Let’s take a look at how one creates a keyword list with the example of a website selling real estate in Texas, where the immediately obvious keywords are items such as ‘property’, ‘real estate’, ‘Texas’ and ‘Texan’. These can also be combined into phrases such as ‘Texan property’ and ‘property in Texas’. In general, focus should be on ranking for keyword phrases rather than for keywords.

It is true that ranking well for ‘Texas’ will give a thousand times as much traffic as ranking well for ‘Texas Property’, but understand it would cost a hundred times as much investment to rank for ‘Texas’ as to rank for ‘Texas Property’ very simply because  competition is many times more heavy for individual words then exists is for phrases. Additionally, most of the traffic for ‘Texas’ is for topics (such as Texas Revolution, Texas Flag, Texas Food) largely irrelevant to the business, so the majority of the traffic is of no value to the business.

Consequently, in most cases, you will achieve a much better return on investment by simply focusing on relevant keyword phrases or targeted keyword phrases, than by doing Search Engine Optimization for individual keywords.

A related point you need to keep in mind is that ranking well for individual keywords in no way means that a keyword will automatically rank well for phrases that include these keywords. For example, a site might rank well for ‘Texan’ (perhaps resulting in lots of traffic about ‘Texan Food’) and rank well for ‘Property’ (perhaps resulting in lots of traffic for ‘Australian Property’), without ranking well for ‘Texan Property’ (which is what we were after in the first place).

In fact, many targeted keyword phrases, are more often than not the best investments in terms of attracting website visitors searching for the precise product that you might be offering. So imagine if you are selling ranches in Texas you might find the best Search Engine Optimization investment is ‘Prestige Texan Property,’ whereas if you are selling run-down ranch houses to people looking for inexpensive seasonal homes they can fix up you might find the best Search Engine Optimization investment is ‘Cheap Texan Ranch Houses’. So admittedly, the actual amount of traffic for these lengthy phrases is most likely low, the probability of the resulting visitors buying is much higher than for the more general phrases, and the cost of Search Engine Optimization is a small fraction of the cost for more general phrases.

Of course there will be such cases when ranking for individual words makes more sense. Let’s look at a website which provides international property rather than property in just one country that may find it cost effective to rank for ‘property,’ and likewise, websites that focus on niche topics identified by a single word. However, the fact is for the majority of websites, keyword phrases are not only more cost effective, but also tend to attract the specific type of visitors that actually match the products being sold.

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There are a couple of things you need to consider when prioritizing keywords, the competitive advantage and profitability of the products/services associated with the keywords. In addition, prior to entering the vetting process, a Keyword Opportunity List should be generated.

The initial phase of creating the initial Keyword Opportunity List simply involves brainstorming as many keyword ideas as possible including listing root brands and product/service names (e.g. lawyer), brainstorming variations of product and brand related keywords, talking to clients to determine what terms they use in search, studying competitors’ sites, adding geographic variations (e.g. Miami lawyers, Dade county lawyers), adding descriptive variations (e.g. personal injury lawyers, slip and fall lawyers), taking all the variations and entering them into the Google AdWords Keyword Tool, which will suggest numerous other variations.

In the keyword list you prepare there could very easily be a hundred terms that you like and think should appear in the search engines. However, consider that obtaining a good rank sometimes takes an investment, and there might be a number of these terms that may not bring sufficient traffic to justify the investment you plan, and to take it further, even for the terms which you are willing to invest in, you should definitely prioritize and understand that it is virtually impossible for you to work on all simultaneously unless you have huge resources at your disposal.

Finally, it is important to understand the importance of keyword research, so don’t fear the investment of time in this component of your Search Engine Optimization puzzle, and if your strategy foundation isn’t based on solid findings and insights you develop, all your efforts could turn out to be a waste. Even worse, your competitors will be laughing all the way to their bank.

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It is not only important to know that keywords are important to your business, but it is also important to understand what aspects of keywords actually make them important to your business.

There are different variables or characteristics that keywords have to help the determination of whether or not the keywords are worth consideration as part of your Search Engine Optimization strategy, and only if keywords pass the primary selection tests can they be subjected to the prioritization variable tests. Considerations for primary keyword selection are:

• Keyword terms/phrases should have adequate search volumes

• Keyword terms that are chosen should be relevant

• Identified relative competition should be evaluated

If a keyword search term’s volume fails to meet sufficient levels, then it is simply removed from the list, and likewise, if it does not satisfy the relevancy criterion, it should also not be considered.

Finally, you must understand that primary keywords are simply the main keywords from which all variations on the keywords should derive, and your primary keywords should be focused on your particular industry and yet, not be too specific, while at the same time, the primary keywords should always be open ended enough so that secondary keyword phrases can be derived from them, and still include the primary keywords within the phrases.

Once identified, you want to make sure the primary keywords appear four or five times in your article in addition to the first paragraph of your article. The more you use primary keywords within limits, the better ranking the article will receive, but be careful, if you are submitting your article to an article directory, be sure to check their guidelines for their keyword use ratio.

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Search Engines use algorithms that are well protected intellectual proprietary secrets and are continually evolving over time. It is important for you to focus on making your website as accessible as possible to Search Engines, while ensuring you have high quality content. Keep in mind these are well-established principles that are guaranteed to improve the rankings of your website, regardless of how the Search Engine algorithms continue to advance.

Search Engine Optimization practitioners can sometimes try to abuse the Search Engine algorithms in order to give their clients an advantage, and at times they might look to benefit and improvement through loopholes or sometimes shady methods. One simple example is using invisible text (white text on a white background) to “stuff” a page. Of course, this is invisible to the human eye, but Search Engines used to index this content, and if it is taken one-step further by stuffing the page even more with unrelated (but popular) keywords, it then becomes ‘spamming’. That was then, this is now and Search Engines are much smarter today and will definitely notice these sneaky tricks, and will heavily penalize any websites using such tactics and tricks.

Advanced Optimization is not simple and therefore carries risk if badly planned and executed. You should always keep in mind that what might work today is innovative, but runs the risk of heavy penalties in the future once people abuse it to the point where results are skewed, so always be careful of the introduction of any initiatives that fall into this class.

You probably have the question in mind that if you apply Search Engine Optimization management to your website, how long before you see the results? Understand that Google re-indexes websites every single day of the year, and it follows a process to ensure every entry contained in its vast database is re-indexed every 4-6 weeks. Google will also re-index sites like “news” aggregators much quicker, many times daily in order to stay most current. You can be sure that other Search Engines use roughly the same re-indexing timeframes, and therefore expect it to take up to 4-6 weeks before you can observe changes in the rankings.

You are still probably wondering if Search Engine Optimization will improve your ranking. Yes, but will they keep you there? No. Understand the Search Engine algorithms always continue to evolve over time and Search Engine Optimization is a form of marketing, and you therefore must have clearly defined processes of monitoring, interpreting results and tweaking.

Remember, Search Engine Optimization is not the only tool you need when creating and maintaining a profitable web presence, it is only one important component of your Web marketing strategy. Seasoned Web Marketers understand and realize that there is more to the Web than just search engines, as they know obtaining links from reputable websites, mixed with advertising using traditional media and ensuring your customers recommend you to their network of friends enjoy the same level of importance.

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