I've seen a lot of posts in this section asking this question so I thought I would post a quick guide. The reason you see people talking about keywords is because they want to pick a highly searched low competition PHRASE for their site. It is this PHRASE that will drive more traffic to their site with buyers. When picking keywords for your site you should be picking 4-5 PHRASES that pull extra volume to your site. FIRST MISTAKE most people make one of the biggest errors I see people making is picking single word keywords. If you have a site about dogs. It will have lots of references about DOGS in it. Google will rank you for it. YOU DO NOT NEED TO PUT EXTRA WORK into ranking for this word... SECOND MISTAKE The use of one or two word keywords. These keywords typically have very high searches and even more competition. I'm talking millions of pages of competition. Again your normal posting and titles will be enough SEO for you to start ranking for these words. THIRD MISTAKE - THIS IS THE IMPORTANT ONE Not picking specific 3 word + keywords for their site. This is what people are talking about. At three word phrases, you can frequently find searches of 3000 a month or more. With less than 100000 competing pages. This Phrase is the one your site can quickly become no.1 in the google search for. Why is this important? If your site is ranked no.1 on google for a search phrase relevant to what you are selling. All that daily traffic is going to your site and will convert into sales. If your site is ranked 2 million you are going to be lucky to get any traffic. FOURTH MISTAKE People don't research their keywords. IT IS EASY. Step 1. go to google keyword tool. enter your keyword see how many monthly searches it gets. (select phrase in drop down menu)If it is more than 900 its ok if it is more than 10000 watch out for competition. Step 2. Check how much competition the word gets. go to google. Type the keyword in with speach marks like so "keyword here" click search on the right it will say how many pages have this phrase. If its less than 100000 it should be ok to rank. These two simple steps can save you lots of time backlinking. and Money not getting customers. FIFTH MISTAKE - THE BIGGEST ONE. Lack of knowledge. If you are planning to sell products online using search engines to drive traffic to your site. KEYWORD research is one of the main things you NEED to understand. For example if driving a car was internet marketing then knowing how to steer would be keyword research. Before you spend days, writing content, building websites, backlinking etc. spend 2-3 days learning about keyword research. Otherwise all the above will be a failure. If you want more help on Keyword research, Search this forum, check the internet theres lots of free information available on the topic. Hope this Helped DAN
ya that's right most SEO person make this time of problem but they don't knoe about more seo they have 60% or 50% knowledge that time they facing this type of problem but Sr person do not make mistake
these were really nice tips.. especially the keyword research point... quite helpful.. appreciate it !
Just a couple things -- As for two-word keywords, I ultimately target those because many high profile "money" terms are two-word. Like "buy monitors" or "monitor sale." You should always aim high, you can't survive on long tail alone. Well, you can - if you're comfortable making the same amount of money. As for keywords, I learned that you should search for the keyword you want to rank for in quotes on Google, and if the results show around 1.5 million results or less, you have a good chance of ranking for the term with aggressive SEO and backlinking. I've found this to be true.
Thanks Guys. I hope it helps. Markn you are right. People should look for the long term. However I find that if your new targetting a competition level that high will take a while for results. If its your first project why make it that hard for yourself. Typically I suggest maximum 25000 - 100000 competing pages for new players. I agree that your long tail keyword should target a one or two word keyword that is very valuable. so that as you build your long tail keywords you are always working towards the end goal of that one or two word keyword.
Wow! thanks for sharing this one. I really need this info as I am having a hard time figuring out what keywords should I pick for my website.
I agree with your 4th and 5th mistake but not necessarily the first 3. It's entirely possible to find 2-word keywords with high monthly searches and low competition. That's why your point #4 is so critical. This is all that really matters, not how many words are in the keywords, just that you did the proper research
Thanks for sharing these five mistakes! I agree with you but the most common thing in which I believe is that if we understand our client's business properly then we will be able to understand what keyword should we choose to improve the business and keyword rankings! And for that we can take help from Google Adwords: Keyword tool. With this tool we can check the search volume of keyword and select accordingly.
Good piece of information. As I have many doubts regarding keyword selection, I find it very useful. Thanks for sharing!!
Hi, No doubt..what you've said is true. It's not a surprise fact that majority of people don't put much attention on keyword research. That's why they are struggling to rank high. Just my advice, if you really have less fund or time for backlinks, go for few keywords with reasonably good demand and less than 30000 competitions rather than struggling for single keyword with higher demand and competition. From my experience, your site will be easier to rank high for highly competition keyword after you got few pages rank at the top for few low competition keywords. Cheers..
Lack of knowledge...I think this word describe about me .. thanks for sharing, I found something to learn about SEO specially keywords.
I have never come across such clarified and useful information regarding Keywords. Thanks so much. Hope others like you add on to the thread for newbies like us!!