Keyword Analysis :: Choosing the right keywords for your website

Conducting a proper keyword analysis is vital for properly marketing your website. Knowing what keywords are best to use, where your customers are in the buying funnel is extremely important for the survival of your website.

Many people are familiar with the various online keyword analysis tools. Manning Search Marketing can provide you with years of experience of expert keyword analysis services to fully help you understand the process.

A further look into Choosing Keywords

The two of the more popular keyword analysis tools out there today is the Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool and Wordtracker. It is important to know how to properly use each of these online tools and understand where the data comes from.

For those aware of the Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool, please be aware that Overture tends to clump singular, plural and misspellings together with the count. If you search for website marketing, or web site marketing, you will come back with 19267 searches with the phrase web site marketing showing for each version searched for. This is done so by Overture because this was meant to be used for Pay Per Click services mainly. It is still a good tool to collect data for and compare it to other data sources. This is where you need to use the Metacrawler info to differentiate the phrases and find out whether the singular, plural or a misspelling is getting the most searches.

Another frequent mistake for some of the more advanced keyword searchers is with WordTracker. One problem I see with this is people basing everything on the KEI analysis formula. The text below is taken directly from Wordtracker tutorial notes. Keep this in mind when reviewing the next example. It will show you how basing all your efforts on the KEI Analysis Formula can lead a website in the wrong direction.

“Good keywords to target have a KEI of between 10 - 100. These are good value bets and you have a good to medium chance of reaching the top. Between 100 - 400 are your best bets and anything above 400+ is a gift!” (taken from wordtracker.com)

With the next example, I will demonstrate the example using the overture database numbers (but remember this is an extreme example to show you how at times how you can be lead astray without the proper experience). With the word Microsoft, using the Overture (GoTo) database, there is a count of 1,578,207 with 40,800,000 competing sites (searching for the phrase in Google with double quotes). Using the KEI algo of [KEI = (P^2/C)], [61047.484 = (1,578,207^2/40,800,000), from the Wordtracker info, Microsoft with a KEI of 61047.484 apparently is a good phrase to position for. We know that with over 40 million sites (using Google for the competing site numbers) is not going to be a good word for most sites to position for. This is why you don’t want to focus all your efforts on the KEI. If so, there’s a very good chance that your competition will be leaving you in the dust when they reach the top of the rankings.

It is always best to get qualified help from a reputable search marketing firm when starting a SEO or PPC campaign. Choosing the wrong keywords could greatly harm your business and Manning Search Marketing can help find the best keyword phrases for your website.