The Internet would be a different place if search engines wouldn’t exist! How do people find your website, agency, company, profile etc? They input keywords and keyphrases in the search engines. The search engine makes complex calculations and displays the results. If you have made good use of that keyword, you’ll be near the top of the results list, and that’s where you want to be (basically it’s more complicated than that, but let’s stick to the keywords only). In this article I’ll show you a quick method how to find good keywords for your website.

And there was Google!

Google seems to want a piece of everything nowadays! They expand like crazy in any niche and market. In order to find keywords, we’ll use a tool offered in one of their service, Google AdWords. This service allows you to advertise your business on Google. Although studies have showed that people prefer clicking on organic results, sponsored links can get you some traffic. The tool we’ll be using is the Keyword Tool, and luckily, it’s free!

What the Keyword Tool does, is it allows you to enter keywords and Google comes back with some other keywords related to the keyword you entered. Another nice feature is the possibility to view the search volume related to each keyword. But, what makes a good keyword?

A good keyword

Don’t make the rookie mistake. That is, find the most general keywords with the biggest search volume and implement them through your website. Don’t expect those millions of searches to come to you, because they won’t. Ranking very good for general terms is very hard for one like you who is now adding these keywords in your website.

Those “giants” have been there long enough to kick a newbie in the teeth! That doesn’t mean they can’t be challenged, I’ll write a tutorial on how to rank good with search engines when I’ll find time, because this subject is huge.

So, what do you do?

You establish a narrow niche. Let me give you an example. Mike is selling old pens on his website. He heads over Keyword Tool and he inputs “pens” as a keyword. The results? over 5.000.000 of Global Monthly Search Volume! Should he use that keyword solely on his website? Of course not! Instead he tries narrowing the niche, and comes up with “vintage ink pen”. He will probably rank very well on this keyword as there is no competition. “Being first into the prospect’s mind ought to be your primary marketing objective” says Al Reis and Jack Trout in his book, 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing.

Furthermore, if you even manage to rank well for a very general keyword, like “pens” people make come to your website see that the website is of no interest for them, maybe they were searching for “bic pens” and leave immediately. On the other hand, if some people search for vintage ink pens and they do find the website being about vintage ink pens, they’ll stay much longer on the website and purchase your products.

You want proof that this is what happens every time? Head over to Google and search for “pens”. The first organic result that relates to this keyword is the website of the “Pittsbourgh PENguins” team playing in the NHL! Was that what I was search for? Nope! Do I leave immediately? Yep! (unless you are a Penguins fan and are searching for pens at the same time)

Bounce Rate?

That’s why is a good practice to always keep an eye on your bounce rate. Bounce rate is the percentage of initial visitors to a site who "bounce" away to a different site, rather than continue on to other pages within the same site (Wikipedia).

Over 70% you have a problem. Try and identify the origin of problem. My problem for example is because I have many images, people come through, see the image and leave immediately.

Conclusion

Try to find a balance between general keywords and very narrow niches. For example if Mike in the example above decided to use the keyphrase “vintage ink pens with engravings and golden cap” it wouldn’t help him very much.

But hey, you could make it even in a very narrow niche, look at Gary Vaynerchuk who launched a daily video blog about wine in 2006 and became to be seen as an expert of wine and was featured on numerous television shows. This was possible because people learned of him, through his narrow niche blog.

The idea is to be honest about your website and do what you love with passion. If you don’t like your vintage ink pen’s website, ditch it and start a daily photo blog about ants or whatever! Have fun!

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