So, What is a Keyword?

Keywords are your most important Web Marketing decision

The first step of a Web Marketing program is deciding what keywords to use. Selecting your keywords is the most important Web Marketing decision you will make. All the effort you put into optimizing your site is built upon your keywords.

The Internet is a vast network of web pages. Search Engines help you find what you are looking for using keywords. A keyword is a word (or combination of words) that you type into a search engine to find what you are looking for. It is a word that describes the subject matter of the site your were seeking.

Search Engines do not market web sites. That is not their function. Search Engines are tools to aid in research. A Search Engine’s goal is to find information quickly. Your goal is to select terms that people use. Here is a Keyword Selector Tool to check how many times your major keywords were typed in last month. Multiply the number that pops up by 2.6 for Google, .6 for Yahoo and MSN.

How Search Engines Work

Getting listed in a Search Engine is a three step process.

Step One You list your site with the search engine. Contrary to what you might think, the initial listing does nothing more than request your site to be indexed for listing.
Step Two The search engine sends out a spider to rank your site. The spider calculates the "relevancy factor" of your site based on your keywords. If your site is about "Central American Travel" the spider will mechanically review your site and calculate how relevant you are based on that subject matter. The spider calculate this relevancy factor based on a formula (text on your site, Meta Tags, page titles, links, links to you, etc.) that they keep secret.
Step Three the spider reports the relevancy factor back to the search engine. If your relevancy factor is high your site will be listed near the top. If the relevancy factor is low your site will be listed near the bottom. If you cheat you will not be listed at all.

Enhancing Your Odds with Search Engines

There are about 25 major Search Engines including MSN, Google, Yahoo, Excite, etc. Competition for a listing in these major Search Engines is fierce. They get thousands of requests daily. When selecting keywords remember that you are competing against hundreds or thousands of sites for placement. The more sites that use a keyword, the harder it is to be listed. If your keyword is broad (like computers for example) that category contains hundreds of thousands of other sites. The odds of you coming up in the top 50 are like hitting the lottery. If your keyword is narrow (like Used Tandem) then you have enhanced your odds tremendously.

A common mistake is to choose a broad category on the premise you will be fishing with a large net. Forget the large net. Search Engine marketing requires a narrow scope. The more narrow the better. If you list in a broad category with millions of sites (like travel for example) you will not come up at all. If you list in a more specific category (like Costa Rican Travel) you are likely to obtain prominent placement. Also you have the added benefit of a more targeted audience.

Experts say keywords should be two or three word combinations. Multiple word combinations yield better results because there are too many sites for ANY single keyword category. Keywords must accurately describe what you do. Imagine a prospect going to a search engine to find your product or service. What keywords would they use to find your site? What keywords don't want your competition to use?

Search engine marketing requires work and experience. You need to know how to pick keywords, how to optimize the site for those keywords, and after listing the site it often takes up to three months for your effort to take effect. The Internet is full of "magic bullet" offers that promise to get you listed for a small fee. You will notice that we never engage in hype when it comes to search engine marketing. We know what it takes to run an effective campaign. We have proprietary software that tells us how to optimize a site. We also have a record of the words people use to find your site. We recommend our program because it is based on real work and always yields results.