Keywords and key phrases are possibly the most important element of any internet marketing project. They are the terms that you use to match to your web presence to your target customers. Most internet users find sites by using search engines rather than by going direct to a known web address. Search engines use the keyword entered by the user to try and match with the relevant information on the web. So Keywords are used on websites, pay per click adverts, press releases and articles amongst others.

Using scuba diving phrases to illustrate this article, some example keywords are Scuba, Scuba Diving, Scuba Training and so on. My choices will depend on the nature of the subject I am trying to promote and how specific I want to be.

Getting Started

Most people have some ideas about which keywords or phrases will match their business, so an easy way to start is to brainstorm with colleagues and bounce ideas around until you have around 30 phrases on a list. At this stage dont try to rank them in order of importance, just try and make the list reflect the subject as you might for an entry in a phone directory.

Consider how general you want to be, there is a trade off between numbers of potential contacts and quality. So for example if I am a Scuba training school I might want to use phrases like Scuba Diving School and Scuba Diving Training rather than just Scuba which would also cover dive sites, dive shops, equipment and so on. Also try and think of phrases people might use to look for a product or service rather than just writing a short description of it; learn to scuba dive describes what they want to do rather than where they might do it.

Researching the list

So once you have your list you need to start more in depth research to try and pick out which phrases and words will work the best for you. There are a large number of websites that will help you do this and perhaps two of the most well known are the Yahoo! Search Marketing Keyword Assistant and Wordtracker. Here you can enter your target phrase and see how many daily of monthly searches are being performed using it and similar phrases. This tends to throw up new ideas and help you expand your list with words that didnt originally occur to you.

Those phrases that appeared good to you may be of little or no use in reality because no-one is using them. Alternatively if there are very low numbers of searches being done but the phrase is very specific it may well be worth keeping it. For example, a particular make and model of a product. Cressi Sub BCD gives you a very clear idea of what that particular searcher is looking for although there is likely to be a relatively small number of them.

Unfortunately you are not alone and the other factor you must take into account is the level of competition for a particular phrase. Many phrases are highly competitive and will take a large amount of effort to rank with. It may be better to take a less popular phrase and be on page 1 of the organic search than put all your time and money into reaching page 17. Having said that looking at your top competitors keywords (by viewing their source code file) is also an important part of your research.

Many keyword tools help you decide on how useful a keyword is by producing a figure called the KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Indicator) this is measured differently by different sites but is generally the number of searches squared, divided by the number of competitors. A scale will indicate whether the figure produced is bad, reasonable or excellent.

What do you do now?

Now youve crunched through all your keywords and come up with a ranked list, you need to start using them. For an article, you may want to select a few and have them point at your website; similarly you should use them in press releases. The main use however will be on building your website page copy and ppc adverts.

Choose between 1 and 3 phrases and optimise specific web pages for these phrases. This involves some technical work in the coding of your page that your web developer should be able to do for you. It also requires you to write meaningful copy for your pages that uses the phrases often and prominently enough for search engines to recognise that this page may well be a good resource for that topic.

If you want to use paid advertising such as Google AdWords to point people at your site, you can use the keywords directly in the advert. Then when combined with your budget you can choose where you want to rank in the sponsored links.

And then?

As with all forms of marketing you need to monitor the performance of each key phrase over time, drop those that arent working or are giving a poor return on investment and beef up those that are working well. It requires a continuous effort to build and improve on an effective strategy.

Guy Parker 2006