Your not alone. Or maybe you
are getting traffic but your not getting sales, then you most likely have
keyword issues. Just bare with me while I explain a bit about keywords to some
of the beginners out there then I'll move on to advanced keyword selection that
even some of you pro's might learn a thing or two.
STOP all Pay Per Click
(PPC) Campaigns and save your money until you read these guidelines for your
keyword selection process.
A term or a phrase used by a
"search engine" or "search box" to find information on a
particular topic is called a "keyword." You will need to select the right
ones for your website or PPC campaign or you won't get traffic or if you do you
won't make sales. What you want is targeted web traffic as this type of traffic
is ready to buy unless you give them a reason not to.
Does 10 people to your website a day mean
you doing OK? How about 10,000 people a day? These numbers mean nothing if
these people are not converting into sales. I'll take 10 targeted visitors if
just 5 converted into sales as opposed to 10,000 with 0 conversions. How you
get targeted traffic depends on your keyword selection. Specifically with PPC you don't want to pay for visitors that just want to look around, you want the visitor that is looking for the specific type of product, in detail that your selling.
Your Basic Keyword Selection
Rule#1: You need to be specific with your
keyword selection. If your website sells "Pens" you don't want to
select and optimize for that word because it's too broad. What I mean is the
word "Pens" is searched for over 5,000,000,000 times a month and
there are 26,500,000 related sites that relate to that keyword. Be more
specific, a better keyword would be "Writing Pens" or "Fountain
Pens" you could even go more specific and name the brand or model.
Rule#2: Use keyword phases instead of just a single word. Google reported in a blog post that more than 65% of all searches made through them use a phrases rather
than single word.
Rule#3: Know the competition for that particular keyword because you don't want to be fighting over it with a website that is 5yrs old or older and has a page rank of 3 or higher because Google LOVES these types of sites and if they have even a slight bit of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) they will rank higher in the search results then you. How do you check the competition? If you have a Google AdWords account you can check using their FREE Google Adwords Keyword Suggestion Tool. This will show you how many searches and how much competition for that keyword.
Another way to check is to just simply type a keyword into the Google Search box and when the results are displayed take a look at the very top of all the listings to the right and you will notice the results will appear that read like this, Results
1 - 10 of about 26,500,000 for Pens [definition]. (0.25seconds).
The basic rules for keyword competition are you want less competition but high search volumes. You should use high competition keywords throughout your web page of relevancy and meta tags, see design SEO.
Rule#4: More advanced, If you are doing a PPC campaign you will want hundreds of keywords that have low competition so use all the keywords that have spelling mistakes too, you would be surprised how may times people type these in. To find these keywords you need help from a software like Keyword Research Tool. Who fights over these? Nobody unless they know what they are doing like you.
Rule#5: Keyword Placement, for starters you should know proper keyword density which is too much is BAD. Don't over do it with keywords on your page or meta and make sure you have keywords for the web page at the top, sides and bottom of the page so search engines know what the entire page about from top to bottom. Most people miss this part. Also see design SEO for more detail on proper keyword placement.
Your Keyword Selection
Your Keyword Selection Guidelines
Rule#3: Know the competition for that particular keyword because you don't want to be fighting over it with a website that is 5yrs old or older and has a page rank of 3 or higher because Google LOVES these types of sites and if they have even a slight bit of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) they will rank higher in the search results then you. How do you check the competition? If you have a Google AdWords account you can check using their FREE 
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