Search Engine Optimization – Targeting the right keyword
Posted December 14th, 2009 by SeanOne of the biggest mistakes many new turnkey adult website owners make is not targeting any keywords or targeting the wrong keywords. In this post, we’ll look at what keywords are and how to select the right keyword to target for your business.
What are keywords and why do we need to target them?
When a user conducts a search through a search engine, they type in words or phrases to find what they are looking for. These words or phrases are what we consider keywords. For example, a user might type in “lingerie” or “sexy lingerie” when conducting their search for lingerie. The keywords here are either “lingerie” or “sexy lingerie”. Notice that a keyword can consist of more than one word so from our previous example, “sexy lingerie” is actually considered a single keyword. By targeting a keyword, you are putting your efforts into having a search engine return your website as a relevant result for a given keyword. Selecting the right keyword(s) to target is paramount in building a successful online business.
Why is it important to target a keyword?
When a search engine indexes your website, it scans your pages (among other things) for keywords in an effort to determine the topic of your website/pages. Without a strong focus on any keywords, you leave it to the search engine to decide what information on your pages is important and what isn’t. As a result, it’s important to influence the outcome of this decision by “helping” the search engine pick the right keywords that describe your content. And by doing so, you have a better chance of your website being returned as a relevant search result for your targeted keyword.
It’s important to understand that you can’t expect your website to show up for every search query relating to your website’s topic. The web is huge and there are millions of sites competing for the same keywords. Instead, you need to focus your efforts on targeting one or a few keywords for which you would like to see your website returned as a search result. Furthermore, you want your website to appear on the first page of that query as most users will likely make their selection here. This is no simple task so by focusing your efforts on just one or a handful of keywords, you’ll find that you have a much better chance at achieving this goal.
Selecting the right keyword
Okay, so you’re ready to get going but how do you select the right keyword? This is going to require some research on your end to determine and there are tools and services available to help you with this decision. You can use tools like the Google Keyword Tool to determine exactly how many people actually search for a given keyword per month to find out if it’s worth targeting. The important thing to remember here is that it’s better to target a niche keyword that has fewer searches per month (but still enough to sustain a profitable business) than a keyword that has a lot of searches per month and way too much competition. The exact number of searches per month that is acceptable is something that you’ll have to determine for yourself but generally any keyword that has anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand searches per month is an ideal target. Why? Because there is less competition for these keywords and your chances of obtaining a first page ranking are much more likely than they would be for a keyword with heavy competition. Plus, a few hundred to a few thousand interested buyers to your website per month is still very appealing!
I’m going to run through an example of selecting a keyword in this post so I’ll be using our lingerie shop as a visual aid to picking out a keyword worth targeting. The obvious keywords here would be “lingerie” or “sexy lingerie” but if we look at the level of competition for these keywords it quickly becomes apparent that this would be a futile effort for a small start-up or part-time business. Instead, we need to focus on something with less competition and something that we can achieve in a much shorter period of time and with a smaller budget. So lets try a different keyword that is more specific or targeted to a niche. We’ll begin with Google’s Keyword Tool and enter a few keywords that come to mind. The best part about this tool is that it’ll provide us with related search terms so that we can get some ideas of what people are searching for.
- Go to the Google Keyword Tool
- Under “Descriptive words or phrases” we’ll be adding some keywords that I’ve come up with that describe our lingerie business. I’ll be using the keywords “sexy lingerie”, “erotic lingerie”, “romantic lingerie” and “sexy adult lingerie”. Be sure to enter only one keyword/phrase per line and make sure the appropriate region that you wish to target is selected. If you’re targeting everyone, leave the region setting as-is, Google’s tool will provide global keyword results in addition to that of your selected region. Now, click on “Get keyword ideas” to have Google’s tool generate a list of related keywords along with their monthly search volume.
Google Keyword Tool
- Analyze the list of keywords returned by Google’s keyword tool. Remember, keywords with a large monthly search volume will be accompanied by fierce competition. We want to find something that still has a valuable monthly search volume but at the same time doesn’t carry a high level of competition. When selecting a keyword, I usually target something that has under 10,000 searches per month. In fact, I normally prefer something between 500-5000 searches per month because getting to the top for such a keyword can prove to me much more easier due to the reduced competition.
Lets have a look at our results. It looks like I lucked out, two out of four of my keywords have a reasonable monthly search volume both locally and globally. Forget about “sexy lingerie” and “erotic lingerie”, based on the monthly search volume of those keywords it looks like there’s going to be way too much competition. I’m also not liking any of the other suggestions provided by Google’s tool so I’m going to pass up on those (but be sure to have a look at those when you’re conducting your own searches). So far, “romantic lingerie” and “sexy adult lingerie” look like the clear winners. I’m leaning towards “sexy adult lingerie” but lets hold off on making that decision right now as we still have a little research to do.
Google Keyword Tool
- The next thing we want to do is enter our selected keywords into Google so that we can analyze the results that are returned. We do this to ensure that our keyword is returning the results that we’re expecting (i.e. other lingerie shops or competing businesses). If it isn’t, then it’s likely that we haven’t selected a good keyword to target.
Lets enter both of our keywords into Google separately. Remember, when entering the keyword into Google you should enclose it with quotation marks to tell Google that we’re looking for that exact term. If we don’t enclose our keyword in quotes, Google will treat each word in our keyword as a separate keyword which will skew our results significantly.
Searching for an exact match in Google
This will also give us an idea of how many results are returned for our keyword. While this doesn’t mean that each of the websites returned is a competitor, it does show the number of results that we’ll have to overcome. Ideally, you want this number to be in the thousands, not millions. If you followed the instructions for selecting a keyword above, you shouldn’t be running into this problem here.
Google results for exact match search
After conducting a search for both of my keywords on Google, I’m happy with the results that I’m seeing. Both keywords have returned competing lingerie businesses and not an excessive amount of results. I’ve decided to go ahead with the keyword “sexy adult lingerie” since it has less than half the results returned by “romantic lingerie”.
- The next thing we want to determine is the direct competition for our selected keyword. What I mean by this is businesses considered to be actively targeting our keyword. Remember, this isn’t an exact science and others may have different views or ways of measuring direct competition so feel free to use whatever techniques you feel comfortable with. We’ll consider a website that has our keyword (verbatim) within the title tag, as an anchor (hyperlink) and somewhere within their page to be a direct competitor for the keyword. We can determine this buy using Google search operators with our keyword. Enter the following line into Google for our selected keyword to determine how much direct competition we have:
intext:”sexy adult lingerie” inanchor:”sexy adult lingerie” intitle:”sexy adult lingerie”
From our results, we can see we have a total of 6 direct competitors for our keyword based on our definition of a direct competitor. This is excellent and I’m happy with the results. I’ve made the final decision to use “sexy adult lingerie” as the keyword that I plan to actively target.
Direct competitors for our keyword
From here, you’ll want to look at our tutorial on creating backlinks and you’ll also want to start using this keyword throughout your website where possible. But be aware that simply loading your pages with this keyword repetitively isn’t going to get you the results that you want. You need to use the keyword legitimately where applicable without it looking like keyword spam. Start off by putting the keyword in the title of all of your pages then work on inserting it within descriptive text on your homepage or other pages. B sure to use your selected keyword when creating backlinks as well. And finally, be patient. You won’t see results right away, this is a slow process that will take some time and practice. If done correctly, you can expect to see some results within the first 3 months.
Note: This post is specific to Google but much of your efforts here will effect all other major search engines.
Tags: keywords, Search Engine Optimization, selecting keywords, SEO, targeting keywords
