March 27, 2008     (Updated from our previous Feb. 6, 2002 article)

In the world of search engines, keywords, key phrases and search terms are the important words or phrases that people type into the search box of major search engines, in a desire to rapidly find the products or services that interest them and that are relevant to their needs.

As it pertains to a website, keywords and key phrases are the words on your web pages that need to match these exact search terms in order for your site to drive targeted traffic to your company or online business. Targeted traffic equals interested site visitors which in turn will convert into buying customers.

The accurate identification and careful selection of these important keywords and key phrases can literally make or break any web site or online business. The best way to define keyword and key phrase marketing is simple text, which a user enters into a particular search engine or directory in order to find information relating directly to the subject of his particular interest. A key phrase is a combination of both keywords and adjectives.

Why are keywords so important to search engine optimization? Well those exact keywords form the basis for any website marketing, as they can produce a powerful impact in search engine listings and rankings. To better explain this, let me use an example that will hopefully simplify things a bit. We know that a search engine user enters a particular keyword or key phrase in the search box of a search engine such as Google or a directory like Yahoo, in the hope to find web sites relating to the subject of his or her interest.

In conjunction with today’s search engine's complex algorithms, keywords will determine which web site and which page in that web site is relevant to the exact search term used in the user’s search query. Remember that the careful identification and selection of the right keywords and key phrases for a given market or industry is one of the most important and critical aspects in implementing any effective search engine optimization (SEO) or search engine marketing (SEM) program. On a scale of 1 to 10, (10 being the highest) if I would rank how important this step is, I would give it a strong 9.

It’s no coincidence that SEO professionals and search engine marketing firms dealing in search engine optimization services spend a considerable amount of time, energy and human resources just to determine these important, relevant keywords as they uniquely apply to that particular market sector or industry. It is a very delicate and crucial step in attaining a well-balanced SEO program, one that will yield the maximum results and the best ROI (Return on Investment) to the company owning that website.

Case in point
Let's take the example of a user that is interested in purchasing a certain brand of computer peripherals, specifically a laser printer. He or she would type in "brand name laser printer" (substituting the word brand name for the make of his choice) in a search engine. Some sites related to the exact search key phrase would be listed in the SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages).

Now if the user types in "brand name computer monitors", some entirely different results are expected in the SERP's. From this we can infer that the probability of a site getting listed in a search result to some extent is highly dependent on the exact keywords and key phrases used. By the same token, different users may use different search key phrases or keywords while searching, which will again produce some entirely different results.

A site named “computer peripherals” may get listed for a key phrase "low-cost computer peripherals" typed by user 'A' and the same may not be listed for the key phrase "Low priced computer peripherals" typed by user 'B' in the search results. Why? Well simply because the search engine looks in its database for documents or pages containing the key phrase only "low-cost" as the keyword and returns those documents or web pages that contain the keyword "low-cost".

Since the website used "low-cost" as the keyword and did not use "low priced" even once on any one of its pages, it gets listed for the former search query.

Determining relevance
In the end, keywords and key phrases are extremely useful in determining the relevance and the resulting search engine rankings of a website. In retrospect, some of you may be asking, what should a person put in its keywords or key phrases? The final keywords used should primarily describe and accurately represent the content and the relevance of the particular page in which they are placed.

The keywords and key phrases used in the process could contain the appropriate technical words relative to the subject and can also include any adjectives relating to the context. To ensure top search engine rankings and ROI, a careful research and a lot of time invested in the accurate identification and selection of the right keywords used in their right context is extremely important and crucial to the long-term viability of any serious SEO or SEM program.

The correct way to do it
How do you define a keyword or key phrase? For effective search engine optimization of your web site, keywords should be formulated for each and every single page. Whatever you do, don’t make the big mistake of using the same title tags or writing your company name in the title tags of all of your pages. Carefully identify and define the keywords and key phrases that best describe the content of THAT particular page.

Put yourself in the shoes of the web visitor and, in your mind, try to “frame” the keywords this user will use to find sites similar to yours. That way, you can phrase relevant keywords in a very reliable and easy manner for each page.

I can honestly tell you that the secret to get top search engine rankings is to concentrate on keywords and key phrases, consistently throughout your site and applying them as it pertains to this article. Many years ago, when the Internet was still in its early infancy, almost all search engines used to rely heavily on meta tags, keyword density and proximity, plus a whole slew of similar parameters. In those early days, keywords played a very major role in judging the rankings of the site in the search engine results pages.

Today, I can tell you the scenario has changed a lot and each search engine has developed its own proprietary algorithm in ranking any website. For example, Google relies mainly on its patented Page Rank algorithm for most of its calculations and its ranking formula.

The indispensable Wordtracker professional search tool
In today’s modern world, as with just about any specialized field that involves any kind of technology, the proper use of specialized, professional tools is essential to the success for anybody attempting to make it a business. When carefully identifying and selecting keywords and key phrases for any of my clients, for many years, I have been using the WordTracker professional search tool.

Today, WordTracker is the best and the most popular fee-based keyword and key phrase analyzer on the Internet and is used by most serious search engine optimization professionals I know of.

I use it daily and I have no idea how I could ever achieve the results I deliver for my clients without such an important resource. Wordtracker is based on meta search queries made by ordinary people searching the Web everyday, which means that the keyword and key phrase combinations found are much more reliable than the pay-per-click listings generated by the Overture suggestion tool. Over time, I have also found that the data generated is also more objective.

The people at WordTracker know that you should not always rely on the most competitive keyword and search query combinations. These are more or less dictated by large corporations that can afford to allocate much bigger budgets on various search engine marketing and sales campaigns. I personally recommend that it just might be as sensible to optimize for less competitive key phrases or search terms for your industry, as long as those keywords are popular.

To help prevent spam, most of the search engines today are now leaning towards more advanced, complex algorithms, and they undoubtedly form the basis for effective search engine optimization.

Conclusion
In light of what I have said here, before you do any type of search engine optimization or marketing, you have to accurately understand your target audience and know exactly the search terms they are using everyday. Once you know the exact search terms being utilized, these can be included in the content of your website as your relevant keywords and key phrases, with the assurance that your site should rank very well in the search engines.

As always, I am available for any questions or if you need assistance in the careful optimization of your website. The best way to get in touch with me is always by email.

(Updated from my February 2002 article).

Article written by Serge Thibodeau,
President & CEO,
Rank for $ales
Copyright (c) Serge Thibodeau 2002

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Rank for $ales strongly recommends the use of WordTracker to effectively identify all your right industry keywords. Accurate identification of the right keywords and key phrases used in your industry is the first basic step in any serious search engine optimization program. The keywords you think are the best may be totally different than the ones recommended by WordTracker. Click here to start your keyword and key phrase research.