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Selection of keywords is the primary task and
usually core of a search engine placement project. One has to be
extremely cautious in selecting keywords as typical search engine
placement task takes months to show result.
So, after spending good amount of money and time if the web-site
is found to be well-placed in search engines but under wrong keywords
- all money and effort go down the drain as the web-site may not
be able to attract quality customers in sufficient numbers. In extreme
cases, the placement project may have to be started all over again.
Essential Quality of a Keyword
There may be many words (and phrases) that can
describe a product - but can all of them qualify as keywords ? Are
some words more important than others ? What is the essential quality
of a keyword ?
The answer to above lies in popular use of a word in search engines.
How many web surfers are actually using this word to search for
a given product ? More people use a particular word in search engines
to look for given product - better is the potential of the said
word to be used as 'keyword' for that product.
So, the first and foremost quality of a keyword/keyphrase is quantum
of its use in search engines. Now, how do we measure it ? There
must be some analytical tool to compare popularity of each potential
keyword. Let us examine this through an example.
Example of Keyword Usage
For a web-site on garments - there may be many
genenral keywords like garments, apparel, dresses, clothing, outfits,
attire etc. as well as specific ones like trouser, blouse, skirts,
saree, salwar kameej etc. In addition, one may have to consider
key phrases like ladies dresses, ethnic garments, baby clothing,
fashion garments etc.
Now, how to check comparative popularity of these possible keywords
and key phrases ?
Keyword Selector Tools
Fortunately, there are few organizations that
track usage of keywords in search engines. Two well known among
them are
-
Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool
Free service from overture.com - its a decent tool for researching
keyword phrases. It indicates which phrases had the highest
numbers of searches on Overture during the previous month. The
biggest weakness it has, as far as applying it to the natural
search engines, is that Overture counts singular and plural
as the same and also corrects misspelling so the totals are
all lumped together in this tool whereas on the natural engines
they are considered differently.
- WordTracker
WordTracker - a paid service, is very similar to Overture's
except that this tool differentiates between plural and singular
searches, does not correct spelling (i.e. it gives the number
of searches for misspellings rather than correcting them and
giving a total for correct and misspelled words) and gives the
results in predicted numbers of searches over all the engines
per day rather than just one engine over a month. A good review
of Wrodtracker can be found
Here
Analysis of Keyword/Keyphrase Usage
Coming back to our example of garment exporter's
web-site - let's see usage of few potential keywords and keyphrases
during October 2005 in Overture search engine
Example 1
| Keyword |
Usage |
| garments |
13,165 |
| apparel |
1,27,783 |
| woman apparel |
1,65,455 |
| womens apparel |
2,06,299 |
| discount apparel |
2,50,376 |
| man apparel |
46,454 |
| american apparel |
32,391 |
| sports apparel |
13,969 |
| golf apparel |
9275 |
| baby apparel |
8513 |
| kid apparel |
7872 |
| riding apparel |
7317 |
Example 2
| Keyword |
Usage |
| skirt |
1,26,002 |
| short skirt |
1,10,107 |
| mini skirt |
1,04,976 |
| skirt up |
36,906 |
| womens skirt |
18,434 |
| tight skirt |
17,066 |
| sexy skirt |
12,373 |
| leather skirt |
12,148 |
| denim skirt |
10,133 |
Some Key Learnings
Above examples reveal some very interesting
observations on popular usage of search words:
- Some keywords are more popular than others. For example, 'apparel'
as a keyword is 10 times more popular than 'garments'
- Keyphrases are more popular than keywords in many cases.
For every use of the keyword 'apparel' the keyphrase 'discount
apparel' was used twice ! Sum of the use of keyphrases 'woman
apparel' and 'womens apparel' was three times more than the
keyword 'Apparel'
- Popularity of key phrase can even be seen in specific keywords
like 'skirt'. The key phrases 'short skirt' and 'mini skirt'
together account for nearly twice more usage than a specific
keyword like 'skirt'
Keyword Selection for Your Web Site
So, which keywords to pick for your web-site
? Should we select most popular keywords only ? Unfortunately, its
not as simple as that !
There's something called competition ! More popular a keyword, greater
will be the competition among web-sites. As only a few can achieve
top ranking - competition will be fierce for most popular keywords.
One has to weigh one's strength while picking a keyword. What is
needed is a prioritization of potential keywords based on one's
own strength and product mix and then promoting a few chosen keywords.
We shall discuss specific strategy for prioritizing potential keywords
and choosing right ones in next issue.
Happy and Productive Surfing
Dr. Amit K Chatterjee
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