Keyword Basics

Keyword Basics Part 3: Choosing your best keywords by Ken McGaffin, 1 May 2010

You know how sometimes you make a list of say, three things and then by the time you get to the end of the list, you remember that there’s something you really must include and your list of three becomes a list of four? This is Part 3 of Ken McGaffin's Keyword Basics series.

Key points

• Include the most popular keywords in your website copy
• Use the most popular keywords along with 'qualifiers'
• Look for niche keywords or markets that others haven't yet found

In Keyword Basics 2, we searched and created a Project and List for chocolate. This shows the searches for each term. 'Searches' is the number of times the keyword appears in our database, which is created from over 640 million searches conducted over the last 365 days. Here's a screenshot of the Chocolate store Project we created:

Lets look at the List called 'chocolate' below:

In our example above, chocolate has a search volume of 6,994. High scoring keywords will be the most popular words in your marketplace. These are the words more people type into the search query box when they're searching for products.
But of course, there is a problem. Because the keywords are so popular, lots of websites will use them. You will face a lot of competition and much of that competition will be good at search engine optimization.
An experienced SEO with a large budget will welcome this challenge and apply skill and hard work over a number of months to compete effectively. But a novice SEO will find it virtually impossible to compete for these highly popular keywords. What then should the novice do?

Strategies for a novice SEO

I think there are three strategies you should follow:

1. Include the most popular keywords in your website copy, even though you may not rank well for them. Your customers will expect to see those keywords, and search engines will take note of them. By including them, you lay a foundation for the long term - slowly but surely as you add more content, your rankings will rise.
2. Use the most popular keywords along with 'qualifiers', such as product description, geographic location or specific target market. So while it might be difficult to rank well for chocolate, it will be less of a challenge to rank well for chocolate baskets, chocolate baskets Orlando (targeting a geographic area) or corporate chocolate baskets (targeting the business market).
3. Look for niche keywords or markets that others haven't yet found. Such keywords have the magic combination of being relatively popular searches, but having little competition. Many SEOs adopt this niche keyword strategy to find more opportunity.