Many of us know that using keywords to increase traffic is desirable because it can get you more targeted free traffic than any other SEO method.

The traffic is more targeted because the searcher is looking for the content that you are providing, and the longer the keyword phrase, the more targeted the search.

But keyword research is often overlooked, due to the demands on our time and the efforts to create content along with our other business activities.

Yet if we just take a little more time up front for some keyword brainstorming and research, we would find our overall investment pays off in a much bigger way with a decreased bounce rate and increased conversions.

This will be both due to your increased page rank in search engine results, as well as in getting targeted traffic.

General Guidelines for Keyword Selection

• Do some brainstorming to come up with search terms that your target audience would use to find your information. One way to do this is to read posts or articles that appear at the top of the search results for phrases that you come up with.  Take notes of the keywords used in these first couple of posts, and make use of all of them in yours.But if you are doing a blog post and you are competing with the exact phrase used by a post on eZineArticles.com, you may want to add a word to the term or change the term slightly, if you want that #1 spot. eZineArtcles is highly favored by Google!

• Use a long-tail keyword phrase, at least 3 but the best is 4 words, is how you will get a more targeted search. The longer phrase you use, the higher the likelihood that it would be more targeted, and at the same time have less competition.And the leads you get from the short phrases will not be as targeted as those you will get using the longer ones, but more importantly you’ll have a better chance of reaching the first page due to a smaller number of results with the long-tail phrases.
• You want a keyword phrase,which has lots of searches but as little competition (results) as possible. A general rule of thumb for getting to the top of Google’s search results for a popular keyword phrases is to find one that has no more than 30,000 results for at least a hundred searches per day. Too few searches indicates a low interest and too many results indicates more competition for first page results.

• Also, use related keywords or LSI keywords throughout the post. You can even use them in alternate text behind images. and in link text. You can read more about this in Using LSI Keywords to Boost Your SEO.

• Another key is to consider the price per click in places like Google Adwords for the phrase, and similar phrases. If you notice, similar keyword search terms may differ widely in price. This is because the higher priced keywords have a higher conversion rate!

Keywords Analysis Tools

Use keyword tools like the Google Keyword External and the Google Wonder Wheel to do your keyword research will help you in coming up with relevant keywords. Here is a step-by-step on using the Google Wonder Wheel, and a 5 minute video showing you how to use the Google Keyword Tool.  But if you really want to get the most out of your keyword research, Market Samurai is an easy to use and yet advanced tool for helping you with keyword research (and it comes with some great video trainings!).

Thesaurus.com is a great tool to help you come up with LSI words and other synonyms that you might need help remembering.

Wordtracker and Wordstream are two paid tools that you may want to consider if you are using Adwords and your ROI is crucial.

Once you come up with the phrases you are going to use, how do you use them? Well, here are a few keys which should help you to increase the amount of highly targeted, free traffic!

Using Keywords to Maximize Your SEO

• Use your keyword phrase in the title, preferably in the first part of the title.
• Use your primary keyword phrase in the meta tags, and in the first and last paragraphs. Be careful not to overpopulate your post with this keyword phrase, as this becomes counter productive in that Google will determine your falsely stuffing your article with keywords.
• If you are designing a website, try and use the keyword phrase in your URL.
• Use your LSI keywords throughout the remainder of the post.

These are just the basics, doing more research will help to realize that it isn’t at all difficult, and that it does work! If you’d like to continue doing more to improve your SEO traffic, read Using Social Bookmarking to Improve Your SEO. But using keywords will definitely increase your targeted free traffic!

Wishing You Awesome Success,

This entry was posted on Friday, July 9th, 2010 at 8:36 PM and is filed under Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.