Every aspect of crafting a website-for-profit revolves delicately around carefully chosen and strategically placed keywords. Behind the scenes of every top-ranking sales page lies a company's systematic campaign to win dominance in an escalating battle over specifically targeted keywords. The stakes can be high. Billions of $$ have already been earned and billions more are in the queue waiting to be tapped.

Part One — Keyword basics

Digested and reprinted with permission from Planet Ocean’s SearchEngineNews.com

Key·words (ke’wûrds’)

— the cornerstone of search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM).

About this article...

This 1200 word digest version is condensed from Planet Ocean’s full 8000 word Ultimate Keyword Primer originally published in July 2005. The full version is available to SearchEngineNews.com subscribers only. We ourselves find it worthwhile to subscribe. You can also subscribe by clicking the link above.

Every aspect of crafting a website-for-profit revolves delicately around carefully chosen and strategically placed keywords. Behind the scenes of every top-ranking sales page lies a company’s systematic campaign to win dominance in an escalating battle over specifically targeted keywords. The stakes can be high. Billions of $$ have already been earned and billions more are in the queue waiting to be tapped.

Clearly, keywords are big business. There’s much to be gained by getting them right. Go slowly! Select carefully! ...while the effort required can be great, the rewards for mastering the trade are substantial. Keywords may very well be ‘key’ to the greatest financial opportunities of our time.

So, you think you understand keywords?

Maybe you do. Maybe not. Know for a certainty that before you take another step toward online profitability, your degree of success will be mirrored by your own comprehension of all nuances that revolve around the concept of keywords:

• what they are,
• how to find them,
• and what to do with them once you have them.

The money keywords that trigger sales

Keywords are the words and phrases people use in their online searches. Be aware that sometimes the searcher’s motives are purely academic. Other times it’s research in preparation for making a purchase decision at a later time (maybe 5 minutes, 5 hours, 5 days, 5 months?). However, a money-transaction ensues only in a third case, when a searcher becomes a buyer and uses specific keywords to locate the product or service they know they want to purchase.

Of course, a site might use keywords tempered for all three instances. But realize that it’s only in the latter case—when a searcher becomes a buyer— that there’s any statistically significant chance for an online company to make a sale in an unbroken...

keyword > search results > go to website > add to cart > complete sale

...buying process.

So, while all three instances involve keywords, only one type (statistically speaking) consistently leads to making sales. That’s why today’s professional SEM’s (search engine marketers) stress and strain to identify the keywords customers are using when they are ready to BUY their product or service.

Sure, their secondary focus is to work keywords into their information pages that funnel (re)searchers to sales pages as they’re preparing themselves to buy. But the professionals know the difference. They know to focus their efforts on determining exactly which keywords people use to buy and which ones they use to research. Then they reverse-engineer the process by building their buy keyword-pages first before broadening their focus toward crafting their information-pages that’ll capture the (re)searchers as well.

For example...

If a consumer is looking to buy a cell phone online, they might keyword (re)search Google for cell phone. Obviously, they’ll get results that offer a wide variety of brands with an almost endless selection of features. At this stage they are researching.

Soon they may learn about Bluetooth and GPS technology and perhaps also include those keywords in their searches. At some point they learn the Motorola i605 has all of these features. Let’s suppose it becomes their cell phone of choice.

That’s when the savvy online shopper enters a highly specific keyphrase—something like Motorola i605 best price… lo and behold, here’s what comes up:

It doesn’t take a behavioral science major to figure out that one of these top listed sites is likely to get that consumer’s purchase as soon as the (re)searcher turns into a buyer.

Ironically, those informational ‘funnel pages’—the pages that scored well for keywords like cell phone, bluetooth, GPS cell phones, and so forth are what primed the pump for this sale. But, ultimately, they were left out in the cold like the nice guy on a blind date with a hottie who’s still pining away over her last boyfriend.

While cell phone, Bluetooth, and GPS were important keywords, the page that got the girl, ...uh, sale, was the page with the specific cell phone model coupled with the keyphrase best price. THAT’s how buyers behave in the cell phone market (selfish bastards!).

So, your job is to also reverse engineer the keyword buying process for your market, making sure your pages score well in the keyword searches your customers are using to buy. Once you’ve covered that base, then you can build your informational funnel pages to help snag more of them.

Part Two – The Ultimate Keyword Primer

Nine steps to finding all the right Keywords

The following is in digest form, condensed into the topic headers only. To get the full 8000 word comprehensive version of this Keyword Primer, you’ll find it worthwhile to subscribe to SearchEngineNews.com

We’ll begin by stating the obvious:

Start by making a list of every possible keyword you can think of that your potential customers might use when searching for what you’re selling.

There’s a good chance you’ll easily come up with a list of twenty or so before you start to run out of ideas. That’s the point at which you should resort to the tips and tools that’ll help you continue the brainstorming process of building your raw keyword list.

The following nine guidelines will help make this process as productive as possible.

1. Be Specific
2. Put Yourself in Your Customer’s Shoes
3. Glean Keywords from your Website’s Referral Logs
4. Check Out Your Competition
5. Cover All Your Keyword Variations
6. Be Descriptive
7. Use Action Words
8. Target Local Markets
9. Use Online Keyword Tools to Complete Your Selections

For all of the specifics on how to implement each of the above nine steps, subscribe to SearchEngineNews.com

Part Three — The Ultimate Keyword Primer

The Location of Your Keywords is Critical!

The following is in digest form, condensed into the topic headers only. To get the full 8000 word comprehensive version of this Keyword Primer, you’ll find it worthwhile to subscribe to SearchEngineNews.com

There are numerous places on your web page where you might place your keywords—and some are much more effective than others. We’ll show you how keyword placement can make a big difference in terms of ranking well within the search results.

1. Title Tags
2. Header Tags
3. Body Text
4. Link Anchor Text
5. The Higher Up on the Page, the Better
6. Combining HTML Tags
7. Meta Tags – Which Ones Matter and Which Ones Don’t – and Why!
8. Use Only a Small Number of Keywords on Each Page – and Why
9. How To Use the Image Alt Tag Wisely and Turn Images into Assets
10. Keyword Density - Exposing An Enduring SEO Myth

To get detailed specifics on each of these ten keyword placement categories, you’ll want to subscribe to SearchEngineNews.com where you can access this 8000 word Keyword Primer in its entirety.

A Few Keywords to the Wise

Assuming you’ve studied all three parts of this rather lengthy Ultimate Keyword Primer, it’s safe to say you now know quite a bit more about the strategic use of keywords than your competitors.

You know the how, why, and where of keyword research and placement. You know that it’s better and far more cost-effective to have lots of keywords—each sending you small amounts of targeted traffic—than it is to have a few highly visible keywords sending you tons of untargeted traffic. And, you know that using well-chosen yet less-competitive keywords can add up to huge amounts of VERY targeted traffic.

Now it’s time for you to apply these lessons to gain your distinct advantage in the online marketplace.

About Stephen Mahaney

Publisher of SearchEngineNews.com and the award-winning UnFair Advantage Book on Winning the Search Engine Wars.