In the last couple of weeks, we have had a few people asking about choosing keywords for their web site. Keywords are arguably the hardest part of Search Engine Optimization to deal with because they involve some psychology. Targeting the right keywords and phrases for your web page can help drive traffic to you and make your web site profitable, but if you target the wrong keywords you could be wasting your time.

And an SEO expert that says they can get you on the first page of Google’s Search Engine Results is great. But being on the first page doesn’t mean anything if the keyword you have selected does not result in converting a site visitor into a customer. Sure, you want traffic. But you also want customers.

What is a keyword?

For the purposes of this discussion, keyword and keyword phrase are interchangeable. But simply put a keyword is a word that someone would enter into Google’s search engine when they’re looking for something on the web.

How to choose effective keywords?

There’s no simple answer to keyword selection, and the process can take months since it involves a lot of trial and error. It is also very different depending on the type of web site you have.

Your first step is to take a close look at each of the pages on your web site and come up with a keyword strategy. You want an effective title, description and keywords for each page. But the keywords should be focused for the content of that page, not the site in general. If your web site sells surfboards, you will want to pick keywords that describe surfboards. But would "surfboard" be effective for your "Contact Us" page on your site? Telling Google that "surfboard" is a keyword for that page, but not having the word "surfboard" within the Contact page doesn’t do anything for you.

For help in coming up with keywords, use Google’s Keyword Tool. This tools lets you see how often keywords are used in searches and gives you ideas for related keywords that might be more effective.

What makes a keyword effective?

An effective keyword is one that can not only describe the contents of your page, but is likely to drive the right people to it. Keywords mean different things to different people. Or, more accurately, keywords mean different things to different web sites. If your web site is a blog about surfing, "surfing" and "surfboard" might be good keywords for you. But if you sell surfboards, these will likely not drive the type of traffic you want to your site: customers that are ready to buy.

Think about how people use the web. What do you do when you want to buy something? First, you do some research. You look up what kinds of surfboards are available and how they are different from one another. And since you’re only looking for information you don’t care much about location. But when you are ready to buy, you use different words in your search query that might include a location. You may use something like "buy surfboard" and "orange county california". Since this is a phrase targeting customers, it’s likely that this keyword would be much easier to rank well with. The keyword "buy surfboard" only has 5,400 searches per month, but these people are more likely to be looking to buy something that the people searching for "surfboard" which has 823,000 searches per month. Why drive 823,000 people to your web site if none of them are going to buy?

Now that you have a keyword, what do you do with it?

Make sure all the keywords you have chosen are within the content of your page. This is important. If your content does not include the keywords, Google will not rank you well for that keyword because Google ranks you based in part on content, not keywords. Also, try to work the keywords into the headings and title of the page. (See our article on utilizing titles and headers for more information on this.) The more you can indicate to the search engine that this page is where to go for information on your keyword, the better you will rank.

Try not to use too many keywords. Google recommends not trying to target more than three or four keywords per page, as it’s difficult to rank well enough for all of them to be effective.

How can you tell if your Keyword Strategy is working?

You need to test your keywords. This is done by using Google’s free tool, Web Analytics. Using this, you can track the number of visitors to your site, what keywords they used to find your site, which pages they are visiting and whether or not they are converting into customers. This information is incredibly valuable as it can guide you in adjusting the keywords and content of your site to attract the types of customers you want.

You will need to continually test and analyze the results of your keyword strategy and make adjustments as you see fit. With a good strategy and the tools to test that strategy, you will be far ahead of your competitor who is just picking a random keyword and hoping that it will drive customers to their site.