| How
to Export - Part 17
Keywords that Attract More Buyers to a Web-Site
Selection of keywords
is the primary task and usually core of a search engine
placement project. One has to be extremely cautious
in selecting keywords as typical search engine placement
task takes months to show result.
So, after spending good amount of money and time if
the web-site is found to be well-placed in search engines
but under wrong keywords - all money and effort go down
the drain as the web-site may not be able to attract
quality customers in sufficient numbers. In extreme
cases, the placement project may have to be started
all over again.
Essential
Quality of a Keyword
There may be many words
(and phrases) that can describe a product - but can
all of them qualify as keywords ? Are some words more
important than others ? What is the essential quality
of a keyword ?
The answer to above lies in popular use of a word in
search engines. How many web surfers are actually using
this word to search for a given product ? More people
use a particular word in search engines to look for
given product - better is the potential of the said
word to be used as 'keyword' for that product.
So, the first and foremost quality of a keyword/keyphrase
is quantum of its use in search engines. Now, how do
we measure it ? There must be some analytical tool to
compare popularity of each potential keyword. Let us
examine this through an example.
Example of
Keyword Usage
For a web-site on garments
- there may be many genenral keywords like garments,
apparel, dresses, clothing, outfits, attire etc. as
well as specific ones like trouser, blouse, skirts,
saree, salwar kameej etc. In addition, one may have
to consider key phrases like ladies dresses, ethnic
garments, baby clothing, fashion garments etc.
Now, how to check comparative popularity of these possible
keywords and key phrases ?
Keyword Selector
Tools
Fortunately, there
are few organizations that track usage of keywords in
search engines. Two well known among them are
-
Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool
Free service from overture.com - its a decent tool
for researching keyword phrases. It indicates which
phrases had the highest numbers of searches on Overture
during the previous month. The biggest weakness
it has, as far as applying it to the natural search
engines, is that Overture counts singular and plural
as the same and also corrects misspelling so the
totals are all lumped together in this tool whereas
on the natural engines they are considered differently.
-
WordTracker
WordTracker - a paid service, is very similar to
Overture's except that this tool differentiates
between plural and singular searches, does not correct
spelling (i.e. it gives the number of searches for
misspellings rather than correcting them and giving
a total for correct and misspelled words) and gives
the results in predicted numbers of searches over
all the engines per day rather than just one engine
over a month. A good review of Wrodtracker can be
found
Here
Analysis of
Keyword/Keyphrase Usage
Coming back to
our example of garment exporter's web-site - let's see
usage of few potential keywords and keyphrases during
October 2005 in Overture search engine
Example 1
| Keyword
|
Usage |
| garments |
13,165 |
| apparel |
1,27,783 |
| woman apparel
|
1,65,455 |
| womens apparel
|
2,06,299 |
| discount apparel
|
2,50,376 |
| man apparel
|
46,454 |
| american apparel
|
32,391 |
| sports apparel
|
13,969 |
| golf apparel
|
9275 |
| baby apparel
|
8513 |
| kid apparel
|
7872 |
| riding apparel
|
7317 |
Example 2
| Keyword
|
Usage |
| skirt |
1,26,002 |
| short skirt
|
1,10,107 |
| mini skirt |
1,04,976 |
| skirt up |
36,906 |
| womens skirt
|
18,434 |
| tight skirt
|
17,066 |
| sexy skirt |
12,373 |
| leather skirt
|
12,148 |
| denim skirt
|
10,133 |
Some Key Learnings
Above examples
reveal some very interesting observations on popular
usage of search words:
- Some keywords are more popular than
others. For example, 'apparel' as a keyword is 10
times more popular than 'garments'
- Keyphrases are more popular than
keywords in many cases. For every use of the keyword
'apparel' the keyphrase 'discount apparel' was used
twice ! Sum of the use of keyphrases 'woman apparel'
and 'womens apparel' was three times more than the
keyword 'Apparel'
- Popularity of key phrase can even
be seen in specific keywords like 'skirt'. The key
phrases 'short skirt' and 'mini skirt' together
account for nearly twice more usage than a specific
keyword like 'skirt'
Keyword Selection
for Your Web Site
So, which keywords to
pick for your web-site ? Should we select most popular
keywords only ? Unfortunately, its not as simple as
that !
There's something called competition ! More popular
a keyword, greater will be the competition among web-sites.
As only a few can achieve top ranking - competition
will be fierce for most popular keywords. One has to
weigh one's strength while picking a keyword. What is
needed is a prioritization of potential keywords based
on one's own strength and product mix and then promoting
a few chosen keywords. We shall discuss specific strategy
for prioritizing potential keywords and choosing right
ones in next issue.
Happy and Productive Surfing
Dr. Amit K Chatterjee
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