Search Engines and Keywords

Why Search Engines must define your online objectives

If you know anything about how websites work, then you probably know something about "keywords" and "keyword strategy", and Search Engines. Roughly speaking a "keyword" is a short one or two (or sometimes three) word description of the content of a web page, which is placed in that page so it clearly identifies what the page is about. The best keyword is one that neatly encapsulates the subject matter of the page. For instance, this page you are reading right now is about "keyword strategy", so that would seem to be a perfect keyword to describe its content. Well, not quite (see the end of the article). The Search Engines have the last say.

I can almost guarantee you will not appreciate the significance of keywords until you give some serious thought to how people find things on the net. In other words, until you think about how Search Engines work. Because Search Engines (Google, Yahoo, Excite, Alta Vista, etc.) are far and away the most popular means of finding pages on the web.

In a nutshell, Search Engines find pages by looking for keywords.

This is the First immutable LAW OF THE UNIVERSE — the web universe.

"Search Engines find web pages by looking for keywords."

For example, if you want to find websites about "disc golf", you do a search for (daah) "disc golf", or "disc-golf", or "golf with discs". Pretty obvious, right?

The problem is, if it's so obvious why do so many webmasters and web designers not know how to define their key words properly? Why do they create a page about "disc golf", and then assign it a keyword like "Billy Golfer" (the author), or "Oklahoma" (where the author plays disc golf), or "playing", as though somebody searching for "playing" might accidentally find web pages about "playing disc golf"? Take it from me. They won't.

I confess. I am as guilty as the next person of this sort of keyword ignorance. For years I have built websites, completely ignoring keywords altogether. My excuse was always, "Well, I don't really have a product that I can sell on the internet, so I don't really care about scoring well in the Search Engines."

Uuuhhh, what's that? So why do you have a website at all? Hmmmm. I don't know....so customers can look up my prices and product descriptions...?

But isn't the obvious question then: "If you actually have customers, why wouldn't you try to describe your products or services in ways they are likely to find, or that other prospective customers might be likely to find — even if they are strictly local customers?"

Good question, isn't it? You simply cannot argue with the facts. If you have a website that doesn't score well with the Search Engines, you will have practically ZERO traffic. And if you have no traffic, why are you wasting time and money having a website?

The obvious answer — yes, it IS obvious! — is that you DO WANT TRAFFIC, but you just don't know how to get it. The First LAW OF THE UNIVERSE ("Search engines find web pages by looking for keywords") dictates that to get traffic, you MUST design your web pages to cater to the Search Engines.

Is this difficult? No, not really. But it does require some serious planning and analysis BEFORE you start building your site. Because not only should you build the right keywords into your web pages, but you should CHOOSE THE RIGHT KEYWORDS before you begin.

Let me give you an example.

I spent at least a year building and rebuilding a site about "Display Graphics", for our family business (www.canadadisplaygraphics.com). In my estimation, I had carefully thought it through, and had decided that "display graphics" was a pretty good description of what our company was doing. But we had a major problem. We didn't have a product that was marketable on the internet. Our products (poster prints, mounted graphics, graphics used in trade show and retail settings) were too bulky and too fragile to ship, and the pre-sell routine (send us your complex error-prone digital files) was too complicated for the kind of "easy-in/easy-out" sales you want to make over the internet.

In time we developed a line of "trade show display" products. And, guess what? With the proper price tweaking, we were able to get some serious action going on the internet. It required some pay-per-click advertising to buy the traffic (because I still wasn't trying to get traffic from the Search Engines), but it was traffic nonetheless.

What did that tell me? Well, first, it told me we had a viable internet-ready product in "trade show displays". And, second, it told me that people were actually able to find us by searching for "trade show displays". In other words, we had accidentally found a keyword that people are actually looking for, and we were able to score well (in Google) on that keyword. The result: instant targeted traffic.

The point of this illustration...is that your keyword strategy extends well beyond determining how to build your web pages. It also determines how you should describe your product. It even, I might be so bold to suggest, determines whether you should CHANGE YOUR PRODUCT to something that is more marketable....Which brings us to the second LAW OF THE UNIVERSE.

The Second, (almost) immutable LAW OF THE UNIVERSE is...
"Only pick keywords that score well with the Search Engines"

In other words, if nobody is looking for a specific keyword (like "display graphics"), then avoid it like the plague. It is NO GOOD. Eject it. Find something else. The reason:  NOBODY WILL FIND A PAGE with a poorly scoring keyword, because nobody is looking for it. Even using pay-per-click advertising will not work, because (to repeat) nobody is looking for this whatever-it-is poorly chosen keyword.

The ecstatically good news

What I have since found over the last couple of years, by doing umpteen hours of research and testing, is that there are ways of determining how keywords score, before you start building your site. If you are thinking about building a site about "golf reviews" (like I did), DON'T. Because nobody is looking for that term. Find another one (again, like I did) that they ARE looking for, like "golf Scotland", or "golf Hawaii".

How do you know what "scores well" — what people are actually looking for? You can do your own umpteen hours of research and testing, buy various analytical tools costing you hundreds, even thousands of dollars, and then learn how to use them. Or I can do an SBO WebReport for you for a ridiculously low price, and you can have the critical information in your hands in three or four days. It's a no-brainer, right?

Of course, you may get lucky. You may strike on a niche product and a couple of keywords that score well even without doing the analysis. But it is extremely unlikely. The cost of doing the analysis before you make all your product and web design decisions is trivial compared to its impact on your site's success. This is MUCH, MUCH MORE IMPORTANT THAN WEB DESIGN, because even a nicely designed site is VIRTUALLY USELESS without traffic. Just ask anybody who has a nice-looking site that nobody ever sees.

The Bottom Line...
Find an advisor or company that properly understands how the Search Engines work, and how your keywords should cater to them. Find somebody who is prepared to do the sort of analysis described here for a reasonable cost. And, by the way, this is just the sort of service available at www.small-business-online.com.

P.S.
Remember at the top I suggested that "keyword strategy" might be the perfect keyword for this page? Well, I ran an analysis of "keyword strategy", and it came up all zeros. Nobody is looking for the term "keyword strategy". So if I want to generate any traffic to this page (and I do), then I'd better find a better one.  Here is a comparison, on a scale of 1-10, of the the search engine potential of a number of possible keywords:

keyword strategy — 0
keyword marketing — 0
keyword theory — 0
keyword service — 0
keyword planning — 0
keyword analysis — 5
keywords — 7
keyword — 7
key words — .5
metatags — 0
meta tags — 4
search engines — 8
search engine — 6
search-engines — 0

So look what I've done. I've called the page "search-engines.html". I've put this primary keyword in the title (that appears at the top of your browser), in the main headline "Search Engines and keywords", and in the meta tags that you don't see. I've also liberally sprinkled the primary keyword ("search engines") throughout the article, and added a not-so-liberal sprinkling of my secondary keywords, "keywords, "keyword", "keyword analysis", "meta tags", and "search engine".

If you haven't heard about keywords, chances are this will sound a bit pedantic and contrived. But that's the way the game must be played to score well at the search engines.