Keywords are the foundation of paid and organic search success.

Yet in my ongoing mission to convince South Australian businesses to invest in internet marketing, one of my greatest challenges is getting them to optimise their keywords.

In considering what a keyword is, there are really three manifestations of keywords and to be effective, each needs to be aligned with the next.  I’ve developed this simple model to illustrate their relationship:

Keywords are:

1. Client’s words
Words that your clients use to describe the products or services you wish to promote online. This is easy to determine – you just listen to what your clients say when they are talking about your products – you’re doing that already – right?

2. Current searches
Yes, it is possible to extract search history from Google. Its quite legal and VERY interesting to see what is actually being searched for.

You would be surprised (maybe horrified) at the poor use of grammar and the predominance of dyslexic-like searches. Interestingly, as we are all becoming more sophisticated searchers, so our search criteria is evolving from single words into a short phrases of three and even four words.
 
Search engine extracts are the ultimate reference for fine tuning keywords because they show exactly what your clients are searching for. Importantly they also provide search volumes (i.e. the size of the market) and results (i.e. your competition).

Handy indeed, and a critical consideration when selecting your keywords.

3. In your website
Ultimately your website is where your keywords need to reside.
Critically, your first audience for the site’s keywords is not prospective clients, but search engine spiders.  These programs trawl the internet scanning websites examining keywords for use by the search engine for your clients searches.

The spider will determine which words are predominate in your site. Configuring your website to achieve this is a challenge in its own right but fundamnetally ensuring those words are quite evident in your site.

As a result of this discussion, a more accurate definition for keyword might now be:

“A short phrase predominate in your website,
searched for frequently by prospective clients”

Keyword alignment, is a term I use to describe the relationship of these three keyword manifestations, and when optimal, maximises your site’s sales effectiveness.