SEO
Finding The Right Keywords
The days of ‘keyword stuffing’ – ie, unsubtly packing your website’s copy with search terms in the hope of improving your search-engine rankings – are long gone.
However, it still makes sense to ensure that your site uses keywords responsibly in order to ensure search engines categorise your site favourably in their results.
You can also use keywords the other way around – by finding out which search terms are relevant to a product, then reverse-engineering your website content to fit. Keywords are the most frequently searched terms that are associated with your website’s topic.
You can perform analysis of these all important keywords, in order to work out the thought process of visitors, and work out whether those visitors have a buying mindset. Here, we show you how to find good keywords for new products, and how to use these appropriately.
YOU’LL LEARN:
- Ideas for find keywords
- How to analyse keywords
- How to put your keywords to use
Step 1 – Find Keyword Ideas
The first step is to find as many keywords (and keyword phrases, which are often combined keywords) for your own website topic. A good way to do this is to brainstorm and put together related search-item ideas around the subject.
You can also look at competing websites, which will contain many terms that are ideal and appropriate for your own website.
There are many free tools to help you do this, including Ubersuggest, Google Keyword Planner, Bing Keyword tool and many more. You should also use your own initiative, visit forums on the topic, and use the Google Suggest tool.
A good way to to collect and map out your keywords is with a mind map.
Step 2 – Keyword Analysis
The second step is to analyse these keywords and filter out the matching ones. It makes sense to check these keywords against three important factors, for:
Search Volume
The search volume is very important because it indicates how many users are looking for the keyword in a given period in the search engines. An excellent free tool for this is the Google AdWords Keyword Planner. Also note how the search volume has been developed.
Competition
A high search volume is not the whole story. You should also analyse the competition in Google. Visit the Top 10 websites ranking in Google for a particular keyword.
Despite the number of searches for a keyword, if the competition is too strong, your website will not even make the first page in many of the search engines.
As is well documented, only a few intrepid searchers ever venture onto the second page in Google search results. Therefore, it’s usually better if a keyword does have slightly lower search volume, as it represents less competition for you, and therefore more traffic to your own website.
Financial potential
Finally, it’s important to check the financial potential of keywords. Earning money is one of the main goals for your website, so check whether there are different sources of income from a keyword, how high the cost-per-click on Google AdSense is (check also in the Google AdWords Keyword Planner’s cost) and whether or not a term expresses some interest in buying.
This last factor is particularly important to earn revenue with affiliate marketing – for example, the Amazon Associates Program.
Step 3 – Content
With these factors checked, your list of interesting keywords is certain to have become a little shorter. Now it’s time to turn those keywords into content that’s interesting for the visitors. There are mainly two kinds of content:
- An article with background information – these convey know-how and are not intended primarily to earn money. But they’re still very important, because Google loves these articles, they’re received very well among readers and build trust.
- Product reviews – this is where you write a review of a product and include your Affiliate Links to make a commission.
