Keywords: Traffic and Competition
You want to choose your keywords to target. This is your first priority, because if your keyword research isn't right then everything else that follows after this will be based on false data. You want keywords that have the most traffic (these are keyword phrases most often typed into the search boxes of the search engines) but also have the least competition (there are the fewest other web pages which contain those keywords, or are optimized for those keywords).
It is a skilled business getting a fine match between these two. What are the words that your potential customers will be typing into the search engines? How will these people find you? Which of these words will have the fewest competing web pages? With which keywords or keyword phrases will you stand the best chance of getting a first position listing ahead of your competitors.
NOTE: from now on, "your competitors"? means anyone or any business that is found on the search engines by using the same search terms (keywords or keyword phrases) as your site. You may not have even heard of them before, but from now on they are in direct competition with you. Your job is now to get above them in the search engine listings.
Okay, let's take an example. Let's say you make widgets, and let's also say that you are based in Boston. You want your web site to be on the first page of the search engine listings when anyone types "widgets"? into a search engine search box.
It might just be that "widgets"? is too competitive a term to be able to achieve first page status. There just might be too many other competitors for that search term, or they might have too well establish a web site (the search engines take into account the age of a site when deciding on its importance). On the other hand, you may find that "widgets in Boston"? is a much easier keyword phrase to rank for. There's no reason why you shouldn't optimize for both search terms.
Let's also say that you were best known for your precision furled widgets. You might find that "precision furled widgets"? was also a relatively easy search term to be highly listed for. By all means, optimize for that search term as well.
So how do you know how many searches are made for these search terms, and how do you kno whow much competition you have? There are quite a few software applications that help you with this, many of them free. A good start would always be the Digitalpoint keyword tool. This is a free tool that collects results from the trial version of WordTracker and the Overture search engine, and you can go to it by clicking here.
This will list the most popular searches for that search term and also the most popular searches for keyword phrases associated within that category. It also shows the number of daily searches. You can also specify which market you want to investigate by country from a short drop-down menu.
This is an excellent starting point, as this shows you what people are actually searching for within your sector, and how many searches are being made (for monthly searches just multiply Digitalpoint's figures by 30). But it does not tell you much about your competition. It's great to know that there are these many searches that may end up at your site's listing. But if the competition for those keywords is fierce your listing may be well down the page, or on a different page altogether, so nobody will see it, and nobody will click on it.
So to find out more about the competition I use Keyword Elite. Since I first bought my copy it has had several revisions, and it now does many more things than when it first came out, all asked for by users. A lot of the Keyword Elite procedures are concerned with the Google Adwords PPC program (which we are not concerned with here). But there is a crafty and deadly accurate procedure you can use to check out your competition in Google's organic (natural) listings. This is so good I can't understand why more people aren't doing this on a daily basis.
Firstly create a keyword list by using project 1 in Keyword Elite. Then export that list to project 4 which is used specifically to find the competition of those keywords. (By the way, there is a series of excellent instructional videos to show you how to use each project.) The results will show you the main competitors for any given keyword search phrase, and also the elements of the on-page optimization (see below) that are present. This will allow you to determine whether a given page has been deliberately optimized to rank highly or not. If it clearly hasn't, you can just move in there, follow the instructions in the next few sections of this book, and take the move into the top position.
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