Writing powerful key phrases

November 19, 2003

In this article, you will learn the proper techniques on how to write powerful key phrases for the search engines and the importance of good relevant text.

But first, we need to know how to properly research these key phrases, ensuring they are the right ones. You cannot write efficient key phrases if you don't know what they are.

Identification comes first. Action comes second. In case some of you still have some reservations or doubts on the importance of key phrases, let's start by defining exactly what these key phrases are and try to learn how to work with them in writing strong, key phrase-rich text that is relevant for your web site.

First, the importance of key phrases
If chosen correctly, your key phrases will truly yield the return on investment you need. It will help transform any web site from a static one to one that pulls in qualified and targeted visitors, wich, in turn, should become buyers.

I will even include a case study, where I have a client who manufactures precision-engineered, special teflon parts that are designed for the aerospace industry.

When I reviewed his "antiquated" key phrases, the first thing I discovered was they weren't targeted in any way and not specific enough. For example two of their key phrases were: teflon parts and parts for airplanes!

Upon initial observation, one might think the key phrase choices seemed logical. After all, they are in the aerospace industry and they do manufacture teflon parts. However, years of optimizing sites for strong key phrases have taught me to never assume anything. The careful research and identification of the exact key phrases needed comes before any other process. It comes before the writing of your copy, before inserting your Meta Tags, before everything.

So, to write powerful, key phrase-rich text, you need to identify the exact key phrases that, number One: will specifically target what product or service you offer, and number Two: are those key phrases exactly what your average searcher types in when he or she needs a specific product or service like what your site offers?

If a person optimizes a web site for the wrong key phrases or if that person guesses or assumes in any way what key phrases people are searching for without better evidence, in such an instance the chances for failure are very high.

To proove to you that this is right, the fact that one of the main key phrase in this site was "airplane parts", the owner would regularly get requests, either via email, FAX or phone for airplane parts which had nothing to do with HIS business.

In one such case, they received an RFP (Request for Proposal) for a part that goes in the landing gear of large airplanes such as Boeing's 747. The only applications of the parts manufactured by my client goes into the security openings and closings of most of the passenger and cockpit doors on medium-sized aircraft!

So you can readily see the importance of carefully researching and using the right key phrases when optimizing a commercial web site.

Developing powerful marketing copy with the wrong key phrases can lead you to situations like the one described above. Once I carefully identified and selected the right key phrases, my teflon parts manufacturer client went from one to two Internet clients a month to two or three a week. Needless to say, the work done is appreciated and, a year later, that company is still doing very well in the SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages).

The Wordtracker professional search tool
If you are like most people, you might find that searching through various databases on your typical working day could be very time consuming, to say the least. Instead, what we use at Rank for $ales is the Wordtracker professional search tool.

Today, WordTracker is the best and the most popular fee-based keyword and key phrase analyzer on the Internet and is used by most serious search engine optimization professionals we know of. We use it daily and we have no idea how we could ever achieve the work we do without such an important resource.

WordTracker is based on meta search queries made by ordinary people searching the web everyday, wich means that the keyword and key phrase combinations found are much more reliable than the pay-per-click listings generated by the Overture suggestion tool. Over time, we have also found that the data generated is also more objective. Now the people at Wordtracker know that you should not always rely on the most competitive keyword and search query combinations.

These are more or less dictated by large corporations that can afford to allocate much bigger budgets on various search engine marketing and sales campaigns. We recommend that it just might be as sensible to optimize for less popular key phrases or search terms for your industry!

Let me give you some general rules in the careful research of key phrase brainstorming. Number One, you should use key phrases your target audience will readily understand. Your sales and marketing division may or may not agree with you on this.

However, at all times, you should remember that you want to carefully identify and use only key phrases that only your audience will respond to, and not nice-sounding, marketing-hype words that will please your sales department, but, like in our aerospace client example, will pull in the wrong audience.

A note about "one-word" key phrases:- First, if it's only one word, it cannot be called a key phrases to begin with! Typically, single keywords are too competitive to be worth anything and chances are you will be wasting a lot of time, for little return in the end. Using Word Tracker, after you have carefully identified and selected your right key phrases, it's time to start writing the body of your text.

Article written by Serge Thibodeau,
President & CEO,
Rank for $ales
Copyright (c) Serge Thibodeau 2003

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Rank for $ales strongly recommends the use of WordTracker to effectively identify all your right industry keywords. Accurate identification of the right keywords and key phrases used in your industry is the first basic step in any serious search engine optimization program. The keywords you think are the best may be totally different than the ones recommended by WordTracker. Click here to start your keyword and key phrase research.

        

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