Ninety nine out of one hundred marketers will never make a cent online and you won’t either unless you understand; What Are Keywords and Why are Keywords So Important? 

You may have the most beautiful website in the world, but humans don’t rule the Internet, search engines do and they don’t have eyeballs. Search engines are computer programs and don’t have “opinions” of the websites they read. They simply read the information, analyze it, and add it to their list. Where the site ends up on that list is determined by how the search engines interpret the words on the page. In order to rank high on the search engines you must have the keywords the search engines are looking for.

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When building a website, imagine that you are cooking a meal; the keywords are the main ingredients. You need to do keyword research before you choose a domain name, structure a site, or build content.

Top Internet marketers know you must give the search engines the right clues or “keywords” so they can determine what your website is about. Keyword research should be done to find out what words will be used by online visitors searching for information or products being sold on your site. A great free tool used to generate ideas for your keywords list is the Google AdWords Keyword Tool www.google.com/adwords/keywordtool.

For example, let’s say you are a Marketing Consultant who lives in Orange County, CA. When building your website and creating a keyword list, the first logical choice would be “marketing consultant.” However this keyword would not be smart. While it is true last month (June 2009) there were 165,000 searches on Google for “marketing consultant,” but there are also 1,430,000 directly competing. We don’t want to use the keyword phrase “marketing consultant” because there is too much competition.

Instead of “marketing consultant” consider using a broader search phrase like “marketing consultant orange county.” There were 720 searches last month on Google and 63,500 directly competing sites. Still high, but this keyword is more focused on our niche.

***To find out who we are “directly competing” against, type in “allinanchor: THEN KEYWORD.”  For example, allinanchor: marketing agency orange county.

Here are 17 Tips to Finding the Best Keywords For Your Site

1.      Use Google AdWords Keyword Tool www.google.com/adwords/keywordtool to analyze the number of monthly searches, related keywords, competition, cost per click (CPC), etc.

2.      Get inspiration from the competition. To find the keywords your competition is using, go to  https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal  and click WEBSITE CONTENT  then type in the URL of the competing site.

3.      Know your target audience. What do you think they are searching for? Try to put yourself in their shoes.

4.      Focus on long tailed keywords, or keywords with two or more words. These keywords or keyword phrases are broader and have less competition. For example “2008 Black H2 Hummer” rather than just “Hummer.”

5.      Don’t use keywords that have too much competition. People find your site through the low hits like 50-70 a month, long tail keywords.

6.      Check the number of sites you will be directly competing against. To find your direct competition, type in allinanchor: THEN KEYWORD.  For example, allinanchor: marketing agency orange county. If there are only 100 monthly searches, but you will be competing against 1,100,000 sites, this may not be a great keyword.

7.      Check out the meta keywords of your competitor’s site. Go to their website and while on the text of their page, click VIEW, then click SOURCE from the top menu, you will see the HTML of their meta keywords and keywords. Look for:

<meta name=”keywords” content=”examples of keywords” />

8.      Once you have a list of keywords add the plural form of the keyword. For the keyword “marketing consultant” try “marketing consultant(s).”

9.      Try variations or abbreviation of the keyword. For the keyword “southern california,” try “so cal” or “southern ca.”

10.  Use misspelled keywords. Most people can’t spell, myself included. If you have a jewelry company, use “jewlry” and “joolry.”

11.  Add your company’s name as a keyword. No one may be looking for your company name noe; however that could change in a couple months time. No one had ever heard of “Billionaire By Thirty,” however using the techniques I recommend on my site www.billionairebythirty.com, “Billionaire By Thirty” is all over the web.

12.  Add your company’s product and services as keywords. If you are marketing correctly your target audience will be searching for them.

13.  Ask your past clients or business associates what they would search for to find your site.

14.  Don’t have too big of a keyword list. Bigger is not better. It’s more important to have 10 targeted keywords than 30 poor ones.

15.  Create an excel spreadsheet for your keyword list. This will make it easy to analyze your findings.

16.  Be patient. It’s unlikely you will find a perfect list of keywords on day one. It will take time and research.

17.  Get started today. Life will always be 80% take, 20% ask. Don’t wait; life is much too short, take action!

Finding the best keywords is crucial to creating a website that drives huge amounts of traffic.  You should know by now if you fail to take this step, you are going to have a difficult time making money online.

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