description of a page, the address of a page, and the content of a page, Google will assume that the page is relevant to the search term, and will rank it higher for that term. If other reputable websites link to the page as well, this improves the ranking even more.

Using your keywords in this manner is called “Search Engine Optimisation”, or more often just optimisation. (But be careful not to overdo it – because there’s a fine line between optimisation and spamming – in which case Google will ignore your page, and send it to the bottom of the listings.)

Finding Keywords – Step 1

Up until quite recently, the selection of keywords pretty much a trial and error thing. However the release of Goggle’s Adwords keyword tool has made the process of selecting keywords a lot more accurate. See https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

This tool gives you the actual number of times a term has been searched for on google in the last month, and it gives lots of suggested alternatives to the term you put in.

So at last, you can get accurate information on the actual terms that people are typing into their browsers when they are searching for something on Google.

Finding Keywords – Step 2.

Finding out how often a keyword is searched for is important, and many people who practice keyword analysis don’t go any further with their keyword analysis.

This is a huge mistake, as the number of searches is only the FIRST part of an effective analysis of which keywords to use on your website.

The second part is finding out how many other people are using those keywords on their websites, and how effectively they are using them.

The keyword “ferret” (74,000 searches a month) appears on 9,530,000 web pages, on 8,100,000 web anchor links, in the title of 520,000 web pages, and in the address of 524,000 web pages. So although there are lots of searches for the word, anyone who wanted to be on the first page of Google for “ferret” would find it EXTREMELY difficult and time consuming.

Now consider the keyword “ferrets as pets” (1600 searches a month). It appears on 28,000 web pages, on 25,100 web anchor links, in the title of 324 web pages, and in the address of 544 web pages. So if you wanted to attract people to your website, you would have a MUCH easier task if you wrote a page about keeping ferrets as pets, and optimising your page accordingly.

So it’s important to know how many times a keyword is searched for, but this is not sufficient to decide whether to use it to optimise a web page. You also need to know about how many other websites are using that keyword, and whether they are using it effectively.

Determining the Effectiveness of Keywords:

There are many factors involved in determining whether you should try to optimise a web page for a given keyword, but the ones discussed above will let you find good ones.

You need to consider these 5 things to greatly improve your chances of a high search engine ranking.

1. Number of Searches made (obtained from Google)

2. Number of pages containing the keyword (Obtained from Google, by putting the search term in quotation marks in a Google search)

3. The number of times the search term appears in web page titles (intitle) *

4. The number of times the search term appears in web page anchor text (inanchor) *

5. The number of times the search term appears in web page names (inurl) *

* (See http://www.googleguide.com/advanced_operators.html for how to use these special google operators.)

Ideally, you want a high number of searches, and a low number for the other indicators. The exact numbers that will be effective will vary according to the situation.

For a high volume marketing campaign, less than 1 million searches a month may not be worthwhile. But for high margin specialist products, as few as 50 searches a month could be very effective.

Analysis of Keywords

It’s possible to do the above keyword research manually, but it is very time consuming.

I use a program into which I put the basic keyword and it gets everything else from Google, puts it into a chart, and allows me to quickly evaluate hundreds of keyword choices very rapidly.

You can find out more about it at www.micro-nichefinder.com

How Many Home Pages are there on your website?

The old concept of having a main home page, and then links to many other subsidiary pages to find what you want was the traditional way of building a website.

So if someone was searching for “ferrets as pets”, the link would take them to the homepge of a ferret site, where they had to hunt around – possibly through several layers of menus – to eventually find a page about having ferrets as pets.

However, the increased power and effectiveness of search engines and websites mean that people expect to put a term into a search engine, click on one of the results, and start reading about exactly what they want to see. So they’d expect to land exactly on a page that discusses the topic of having a ferret as a pet.

This means that the selection of keywords, and writing content that precisely addresses that keyword, is vitally important. So you should be constructing your site as if ANY page of your site is effective as your home page – with links, information, and contact details.

In many cases, this may mean that you just about have to construct a separate page for every keyword. This is very difficult if your website is a traditional static type of site that has been created for you by a developer – but very simple if you are using a Wordpress blogging platform as your website.