Determining Keywords For Your Web Pages

Just in case you haven't heard the term "keyword" before, here's a brief explanation.

Any time someone uses a search engine, they type in a word or phrase. This word or phrase is known as a keyword (even though it can be longer than one word.) The search engine goes out and retrieves all the web pages that focus content on that particular keyword or keyword phrase.

The more relevant the web page is to the keyword, the higher the page ranks in the search engine. Each web page contains a place in the HTML coding to insert these keywords. This helps the search engines determine page content. This is a bit of a simplification as search engines use many other criteria to rank pages. However, keyword focused content pages are the most important on-page criteria.

Deliver poor content that is not keyword focused and you will have a difficult time ranking highly in any search engine.

So, the questions becomes this. How does one choose the proper keyword for any particular web page? The answer is quite simple. You research keywords that pertain to your business and choose the ones that have a high demand and low supply.

The Demand of a keyword is a measure of the number of times people have searched for that keyword in a particular period of time. The Supply of a keyword is a measure of how many total web pages focus on that keyword. Keywords with a high demand and low supply will allow your page to rank higher in the search engines and will drive more traffic.

The best way of determining keywords is to use a good keyword research tool. The purpose of these keyword research tools is to allow you to enter a specific keyword related to your business and then see how many times people searched for that keyword (keyword demand) as well as how many web pages are focused on that keyword (keyword supply.)

In addition, a good keyword research tool will come up with new keywords related to the initial one you typed in, giving you ideas for branching out and coming up with dozens of other high quality keywords.

I am currently recommending only two tools for determining keywords. You can read about them both below and decide which one better fits your needs. By the way, you can find some free keyword research tools out there but they don't provide all the data you will need for keyword selection. The old adage that you get what you pay for really applies in the case of determining keywords.

Whether you decide to use Wordtracker or Site Build It!, the method of determining keywords is exactly the same - look for high-demand/low-supply keywords. Although Wordtracker and Site Build It! both provide detailed instructions on keyword research, here is a brief description of the process.

You start by selecting a seed word that people might use at the search engines to find your business. This seed word should be a one or two-word phrase only.

Suppose you have a fishing business. You would type "fishing" into the keyword search box and Wordtracker or Site Build It! would return many additional keywords based on that seed word. But here's the best part - not only do you get many additional keywords relating to your initial seed keyword, but these programs will also return the supply and demand for each and every keyword. Determining keywords is a snap when you use either one of these great tools.

Below are a few of the actual results returned when I did a keyword search using Site Build It! The term "fishing" returned almost 1,000 additional keywords containing the word "fishing." I've listed just a handful below.

I specifically chose keywords with a wide disparity between supply and demand. What comes to mind when you view these keywords? The first thing I notice are keywords I would never have thought of myself. This is one of the greatest advantages of a good keyword research tool. They help in determining keywords that are profitable but also brainstorm hundreds of new ones.

Look at the data above and see if you can decide which keywords would be best for writing additional content pages for your site.

Here are the terms you would definitely NOT want to write a page about.

As you can see from the data, there are people searching for these terms but look at the supply - yikes! These terms are way too competitive and too general to use as the main keyword for a web page. Now, look at the others.

See how each of these words is more specific? Look at the demand and supply numbers for these words. These are profitable keywords! If I owned a fishing-themed website, I'd create a content-rich page for each of these keywords.

In summary, it is imperative that you determine keywords that are profitable to your business by analyzing keyword supply and demand data. This data will guide you in building content-rich keyword-focused pages that will rank high in the search engines. This is not the place to try and save money. Purchase a week or two of Wordtracker (or Site Build It! if your site is not up yet) and start researching your keywords.

Remember, if you don't rank in the first page or two of a search engine, you are virtually invisible. Poor rankings equals poor traffic. Poor traffic equals poor profits for the online portion of your business. Don't let this happen to you. Start up a comprehensive keyword research program now. It is one of the top ways to build an online business that generates large amounts of free traffic.