Keywords are the foundation of any Search Engine Optimization or Search Marketing campaign. If you don’t know what keywords are being used in searches by the people you want to attract to your Web site, you can’t effectively market through the search engines to those people.
If you’re reading this, you probably already understand why you need to know the keywords people use when searching for products or services such as those promoted by your Web site. Just in case …
If you don’t know the keywords, you can’t optimize your Web site properly.
If you don’t know the keywords, you don’t know what keywords to put in links pointing to your site.
If you don’t know the keywords, you don’t know which keywords to bid on in Pay Per Click programs.
Selecting keywords, then, is important. But there are two ways to select the keywords you need for your campaigns:
Guess
Do a full keyword analysis
The most popular method is to guess at the keywords. The most effective method, however, is to do a full keyword analysis (which actually begins with you guessing at what keywords you think are important, then using Wordtracker to “dig” into databases of actual search terms).
What happens if you simply guess at the search terms you need, and don’t do a full keyword analysis? Typically two problems arise:
Many of the keywords on your list will be more or less irrelevant. People simply aren’t using them in searches.
You’ll miss keywords that people are using to search for your product or service.