Choosing search key phrases
With millions of websites targeting almost every phrase, it is very difficult to rank highly for single words or popular phrases. You must identify less competitive phrases relevant to your business, then optimise individual pages for these. The aim is not just to get visitors to your home page, but to drive traffic to any page.
How to find key phrases
Don't start with the obvious. Think laterally. Think phrases. Most people these days search using three or more words. For example, you sell Gifts. 'Gifts' returns 1,010,000,000 results! However, a single gift, such as 'make-up and manicure set' returns only 966,000 results, that's more like it. To quickly see how competitive your phrases are, visit Google and view the number of results.
If your phrases are too competitive, you will need to find alternatives. Don't just guess. Overtures keyword selector tool shows both alternative phrases and the number of searches performed on each last month. Googles Keyword tool shows both alternatives and search trends throughout the year. These tools are free and very useful. Wordtracker offers a comprehensive solution providing alternative phrases, the number of searches in 24 hours and the number of competing sites. This is subscription based, although a single day may be purchased.
How good is the competition?
Once you have a list of key phrases, you should find out how good the competition is. You may have picked a competitive phrase, but if the competing sites all have a low PageRank, you may still have a chance.
Check out the page rank of the top competing sites using the free PageRank checker tool, or install Google toolbar to instantly see the PageRank of every site you visit.
Targeting competitive key phrases
If search engine marketing for competitive phrases is important, Pay Per Click (PPC) is the best short term solution. Google, MSN and Overture all offer a PPC service that should provide instant results.
Related links
Check key phrases with Google
Search Google to see how many competing sites there are for your chosen key phrases.
Use PPC to test phrases
You can use a Pay Per Click advertising campaign to test which phrases are actually converting to customers, then use this data to inform your choice of phrases for optimisation.