How to Find Relevant Keywords
If you have your website set up and ready to go, the next thing you will be thinking about is how to get traffic. Finding relevant keywords to optimize your site is the key to a website that generates a lot of traffic. There are many ways to find keywords that are relevant to the theme of your website. So, what comes next?
Finding the Keywords
One method of finding keywords that are specific to your website is to use the Google Keyword Tool. This tool helps you to find the keywords that are used most often to find a service or product. For example, if you have a site that provides Private Label Rights web content such as articles for individuals and companies, you need to use the most relevant keywords you can find to rank your website at the top of the search engine listings.
When people search for this type of service, there are many terms that could be used, however take look at the difference in search volume between two terms that mean basically the same thing. If you use “Ghost Writer” as a keyword term, results show 12,100 searches globally per month for this term. If you use “Freelance Writer” as a search term, results show 135,000 searches globally per month for this term. “Ghostwriter Service” generates only 320 searches globally in a month. Which one would you rather use for your freelance business?
This is just one example of how choosing the correct keywords for your website can make a big difference in the amount of potential traffic you can pull to your site. There are so many words that can describe your business it is hard to know which ones you should use to accomplish your goal. This is why keyword tools are extremely important.
There are several tools available for researching the keywords you need to use for the content on your site. Some tools charge for providing a list of keywords and some are free. The Google Keyword Tool is free. Many offer a free trial, usually about 7 days, and then you must decide whether to keep the service or not. Wordtracker for example, has a free tool to show the keywords used most often, but they only show you the top 100 keywords being searched.
Long Tail Keywords
There are two different types of keywords that are used for searches, which bring up another aspect of finding keywords for your business. There are “long tail keywords” and “short tail keywords”. A long tail keyword is three or more words strung together to describe an item. Using the example above ‘freelance writer needed’ is a long tail keyword. According to Google Keyword Tool this is only searched 880 times a month globally.
The long tail keyword is used more specifically to target markets that are not as competitive as the ones using the short tail keywords. Looking for more precise keywords such as ‘freelance editor’ or ‘freelance proofreader’ or even ‘freelance writer’ will provide more results than the long tail keyword ‘freelance writer needed’.
Finding keywords that will work for your website is not as difficult as it may seem. The important thing is to do the research necessary to find keywords that people use when looking for a product or service. By choosing the proper keywords you will be able to increase the amount of business your website can generate.
When you are first getting started, do your research and choose the keywords you feel are most relevant to your product or service. Use these keywords and monitor them to see how much traffic is generated from the keywords you have chosen. Visit competing websites and take note of the keywords they are using. If it is generating traffic, it is a good keyword.
If you are using keywords that do not seem to pull very much traffic to your site, you will want to search for new keywords. This is a crucial aspect of your business. If you do not use the proper keywords, you will never be ranked high enough in the search engines for anyone to see your business.
Check out the many sources available on the Internet to help you find keywords to optimize your website. When you find the right combination you will begin to generate a large amount of traffic, which will increase your sales. Using the proper keywords is one of the keys to getting your business on the top of the search engine listings.
To Your Success,
Mark Freeman
