Choosing keywords wisely is extremely important if you are to be a successful internet marketer.
All too frequently, new webmasters engaging in Search Engine Optimization choose keywords that result in a lot of web surfers but not many buyers.
Choosing keywords wisely means to choose search terms that buyers would use to locate specific goods or services on your website, not just locating your site.
Broad search terms will locate your site and describe what your website does, but not to the level of detail that targeted search terms do.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s great having a lot of web traffic to your site but it’s much better having a lot of paying customers.
Obviously, the best scenario is to have your cake and to eat it too. Having both search engine traffic and a good ROI is having the best of both worlds.
Are the keywords you are using attracting buyers or are they just attracting a lot of “window watchers”?
Choosing keywords wisely in this instance means choosing keyword phrases that result in traffic to your site as well as traffic related to content in various pages of your site; specifically your landing page.
Your search terms must satisfy your visitors needs, therefore they must be included in the content of your landing page as well as in other pages of your site.
These targeted keywords will help the search engines understand that your site can be about several different things. Some might be related to the search term and some may not.
Once the search engines have crawled your website, they may display your site in the search results for that targeted phrase.
Then users that do a search with that specifically targeted phrase are likely to find exactly what they are looking for and are more apt to sign up with your website to purchase your product or service.
By providing buyers targeted keyword phrases in your content that gets them to your site, you are offering them exactly what they are looking for so they no longer need to sift through extraneous search results to find what they want.
In other words, the targeted keyword phrase brought them to exactly what they wanted.
A good balance of search terms will direct a lot of traffic to your site as well as to more specific content of other pages on your site, i.e. your landing page.
Of course once you have visitor traffic, you need to ensure that your landing page will hold your visitors and convert them into paying customers or have them perform the action you desire.
If one search term can get only one visitor a week to your landing page where they spend a thousand dollars, you have chosen keywords wisely. You should retain that keyword.
However, if you choose a broad search term or phrase that drives tons of visitors to your site and nobody purchases anything, it would behove you to eliminate that search term or keyword phrase from your list.
Not all search terms have the same click through rates and since no one really knows how many queries are performed for any given keyword; no one can really know how much buying web traffic is generated by any given keyword.
Predicting actual traffic generation is an unknown however, by choosing keywords wisely you can dramatically increase the amount of buyers and limit the amount of web surfers on your site.
There is a plethora of free home based internet marketing information available online that focuses on keyword research which is essential if you intend on improving your Search Engine Optimization or paid search advertising.
People on the Internet search for specific content, products or services using a variety of methods; all of which utilize keywords and keyword phrases in some manner.
Since creating an extensive list of keywords can be quite a task, we need all the help we can get to make the job easier.
Fortunately, there are plenty of good keyword research tools available on the web that make life easier for Internet marketers and many of them don’t cost you a dime unless in certain cases you decide to upgrade to a “premium” product.
The following list of research tools is a small sample of what is available online at no cost:
Google AdWords Keyword Tool is by far the most popular tool in this list and is placed first for this reason. It allows users to enter a keyword from their market niche and look for exact terms or phrases that contain them, when using advanced filters and options.
Wordtracker’s Keyword Questions Tool allows users to enter a keyword or keyword phrase to generate additional relevant keywords.
The majority of Wordtracker tools are free to use. They create an extensive list of keywords so users can fine tune their keywords and get additional data about the popularity and relevance of certain topics within their market niche.
Trellian’s Keyword Discovery Tool allows users to enter a seed keyword in the Discovery tool. It then generates a list of the top 100 keywords applicable to the chosen keyword.
Open Site Explorer is a service from SEOmoz that is perfect for researching keywords that your competitor’s are using. Simply enter the URL to start searching.
Bing Ads Intelligence is a powerful PPC keyword research tool that allows users to build and expand on their keyword lists using the Excel interface. Users can discover new keyword ideas by entering either their website URL or a list of keywords. A Bing Ads account is required before you can use Bing Ads Intelligence.
SEOquake is a popular, handy analytic seo-tool for Firefox, Chrome and Opera web browsers that helps users find keyword data based on keyword density “on the fly”. SEOquake also obtains information on a wide range of parameters such as page rank, Google index, Alexa, etc. from any website as you surf the Internet.
KGen which is short for Keyword Generator is another nice Firefox add on that scans the Web page the user is on to find the keywords used. KGen is great for determining keyword density research of your competitors.
Alexa allows users to see search engine queries from their competitors as well as the percentage of traffic that those search terms actually bring to their sites.
SEMRush allows users to get data on the top 10 keywords that your competitors are getting traffic from on both paid and organic searches. Just enter the URL of the competitor’s site to start your search.
The SEO Book Keyword List Generator takes a little time to get used to but when you enter keywords, keyword phrases or modifiers separated by commas in each box, it generates a list of keywords results based on combining your words. Select your desired keyword match type and hit the Generate button. A keyword “cleanup” tool is also available.
The SEO Book Keyword Research Tool powered by Wordtracker, generates a list of related search terms for a user’s query and also provides links to keyword suggestion tools from the major search engines however, you must register for a free account in order to use the tools.
The Moz Tools and Resources site provides users with tools to help you optimize your local business listings, track your social media performance, conduct link research, access SEO metrics for any page, and more. Their Term Extractor allows users to enter a competitor’s URL to receive search phrases that the site is targeting.
KeywordSpy searches out the keywords that your competitors are using in their advertising campaigns. This includes AdWords, the Bing Adcenter and Yahoo Search Marketing. Just enter your competitor’s URL.
WordStream’s Keyword Tool provides users with free keyword suggestions for the target search terms entered into the Keyword Tool however, you will need to provide your email address to receive the full list of suggested terms.
WooRank is a nifty website review tool that provides a complete dissection of your website. It shows the top keywords, the site ranking, competitor’s sites, and an in depth analysis with recommendations for improvements of the site URL that is queried.
Soovle is the fastest keyword suggestion tool we have encountered to date. It provides an almost immediate simultaneous response from Answers.com, Google, Bing, Amazon, Yahoo, Wikipedia and YouTube. You have got to try this one.
Google Trends is another powerful tool that allows users compare multiple search terms by volume when they are separated by commas.
UberSuggest is another free keyword suggestion tool that uses Google Suggest and other suggest services. It takes your base keyword and adds a letter or number next to it for probable search combinations.
RANKS.NL is a Keyword Combinations tool designed to help you expand and manage your keyword lists for use in PPC campaigns. This online tool has a phenomenal number of variations and different combinations you can use for keywords and keyword phrases.
All the above keyword research tools are free for the asking and can provide Internet marketers a great deal of assistance creating an extensive list of keywords.
Easily locating links is important to the successful navigation of every website.
One of the main goals of website usability, specifically navigation, is the correct placement of internal links so readers can easily locate their position on your website or blog.
Without any links on your website, there would be no ability for readers to navigate and view other topics on your site.
For all practical purposes, your site would be a single web page, i.e. a dead site.
Webmasters will include links into every page of a website for cross referencing articles, changing topics, advertising and for basic navigation to whatever area of the site or other sites they want their viewers to visit.
Links are as vital to your website and are just as important as your content.
Without them, it is not possible for visitors to your site to connect to any other document on your website or the web.
There are two types of links on a website.
Internal, for navigating within your website and external for navigating to other sites on the internet.
Internal Links:
Internal links function like tabs in a book. Their main purpose is to connect other pages of your website together.
A book has an index for readers to navigate through it’s pages. Like a book, your website also contains separate pages to navigate through. These are called web pages.
The home page of your website functions like a book’s index. Here your readers can choose which web “page” they want to look at by simply clicking on an internal link or tab.
External Links:
An external link connects a web page from your website to some other website’s web page on the internet.
It’s only function is to direct the reader to another outside “book” page or in the case of the Internet, to another website web page.
Without any external links, your website would be more or less isolated.
No Internet purchases could take place, no electronic billings could occur and no commerce or communication could exist.
Webmasters, since the inception of the internet, have been using a relatively standardized method of locating internal navigation links on web pages.
Internal links are almost always placed either in the left hand column or at the top of each web page, just below the header.
Research through the years has shown that these are the first areas on a web page that are immediately viewed by visitors. Our eyes naturally go to these areas when we view a fresh web page.
Because these are the first places on a web page that your visitors check, Webmasters naturally designed web pages to prominently place their links in these areas and immediately capture the attention of their audience.
Internal links are occasionally placed at the bottom of a web page, however they are usually not as prominent. This is done primarily to avoid design redundancy or as an alternate, backup link.
External links are also commonly placed in the right hand margins of some web designs and even in the content of the web page.
Most webmasters place external links in the content of web pages primarily for explanatory purposes, but also for advertising and as a reference to other outside web information.
Many webmasters believe that because our reading is performed from left to right, the right side of the web page should be allocated to external website links.
Regardless, easily locating links on the web page is standardized relative to these explanations.
The one exception is Google AdSense and other similar text advertisements where external links are often allocated to the center and/or right side of web pages.
Based on these general practices, easily locating links on your website should not be a problem for novice webmasters however, these are simply guidelines and not rules chiseled in granite for website designers.
Easily locating links is extremely important on your website however, so long as navigation is not impeded, deviations from so called “standard website design” can often create an interesting and unique surfing experience for your visitors.
