Keyword

What is a Keyword?

A keyword is a word or phrase that are used to query Google or any other search engine . You type these keywords into your search engine of choice to get more information. For instance, if I type ‘home Security cameras’ into Google, I am asking the search engine to provide me websites that have information on the subject.

Some keywords get hundreds of thousands of unique searches a day while others get a couple of hundreds.

At the same time, some high trafficked keywords are very competitive online because many businesses are trying to get referrals and traffic from users when they search for those keywords while others are not.

In choosing a keyword for your business, it is very important to put some time and thought into researching keywords. There are some good free tools online such as the Google Keyword Research tool and Wordtracker that can help get you started in researching keywords relevant to your business. These tools can be very useful for getting insights about how many users are searching for a given keyword and how much competition there is for the keyword online. This can also give you a realistic sense of what keywords you should be using on your website and how effective they will be in marketing your site online.

A keyword, in the context of search engine optimization, is a particular word or phrase that describes the contents of a Web page. Keywords are intended to act as shortcuts that sum up an entire page. Keywords form part of a Web page’s metadata and help search engines match a page to/ with an appropriate search query.
The role of keywords was once very central to the function of search engines. Search engines could crawl sites and, if the keywords were accurate, serve those sites up as search results. However, people began abusing the keyword metadata in an attempt to show up higher in searches, and even to rank in completely unrelated searches. For this reason, the importance of keywords in search engine optimization has been greatly reduced. Keywords are arguably still an important factor, but they are not the only factor in SEO.

Explanation of  keyword:  Using keywords is just a common sense approach to setting up a website because you’re trying to know what people want so you can give it to them through your website. For instance, if my keyword research reveals that people are searching for ‘Cake Mixer', I could build a website around it and promote it to those people who indicated interest, get them to my website, they buy and I get paid commissions and everybody is happy at the end of the day.

This takes the guess work out of setting up a website. From the word ‘go’, you know what people want and you decide to give it to them through your website.

Importance of keyword

Keyword research tools:  Searching for keywords is made easy by various tools, some of which are free. They are popularly known as keyword research tools or software. You may go to google and search for Keyword Research tools to get familiar with what they do and how they work.

A golden keyword will then be a keyword you build your website around, so that when anyone searches for that keyword using Google search engine for example, your website will be among those displayed on its first page.  If your website is displayed for example on the 10^th page, searchers will hardly go as far as the 10^th page to get answers or information, such a keyword will not be termed as Golden.   You need golden keywords to get good traffic to your website, getting traffic to your site is the one of the most important factor in internet marketing.

 

Characteristics of a Golden keyword

1. Search Volume:

The keyword should have high search volume, meaning the number of times people search the internet using the keyword or the number of people that want information on the keyword during a period of time e.g. in a month or in a year.  It is also important to narrow the search down to your target audience e.g. United State of America as against global search result.  Global search results will not represent what obtains locally almost all the time. Global search volume represents the world-wide search volume while Local search volume represents the amount of searches in the country your keyword tool is set to target.

We can also use Broad Match or Exact Match, Exact match is more accurate. The exact match volume is exactly the amount of searches per month of a certain keyword.

2. Cost per Click (CPC):

CPC represents how much people are willing to pay for a click for a specific keyword. It also represents how much you can make per ad click if you have Adsense ad on your website. In short, if people are paying a lot of money for a click for a certain search term, then the keyword is lucrative and can bring in a lot of money for you.

3. The Level of Need For a Solution

The need to find a solution to an ailment will far outweigh the need to find fun pictures on the internet, most people are therefore willing to pay more for solutions to a problem than get fun pictures. When you focus your keyword on problem solving, your are more likely to get to the first page on Google search and greater value for your ads.

4. Buyer Keywords

Buyer keywords are keywords that include some phrases that show the interest and intent in buying things of a searcher. This is fairly simple. If a person types in “where to buy (product name)”, it clearly shows that they’re looking to buy. Targeting this keyword will result in more sales.
On the flip side, if someone just types in “(product name)”, they might be looking for photos, information and some other things related to the product. This keyword is still great but it’s not as profitable as the first keyword.

Searches like this have a high conversion rate and will result in getting you more money per visitor.

Examples of buyer keywords, where to buy [product name] (online)
get [product name] (online). cheap [product name] (online)
where can I buy [product name]
where to find [product name] (online)
where to shop for [product name] (online)

5. Seasonality

Search based around the word “Valentine” will not get high search volume in the summer. Search based on events will not get a large search volume in the future. This is a common sense. Be sure to enter your keyword to Google Trends  to know whether it gets sustainable search volume for all the year or just peak on a period of time.

6. Keyword competition
A low-competition keyword is a keyword that your website can easily rank for. What I mean by that is, a low-competition keyword can easily get your website to the first page of Google (where the traffic is and where you can get a lot of visitors).
Low-competition keywords are gold. They can get your website to make money as if it was going out of fashion. When you choose your keywords, try to analyse them. Any keyword that is not low-competition should not be used on your website.

So your strategy to succeed in internet marketing(get high traffic) and to rank high in Google search is to use a keyword with moderately high search volume and low competition

There are dozens of tools that promise that they will help you to easily figure out golden keywords. But you have to understand the basics first, tools can only help you get things done faster.
Here are some basic page ranking factors you should consider before deciding on your keyword:

a. Onpage SEO

For SEO page optimization, keyword should be in the title, description, headline of the content and in the url.  If websites that show up on the first page of your targeted keyword fail to do this, it means they are either not trying to rank for the keyword you are after or not even doing SEO. The implication is that you can easily beat them and get their ranking.
Fortunately there are thousands of keywords like that waiting to be discovered
So, the first thing you have to check is whether there are unintentional & unoptimized pages that are ranking for your targeted keywords. If so, go for it immediately!

b. Competition Page Rank

Google give pages with higher PR more trust and authority than pages with lower or no PR.
A rule of thumb is to make sure that none of the top 5 sites have a page rank of 3+ and at least 2 pages with Pr 0 in the top 10.
You can still outrank sites with page rank of 4 or 5+ but you should only do that when you’re pretty good at SEO. But for the success of a niche websites, it is  better to focus on low-hanging fruits keywords with page rank of 0 sites on top.
You can use SEO Quake (FREE) to check PR of any site.

c. The amount of backlinks to the page

This is another important and basic factor. The rule of thumb in basic SEO is that if a page has tons of backlinks, run away and find another keywords!
You can use SEO Spyglass (it’s FREE) to check backlinks.
You should also look at the amount of Refering Domain. It means how many unique domains are pointing to the page. It’s more important than amount of backlinks because if the site has 10,000 backlinks from just 10 refering domains, it’s not well-diversified and that’s a sign of a weak site as well.

d. The Type of Pages Showing Up

The type of the pages showing up in the top 10 does matter a lot. There are times when random inner pages of a site with ZERO SEO will show up in search results. This also happens a lot with user generated sites as well. If you see these kinds of site, you can build up your confidence because you can outrank them easily examples are:

• Facebook and twitter profiles
• Yahoo Answers.
• Other Q & A sites.
• Article directories (article base, ezine articles…)
• Any kind of Forum.
• Web 2.o sites (Squidoo, Hubpages, …)
• File download sites (mediafire,  privatebay,…)

e. Site Age

Older sites tend to receive more trust by Google than new sites.

f. Exact Match Domain Available

People prefer buying exact match domain to build sites, If the exact match domain is available, it means no one knows about that keyword and it also means no competition.

g. Anchor Text

When you inspects a site’s anchor text in Majesctic SEO (FREE, no affiliate link) you can easily figure out if the site is targeting the keyword or not. For example if a site is targeting the keyword: affiliate marketing, the anchor text will look like this:
– affiliate marketing tips
– affiliate marketing guide
– affiliate marketing

It would then make sense to create pages on your website targeting those keywords by providing relevant information to online searchers about what they are looking for.

Some businesses choose to include keywords relevant to their business site domain name. This strategy works as well as long as it is in line with the brand identity you have for your website.

Putting some thought into target keywords for your website is an investment worth making. With the free tools and resources available online, it will be easy for you to get started on thinking about ways to use targeted keywords to get qualified leads to your website’s pages.

In summary, a keyword basically just refers to the phrase you want to show up for when searched. Depending on your strategy, this can be a specific term used to display your sponsored ad or it may be set of terms used in your website’s content.