New Web Business Guide Chapter 3 – Keyword Research

The New Web Business Guide Introduction can be found here. Chapter 2 – Choosing the right domain name can be found here

Choosing The Right Keywords To Help People Find What You Have to Offer

This may very well be the most important thing you do when starting your new online business. Choosing the right keywords and key phrases to target makes a huge difference in the amount of money you will make online. The more people that can find you, the more sales you will make.

The search engines have a job. They want to provide the most relevant results to the people that use their search engine to find what they are looking for. Your job is to make sure that the search engines know that you have what their users are looking for whenever they type a particular search phrase into their search engine.

Don’t try to trick the search engines. Don’t work against them. Work with them to provide the most relevant content to their users. By doing so you will be much more successful than those who try to use tricks and those who optimize their website for keywords that are not really relevant to what they sell.

How Do I Know What Keywords To Target?

I am going to offer a list of tools that will help you do your keyword research, but if you know your business well, make a list of the keywords and key phrases that you “think” people might type in to find what you are selling. Your knowledge of your products and/or services and your knowledge of your customers gives you some insight into which keywords and phrases they might choose.

Keyword Research Tools

The SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool is mostly reliant on the wordtracker database but shows you some good results broken down by search engine and day.

Keyword Discovery relies on toolbar users for it’s data much like alexa does.

My favorite is the Google Keywords Tool. It will also give you traffic estimates for the number of people who search for that particular keyword or phrase. It also gives you an idea of how many advertisers target those keywords and phrases.

Yahoo Search Marketing Keyword Tool To use it you have to sign up for yahoo search marketing. Even if you do not put up a deposit you will be able to access the yahoo search keywords tool.

Wordtracker, the free version.

Don’t be afraid to target the top keywords and phrases people type into the search engines. Just because other people also target them, it does not mean that you will not be able to compete with them.

But also do not ignore key phrases that are less popular or that have less traffic on them either. You should choose at least 10 highly Competitive keywords or phrases, 10 that have a medium amount of competition, and 10 that have very little competition for them.

That will get you started. Eventually you willl likely be targeting as many as 500 keywords and phrases, but 30 is a very good start.

How Do These Keywords and Phrases Apply To Choosing My Domain Name?

In the chapter on choosing a domain name, we talked about why your domain name should target the top key phrase you want to target.

After you have done your keyword research, you need to determine the top key phrase that you plan to be ranked well for in the search engines. That will give you the phrase you want to register as a domain name.

I Have My Keyword Research Done. Now What?

As I just said, now you can go and get your domain name registered first. Then you will need to set up a hosting account for your domain name. You are almost ready to start building your website and starting your new web business.

That keyword list you just made will be used to determine how your website will be optimized for the search engines. The keywords you use in your website’s content will help people find you when they use search engines. In later chapters we discuss how to use those keywords as you build your website, writing your content using those keywords and more.

Great keyword research is the key to your online success, so take the time to get it right. Do your homework or hire someone to do it for you.

The next chapter will be about how to choose the right web hosting company for your website.

We can do your keyword research for you.