Search Engine Keywords Selection

Search engines are the vehicles that drive potential customers to your websites. But in order for visitors toreach their destination - your website - you need toprovide them with specific and effective signs that willdirect them right to your site. You do this by creatingcarefully chosen keywords.

Think of the right keywords as the Open Sesame! of theInternet. Find the exactly right words or phrases, andpresto! hoards of traffic will be pulling up to your frontdoor. But if your keywords are too general or tooover-used, the possibility of visitors actually making itall the way to your site - or of seeing any real profitsfrom the visitors that do arrive - decreases dramatically.

Your keywords serve as the foundation of your marketingstrategy. If they are not chosen with great precision, nomatter how aggressive your marketing campaign may be, theright people may never get the chance to find out about it.So your first step in plotting your strategy is to gatherand evaluate keywords and phrases.

You probably think you already know EXACTLY the right wordsfor your search phrases. Unfortunately, if you haven'tfollowed certain specific steps, you are probably WRONG.It's hard to be objective when you are right in the centerof your business network, which is the reason that you maynot be able to choose the most efficient keywords from theinside. You need to be able to think like your customers.And since you are a business owner and not the consumer,your best bet is to go directly to the source.

Instead of plunging in and scribbling down a list ofpotential search words and phrases yourself, ask for wordsfrom as many potential customers as you can. You will mostlikely find out that your understanding of your businessand your customers' understanding is significantlydifferent.
The consumer is an invaluable resource. You will find thewords you accumulate from them are words and phrases youprobably never would have considered from deep inside thetrenches of your business.

Only after you have gathered as many words and phrases fromoutside resources should you add your own keyword to thelist. Once you have this list in hand, you are ready forthe next step: evaluation.

The aim of evaluation is to narrow down your list to asmall number of words and phrases that will direct thehighest number of quality visitors to your website. By"quality visitors" I mean those consumers who are mostlikely to make a purchase rather than just cruise aroundyour site and take off for greener pastures. In evaluatingthe effectiveness of keywords, bear in mind three elements:popularity, specificity, and motivation.

Popularity is the easiest to evaluate because it is anobjective quality. The more popular your keyword is, themore likely the chances are that it will be typed into asearch engine which will then bring up your URL.

You can now purchase software that will rate the popularityof keywords and phrases by giving words a number ratingbased on real search engine activity. Software such asWordTracker will even suggest variations of your words andphrases. The higher the number this software assigns to agiven keyword, the more traffic you can logically expect tobe directed to your site. The only fallacy with thisconcept is the more popular the keyword is, the greater thesearch engine position you will need to obtain. If you aredown at the bottom of the search results, the consumer willprobably never scroll down to find you.

Popularity isn't enough to declare a keyword a good choice.You must move on to the next criteria, which isspecificity. The more specific your keyword is, the greaterthe likelihood that the consumer who is ready to purchaseyour goods or services will find you.

Let's look at a hypothetical example. Imagine that you haveobtained popularity rankings for the keyword "automobilecompanies." However, you company specializes in bodyworkonly. The keyword "automobile body shops" would rank loweron the popularity scale than "automobile companies," but itwould nevertheless serve you much better. Instead ofgetting a slew of people interested in everything frombuying a car to changing their oil filters, you will getonly those consumers with trashed front ends or crumpledfenders being directed to your site. In other words,consumers ready to buy your services are the ones who willimmediately find you. Not only that, but the greater thespecificity of your keyword is, the less competition youwill face.

The third factor is consumer motivation. Once again, thisrequires putting yourself inside the mind of the customerrather than the seller to figure out what motivationprompts a person looking for a service or product to typein a particular word or phrase. Let's look at anotherexample, such as a consumer who is searching for a job asan IT manager in a new city. If you have to choose between"Seattle job listings" and "Seattle IT recruiters" which doyou think will benefit the consumer more? If you werelooking for this type of specific job, which keyword wouldyou type in? The second one, of course! Using the secondkeyword targets people who have decided on their career,have the necessary experience, and are ready to enlist youas their recruiter, rather than someone just out of schoolwho is casually trying to figure out what to do with his orher life in between beer parties. You want to find peoplewho are ready to act or make a purchase, and this requiressubtle tinkering of your keywords until your find the mostspecific and directly targeted phrases to bring the mostmotivated traffic to you site.

Once you have chosen your keywords, your work is not done.You must continually evaluate performance across a varietyof search engines, bearing in mind that times and trendschange, as does popular lingo. You cannot rely on your logtraffic analysis alone because it will not tell you howmany of your visitors actually made a purchase.

Luckily, some new tools have been invented to help youjudge the effectiveness of your keywords in individualsearch engines. There is now software available thatanalyzes consumer behavior in relation to consumer traffic.This allows you to discern which keywords are bringing youthe most valuable customers.

This is an essential concept: numbers alone do not make agood keyword; profits per visitor do. You need to findkeywords that direct consumers to your site who actuallybuy your product, fill out your forms, or download yourproduct. This is the most important factor in evaluatingthe efficacy of a keyword or phrase, and should be thesword you wield when discarding and replacing ineffectiveor inefficient keywords with keywords that bring in betterprofits.

Ongoing analysis of tested keywords is the formula forsearch engine success. This may sound like a lot of work -and it is! But the amount of informed effort you put intoyour keyword campaign is what will ultimately generate yourbusiness' rewards.

Monitoring Search Engine Positions

Since search engines are the first stop for people on theInternet looking for goods or services, the position yourwebsite appears in search results is an important factor.If your URL shows up far down the results list, the chances of the consumer never finding you increase incrementally.Once you achieve a high search engine position, it isessential that you make sure you maintain the high rankingyou have worked so hard to achieve.

This means you must come up with a strategy to monitor yoursearch engines positions. This strategy is crucial to thesuccess of any marketing campaign. Think of your searchengine positions as your online portfolio. Would you letyour stock portfolio be ruled by chance and marketfluctuations, or would you keep close tabs on your stocksso you could buy and sell when the time is right? This isthe way you must consider your search engines positions.
Be aware that at first, after you have launched your searchengine campaign and done all the right things to increaseyour rankings, you will most likely see a continual upwardclimb. What you need to be on the lookout for is the momentthat upward climb reaches a plateau. When this happens,your search engine position campaign moves into stage two,the monitoring and protecting stage.
In stage two, do not be concerned about the short-termfluctuations in your positions. These are similar to thesubtle rising and falling of stocks in a portfolio.Short-term movement is an integral part of the wholeprocess. It's the long-term changes that you must watch forand prepare to act on immediately.
Analyzing the long-term trends of search engines positionsis imperative. The way in which search engines rankwebsites may change at the drop of hat. If you are unawareof these changes - many of which are subtle yet can bedeadly to your ranking - your position may drop to thebottom of the list before you can get your bearings. Toprevent this kind of precipitous drop, you must create asystem to monitor your positions on a monthly basis. Devisea chart to keep tabs on your top ranking positions or yourtop pages, and make sure to watch "the market" closely.
Each search engine uses a formula to compute websiterankings. When a search engine changes this formula in anyway, it may raise or lower your ranking. Some searchengines use a number of different formulas, rotating themso that a formula doesn't become overused or outdated.Depending on which formula is being applied, your searchengine position may suddenly drop or rise in ranksignificantly. Therefore, you must check your positionsfrequently in order to catch when a search engine changesformulas and what effect it has on your positions.
You must also deal with your competition - a crucial factoryou must always be vigilant about. Your competitor'sposition may suddenly rise, automatically lowering yourposition. Or their position may drop, pushing your positionhigher. Each month, expect position changes due to thecontinual changes that are occurring in your competitor'sposition, and be prepared to adjust your marketing strategyto compensate for decreased rankings. Monitoring thesefluctuations will also give you vital information about howto improve your website to increase your position in searchresults.
Of course, you must discern what the most popular searchengines are in order for your monitoring efforts to beeffective. Right now, there are ten popular search enginesthat direct most of Internet traffic to your sites. Thechallenge you face is that these top ten may change frommonth to month.
This means that your must not only monitor your searchengine positions, but you must also keep track of theranking popularity of the search engines you aremonitoring. Find out which search engines people use mostfrequently every month and be sure to live in the present!People are fickle about their favorite search engines, andit takes constant vigilance to follow their dalliances. Thesearch engines they loved when you first launched yourcampaign may be old news in the next few months. You mustadjust your list of engines according to the whims of theInternet users. Check outhttp://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/netratings.htmlfor a current list of website favorites.
Another factor to monitor carefully is a sudden drop ofyour positions in all search engines. This is not the sameas monthly fluctuations - this is a neon red warning sign!It could mean a number of different things.
It all your search engine positions have plummeted, it mayindicate that search engines spiders - those sneakyprograms that seek out your site and rank their positions -have found some type of problem with your website. If youhave recently changed the code, for instance, the spidermay become utterly confused and consequently drop yourpositions disastrously. If a spider creeps up on yourwebsite when it is down for adjustments or changes, you mayactually disappear from a search engine index entirely. Ora search engine may drastically change its formula, andsuddenly all of your website come up as irrelevant. If thatsearch engine is a current favorite, it may create a dominoeffect, causing all of your position to drop in all searchengines.
Some search engines rely on the results from other searchengines, and it is vital that you know which engines theseare and keep track of all the engines they influence. Thebiggest problem here is that search engines will sometimeschange affiliations, and this can create a major shift inthe geography of the Internet. For example, recently Yahoodecided to display only results gleaned from Google. So youmust not only monitor your own positions, but you must keepabreast of seismic shifts in the landscape of the Internetas a whole.
Finally, pay attention to your keywords. Keywords are thefoundation bricks of the entire search engine system, andthey demand individual scrutiny in your monitoring efforts.If you have found that a number of your positions haveplummeted, it may mean that a page of your website hasbecome invisible or inaccessible to search engine spiders.Or the competition for that particular keyword or phrasehas recently rocketed into outer space. In either case, youmust act quickly and efficiently to regain lost ground.
Your search engine marketing campaign is an investment. Ifcosts you time and money on a continual basis. Protect thisinvestment as diligently as you would your financialportfolio. In the same way, track your positions from anobjective perspective, and monitor your positions on aregular basis. Make sure your time and effort reap rewardsby keeping your eye on the big picture - your long-termmarketing campaign.

Protecting Your Search Engine Rankings

Your website's ranking on search engines is a vital elementof your overall marketing campaign, and there are ways toimprove your link popularity through legitimate methods.Unfortunately, the Internet is populated by bands ofdishonest webmasters seeking to improve their link popularity by faking out search engines.

The good news is that search engines have figured this out,and are now on guard for "spam" pages and sites that haveincreased their rankings by artificial methods. When asearch engines tracks down such a site, that site isdemoted in ranking or completely removed from the searchengine's index.

The bad news is that some high quality, completelyabove-board sites are being mistaken for these web pagecriminals. Your page may be in danger of being caught up inthe "spam" net and tossed from a search engine's index,even though you have done nothing to deserve such harshtreatment. But there are things you can do - and things youshould be sure NOT to do - which will prevent this kind ofmisperception.

Link popularity is mostly based on the quality of sites youare linked to. Google pioneered this criteria for assigningwebsite ranking, and virtually all search engines on theInternet now use it. There are legitimate ways to go aboutincreasing your link popularity, but at the same time, youmust be scrupulously careful about which sites you chooseto link to. Google frequently imposes penalties on sitesthat have linked to other sites solely for the purpose ofartificially boosting their link popularity. They haveactually labeled these links "bad neighborhoods."

You can raise a toast to the fact that you cannot bepenalized when a bad neighborhood links to your site;penalty happens only when you are the one sending out thelink to a bad neighborhood. But you must check, anddouble-check, all the links that are active on your linkspage to make sure you haven't linked to a bad neighborhood.

The first thing to check out is whether or not the pagesyou have linked to have been penalized. The most direct wayto do this is to download the Google toolbar athttp://toolbar.google.com/. You will then see that mostpages are given a "Pagerank" which is represented by asliding green scale on the Google toolbar.

Do not link to any site that shows no green at all on thescale. This is especially important when the scale iscompletely gray. It is more than likely that these pageshave been penalized. If you are linked to these pages, youmay catch their penalty, and like the flu, it may bedifficult to recover from the infection.

There is no need to be afraid of linking to sites whosescale shows only a tiny sliver of green on their scale.These sites have not been penalized, and their links maygrow in value and popularity. However, do make sure thatyou closely monitor these kind of links to ascertain thatat some point they do not sustain a penalty once you havelinked up to them from your links page.
Another evil trick that illicit webmasters use toartificially boost their link popularity is the use ofhidden text. Search engines usually use the words on webpages as a factor in forming their rankings, which meansthat if the text on your page contains your keywords, youhave more of an opportunity to increase your search engineranking than a page that does not contain text inclusive ofkeywords.

Some webmasters have gotten around this formula by hidingtheir keywords in such a way so that they are invisible toany visitors to their site. For example, they have used thekeywords but made them the same color as the backgroundcolor of the page, such as a plethora of white keywords ona white background. You cannot see these words with thehuman eye - but the eye of search engine spider can spotthem easily! A spider is the program search engines use toindex web pages, and when it sees these invisible words, itgoes back and boosts that page's link ranking.

Webmasters may be brilliant and sometimes devious, butsearch engines have figured these tricks out. As soon as asearch engine perceive the use of hidden text - splat! thepage is penalized.
The downside of this is that sometimes the spider is a bitoverzealous and will penalize a page by mistake. Forexample, if the background color of your page is gray, andyou have placed gray text inside a black box, the spiderwill only take note of the gray text and assume you areemploying hidden text. To avoid any risk of false penalty,simply direct your webmaster not to assign the same colorto text as the background color of the page - ever!

Another potential problem that can result in a penalty iscalled "keyword stuffing." It is important to have yourkeywords appear in the text on your page, but sometimes youcan go a little overboard in your enthusiasm to pleasethose spiders. A search engine uses what is called"Keyphrase Density" to determine if a site is trying toartificially boost their ranking. This is the ratio ofkeywords to the rest of the words on the page. Searchengines assign a limit to the number of times you can use akeyword before it decides you have overdone it andpenalizes your site.

This ratio is quite high, so it is difficult to surpasswithout sounding as if you are stuttering - unless yourkeyword is part of your company name. If this is the case,it is easy for keyword density to soar. So, if your keywordis "renters insurance," be sure you don't use this phrasein every sentence. Carefully edit the text on your site sothat the copy flows naturally and the keyword is notrepeated incessantly. A good rule of thumb is your keywordshould never appear in more than half the sentences on thepage.

The final potential risk factor is known as "cloaking." Tothose of you who are diligent Trekkies, this concept shouldbe easy to understand. For the rest of you?cloaking is whenthe server directs a visitor to one page and a searchengine spider to a different page. The page the spider seesis "cloaked" because it is invisible to regular traffic,and deliberately set-up to raise the site's search engineranking. A cloaked page tries to feed the spider everythingit needs to rocket that page's ranking to the top of thelist.

It is natural that search engines have responded to thisact of deception with extreme enmity, imposing steeppenalties on these sites. The problem on your end is thatsometimes pages are cloaked for legitimate reasons, such asprevention against the theft of code, often referred to as"pagejacking." This kind of shielding is unnecessary thesedays due to the use of "off page" elements, such as linkpopularity, that cannot be stolen.

To be on the safe side, be sure that your webmaster isaware that absolutely no cloaking is acceptable. Make surethe webmaster understands that cloaking of any kind willput your website at great risk.

Just as you must be diligent in increasing your linkpopularity and your ranking, you must be equally diligentto avoid being unfairly penalized. So be sure to monitoryour site closely and avoid any appearance of artificiallyboosting your rankings.