Keywords - Tips and Tools for Finding and Using Relevant Keywords

Keywords, keyword phrases, and keyword search are are topics of concern, especially when writing relevant content for an article or other web content.  It is important to use relevant keywords or keyword phrases in order to attract high traffic from the search engines and earn the writer some recognition as well as some adsense money. I'm "learning the ropes" as I go.

Admittedly, keywords and keyword phrasing have been a major concern of mine and sometimes I spend more time searching for relevant keywords than I do writing relevant content. Luckily, I have found some very useful tools in helping me find relevant keywords, which I will share with you shortly, but first I want to discuss what exactly keywords are and how I incorporate them into my articles and web content.

Keywords are an article writers best friend. Keywords are words or phrases that a person would type into a search engine to find relevant content. Successful keywording will drive targeted traffic to your content through the search engines.

Prominence

Make sure to place your keyword or keyword phrase close to the beginning of your content and expecially in the title. It should also be in the first sentence or at the least the first paragraph. Search engines will usually display the title or first sentence in the search results and if your keyword or keyword phrase is not in there it will not get high ranking.

Density

Your keyword or keyword phrase should make up at least 3% but no more than 8% of your total content. This is known as keyword density and is very important as it affects page ranking in almost all search engines.

Frequency

In theory, the more often your keyword or keyword phrase is used through out your content, the more relevance the search engines are likely to place on that keyword and rank your content higher. The trick is not to abuse your keywords and just throw them anywhere. Search engines can determine if keywords are just being stacked to get relevance.

Proximity

Use your kewords through out your content and do not use keywords that have no relevance to your content. Be sure to use them in the first and last paragraphs. Build your content around your keywords and keyword phrases.

Below, I am listing several free tools you can use to research relevant keywords. When you are researching keywords or keyword phrases keep a pad of paper near you and pay close attention to these 3 criteria for relevant keywords:

Number of Searches

This is literally the number of searches per month that a keyword or keyword phrase has been searched for. The higher the number of course means there are a lot of people searching for it. Wrap your keyword or keyword phrase in quotes.  This will give you a more relevant search number for your keywords.

Competition

When you find a keyword or keyword phrase you are considering, type it into a couple of search engines to find out how many results come up. If the reuslts show up in the millions then you can rest assure there is a ton of competition. Type in all of your keyword phrases and write down your results. When you find the lowest amount of results then you have found the phrase that has the least competition.

Profitabillity

Using Google Adword's Traffic estimator you can research how much a keyword is going to cost per click for the advertiser.  Compare this number to the number of searches for you keyword.  This will give you the potential profitablility of that keyword. 

Having relevant content is what will get a higher click through rate (CTR) on your adwords and earn you a decent return.  Increasing CTR will be the topic of my next SEO article.