Definition of Keywords

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Definition of Keywords

John Aschoff

[Date: Monday, March 09, 2009] [Viewed: 322] [Comments: 0]
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What Are Search Engine Keywords?

Keywords are what people type into search engines to find a particular product, service or information.

Keywords are the building blocks for optimizing a website, and play a very important role. You will be using your keywords in a variety of ways, including finding your popular keywords, top paying keywords, meta keywords, your link anchor text and description, Title keywords and page content keywords.

This section will discuss the basics of utilizing keywords and how to figure out your best Google keywords, Yahoo keywords and MSN keywords.

Finding Your Most Searched for Keywords:

The first step in optimizing your website, is to research the keywords that apply to your website.

Wordtracker has a free (trial version) keyword suggestion tool.
Go to Wordtracker and type in various keywords that apply to your site. Now you are seeing the most popular keywords related to your website, in a descending manner.
Lets use an example from the real world, to give you an idea of how to utilize your keywords.

Example:
You have a site about a furniture manufacturer.
This furniture manufacturer specializes in unfinished furniture.
They build bookcases, credenzas and cabinets.
Their furniture is made of hardwood and built in the U.S.A.
The furniture style is contemporary.

First, type in 'furniture'(without the quotes).
You will find a wide variety of furniture related keywords.
These are the most popular keywords related to furniture and the search engine keywords that people are using to find your type of service or product.

Now, find the keywords related to our example:
furniture
unfinished furniture
modern furniture
contemporary furniture
furniture manufacturers
unfinished wood furniture

Although not directly, there are other keywords that apply to our example:
bedroom furniture
living room furniture
home furniture
furniture online

Utilizing Our Search Engine Keywords:
Now, lets put our list of keywords into action in a meaningful way.
Combine the keywords together, starting with the most popular keywords first:

furniture, unfinished furniture, modern furniture, contemporary
furniture, furniture manufacturers, unfinished wood furniture,
bedroom furniture, living room furniture, home furniture, furniture online

'contemporary furniture and 'modern furniture' are basically the same, so we should include both

As you have probably noticed, Wordtarcker didn't give us a comprehensive list of all keywords, just a snippet (you have to pay to get the whole list).
So, lets add our other related keywords to the list, even though they are not as popular:

furniture, unfinished furniture, modern furniture, contemporary
furniture, furniture manufacturers, unfinished wood furniture,
bedroom furniture, living room furniture, home furniture, furniture online
bookcases, credenzas, cabinets, hardwood furniture, furniture made in the usa, american made furniture

We have also included 'american made furniture', since it resembles 'made in the usa'.

Now, lets take it a step further.
Now type in our most popular keyword phrase 'unfinished furniture'.
You can see that we have even more related search engine keywords to play with:
unfinished wood furniture
unfinished oak furniture
unfinished bedroom furniture
unfinished furniture online
furniture unfinished
unfinished wooden furniture

Pine is not a hardwood, so we don't need to include 'unfinished pine furniture'.

Now, type in our second most popular keyword phrase 'modern furniture'.
You will see that we have even more keyword phrases to add to our list.

Now you start to get the idea. You can keep going and come up with more, but for our purposes we will stop here and continue.

Lets add all our related keywords so far to our list:
furniture, unfinished furniture, modern furniture, contemporary
furniture, furniture manufacturers, unfinished wood furniture,
bedroom furniture, living room furniture, home furniture, furniture online
bookcases, credenzas, cabinets, hardwood furniture, furniture made in the usa, american made furniture
unfinished wood furniture, unfinished oak furniture, unfinished bedroom furniture, unfinished furniture online, furniture unfinished, unfinished wooden furniture

Great! We have our list of keywords!
Now create your own list of search engine keyword phrases that apply to your site.
You should select keywords that are not only specific to your industry, but also are attainable for good rankings in the search engines. In other words, don't 'shoot for the moon' at first, maybe pick less popular keywords that are still being searched for, but not as competitive.
Use your keyword list as the foundation for optimizing your site.

Article Tags: search engine keywords, meta keywords, popular keywords, top paying keywords, Google keywords

About Author:
John Aschoff has 7 years experience in Website Promotion and search engine optimization services. SEO services include social media optimization, link building, internet reputation management, webpage content writing, press release and article writing and publishing.

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