Finding your targeted Keywords

To be able to market your site effectively you need to create a list of all the relevant keywords and phrases that relate to your page. These are the words that you think people would be searching for when they are looking for your site. If you do not have these, then you cannot effectively complete many of the marketing tasks. Such as:-

• Optimize your pages to rank well in the search engines
• Bid on appropriate keywords
• Search for relevant link partners
• Create useful site listing descriptions
• Create useful link text and descriptions
• More...

This is a big must do. Without a proper keyword list then you won't be able to put together a good internet marketing strategy. It's important that you spend a lot of time on your keyword list, and that you get it right. Now we'll give you a step by step guide on exactly what to do to get a great list.

Step 1. Thinking of your keywords

Make a list of all the words you think relate to your site. Do not go into phrases at this time. A list for a site like ours would look like:-

• marketing
• promotion
• traffic
• hits
• etc...

Step 2. Finding what people actually search

Now you need to find out what search phrases people are using that include these keywords, how often these phrases are searched, and which relate to the content of your site. Download a copy of the very useful freeware program called "Good Keywords". Open the GoodKeywords program and enter in your first keyword (in this example 'marketing'). Click 'go' and you get a list of search phrases that people use including the keyword. These are ranked by the approximate number of searches the phrase received each month. If you want a more advanced piece of keyword finding software then download a copy of Word Tracker. They offer a free trial so you can see if you think it's worth the price.

Step 3. Grabbing all the key phrases

You can pick and choose the appropriate keyword phrases from the list given, but to get the very best you need to go a step further. Right click on the first key phrase, and select "Copy the list". This will grab every phrase that has been returned. We are now going to put this into a text file that we can open in a spreadsheet to make it easier to play with. Open NotePad and 'Ctrl+V' to paste in the key phrase list. Now go back to the GoodKeywords program and search for the next keyword in your list, adding this next set of results to the bottom of NotePad. Repeat this until you have a very long list of key phrases in NotePad for all your keywords. You may want to include your original keywords at the top of NotePad.

Step 4. Sorting out the list

Save the NotePad page as something like "CosmicMarketing.com KeyWords.csv". Make sure you save the text file as a ".csv" and not ".txt". This is so that the file will open properly in a spreadsheet. Now open your spreadsheet, such as Excel and open the .CSV file you just saved. You'll see all your keywords listed in column A and the monthly search volume in column B. Now lets sort this list so that the most popular phrases are at the top of the list, and the least popular at the bottom. Select both columns A and B, and from the menu select 'Data->Sort', select to sort by column B descending. Save the changes.

Step 5. Removing the irrelevant phrases

Now it's the hard bit. You may want to make a backup of the current file before you start editing. You have to make your way down through the list removing all the keyword phrases that do not match your site. It is VERY important that you get this step right. Be picky with your key phrases. If it's not clear that the person searching the phrase is looking for your site, then do not include it in the list. You are looking to create a targeted keyword list that you can use later for many things including Pay Per Click advertising. If you have key phrases that do not apply to your site then you could be wasting money. Be ruthless! For example a site selling affiliate software could have a list of keywords that includes:-

• free affiliate software
• affiliate software
• affiliate program
• affiliate program software

The keywords in bold should be removed (unless they offer free affiliate software). Imaging you are paying for each keywod in your list. The phrase 'affiliate program' is very popular, in a PPC campaign bidding on that term could cost the site a fortune as people are looking for actual affiliate programs, not affiliate software. That's not to say miss out on key phrases that do apply, but definitely don't add those where you are thinking "there is a chance they are looking for my content, but it's more likely they are looking for something else". You have to put yourself in the mind of the searcher, if they search this phrase and find your site, they aren't going to look 3 pages deep into your site to find a page that kind of has what they are looking for. Tip using Ctrl you can select multiple rows and remove them all at once, right click and selecting 'delete' will remove the row(s), not just wipe it.

Step 6. Finished!

Now that you have a clean list save the file. Well done! You now have a list of all the targeted key phrases for your site. This exercise should have left you feeling more comfortable in the knowledge of what people in your market are searching for, now you can tailor your site and advertising to match.