Getting your keywords right

The keywords information on this page is something I wish I'd known four years ago when I first started making websites seriously.

It's all about getting the wording right.

Forget the fancy Flash animations, the £2000 fee you were charged by the website company or the specially composed theme music that plays when you arrive on your homepage.

It's all wasted time and money.

If your key phrases aren't right, forget any chance of web success.

I say this with one important qualification.

If a website is sheer brilliance - something that everybody loves, like eBay for instance - it wouldn't matter too much if you had all these things, because people would probably use your service anyway.

However, if you look at eBay you'll notice that they don't have fancy Flash animations or specially composed theme music on the front page.

So take the hint - keep it simple and concentrate on the wording that you use.

The magic of words

The reason Google is so popular is because it sorts all those pages so well, cutting out the rubbish and presenting you with the best.

How often do you click beyond the first page of results? Seldom? Never?

That's why the Holy Grail of websites is to get your site showing on that first page of results.

Commercial companies will make you all sorts of promises about how they'll get you on the first page of Google.

Oh, and they'll happily relieve you of lots of money for the privilege!

But it all boils down to keywords ... and selecting the right ones.

Let's clear up some myths ...

For a couple of hundred pounds, you can be at the top of Google ... or so it's claimed.

But it doesn't work like that.

You need to get your small business website right from day one.

The foundations have to be solid.

The chances are that if you've spent hundreds or thousands of pounds building a website which nobody is visiting, you probably sowed the seeds of your failure the minute you - or that expensive web company - started work on your website.

The other myth is that there's no fast way to beat the search engines.

It takes patience, planning and research.

You can't beat the system ... unless you're lucky enough to create the next eBay or Facebook, and even then it takes time.

For us mere web mortals, building regular websites to create a second or primary home-based income, the rules are slightly different.

Oh, and don't 'stuff' your pages with your chosen profitable phrases either.

The search engines can tell what you're up too and will ignore you.

Assembling your keywords

• First - to determine a niche that is profitable, but not too broad and not too limited.

• Second - to research words and phrases which a) people are searching for b) for which there are relatively few strong results (low supply) c) which are therefore profitable.

• Third - to intelligently sort these options into sub-sections which become the navigation on your website, and then to create lots of informative articles which use those keywords, one by one.

• Four - having created lots of targeted articles, your pages will - step-by-step (it takes time!) - move higher up the search engine results. The less supply there is for a keyword, the easier it will be to 'win'it in Google and rank highly in the search engines.

Search engines love content, so provide lots of it but make sure it's attractive and useful to your website visitors as well as Google and the like.

Useful tools to use

However, if the future success of your website depends on getting your niche and your keywords right, it might be worth the small expense.

The two recommended tools are Google and Wordtracker.

Google actually lets you have access to lots of superb information for free.

It's quite hard to sort and interpret at times - you can have numbers spinning in your head - but all the key information is there.

Wordtracker also provides an excellent free service.

It has a free resource which allows you to determine variations on keywords, which is very useful for a bit of lateral thinking.

Wordtracker also offers a paid service, and this is one service you might feel you need to subscribe to, but only do so a month at a time and you're unlikely to need the service for more than this.

Also, it offers a free introductory period - use this time wisely and save yourself some money.

The only people who need to be taking out longer term subscriptions to Wordtracker are webmasters who will needs to use it as a tool of their business.

What you're trying to achieve

• people are searching for (ie high demand, indicated by the high cost per word or phrase shown on Google's site)

• don't return a huge number of quality results (ie low supply, as determined by a competition search in Wordtracker)

• High demand + low supply = high KEI ie maximum SEO effectiveness.

Don't be fooled by this, as you can get weird results - use common sense.

A search term that is searched for infrequently and returns few searches can give a high KEI.

You can get a number blindness doing all this keyword work, and to be honest with you, it's the part of the website building process that I hate the most.

However, you must get this bit right. If you don't nobody will visit your wonderful website and you'll have wasted your time.

So grin and bear it, work through Wordtracker, watch the videos, use the tutorials and compare with Google's information.

Keep going, through the pain barrier, until you have that honed collection of keywords.

You are going to create your website content around those keywords, so that when surfers enter those search terms your pages will come up in the results.

And, because your content is relevant, informative and search engine friendly, that will be the beginning of your web success.

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