Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Using Keywords and Keyphrases

People typically find most sites through a search on a word or phrase such as: "learning math online" or "kids learning games". The heart of online PPC and search engine marketing is finding the keywords and keyphrases that work for you.

Generally, from a webmaster's point of view, a single word keyword producces a large volume search with less targetted traffic. A multiword keyphrase produces more targetted traffic which is less competitive or expensive to win. For an extreme example, my site does better to focus on "third grade learning games" than to compete for the word games. Lets analyse the keyword "games".

If you look up the search volume on games, you'll find that yahoo has 4 million searches for the word "games" in January. The largest two word keyphrase with the word game was "free game" at 1.4M. Since my site is for learning, its unlikely that most of the people interested in "games" would have much interest in my site (its also unlikely that at this stage that I could compete successfully for these very high volume phrases. Looking down the list, the first expression that might produce traffic targetted at my site is "kids learning games" which has 10K seaches in January. If you look up "third grade learning games", you'll find 56 searches in January.

Now keyphrases can be used in a few ways. You can design a page to do well in the search engines for a keyphrase by using it in the (listed roughly in order of impact) Page URL, page name, body text, H1 or H2 tags, anchor text pointing to that page, meta tags and meta descriptions, and alt tags. (Theres alot more to it than just the onpage issues). You can also buy traffic based on people searching on keyphrases thru PPC advertising.

Comment on synonym engine by google

Although google appears intelligent, its actual "thinking" is primarily based on keyword and keyphrase analysis. Comment on semantic stupidity (doesn't think of 3rd and third as the same)

from Yahoo/Overtures' ranking tool - http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
4197902 game
1486027 free game
1351503 yahoo game
1043416 online game
793698 free online game
513724 video game
451565 addicting game
434954 video game rental
300809 the game
278053 game cheat
237947 play free game
225750 free game downloads
214947 game spot
213469 dress up game
206045 msn game
195366 kid game
194565 computer game
179996 pogo game
174684 flash game
157221 card game
156792 poker game
154099 pc game
151806 disney game
146618 game downloads
141818 cartoon network game
136806 sex game
136763 play game
121896 disney channel game
121612 baby shower game
120507 console game
118795 casino game
114968 fun game
112515 arcade game
108214 kid learning game - 95th on 4/1/06:
104703 free casino game
etc

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