The term "keyword" could not be more appropriate, since keywords truly are the way to open the doors of search engine success. In-depth research and wise keyword choice are crucial in the creation of a thriving sales-generating Web site that is popular with potential customers and the major search engines.

For any online business, the goal of search engine marketing is to achieve high rankings in the major search engines for keyword phrases specific to the products or services offered.

Furthermore, it is just as crucial to ensure that the keywords chosen are the ones most likely to convert to sale or action. Traffic is great—sales are even better!

When should keyword research begin, and where are these keywords used?

Effective keyword research needs to begin as early in the business planning process as possible—whether a business has an Internet marketing agency conduct an aggressive search engine optimization campaign, whether the company has an in-house development team, or whether the business owner plans to learn to optimize the Web site on his own.

If a new Web site is being built, keyword choice takes place as the Web site is being planned. The search terms with which customers seek services and goods are used in more aspects of search-engine-friendly Web site development than are immediately apparent. These include but are not limited to the following:

• The copy text that appears on the Web site
• The title tags at the top of the Web site pages
• The meta keyword and description fields
• Alternate text tags for labeling images

Industry and company-specific keywords are also used in press releases and informational articles. Many businesses choose to supplement natural search engine optimization with pay-per-click campaigns such as Google AdWords and Yahoo's Overture. Accurate choice of the keyword phrases most commonly used by the target market is essential for success in these sponsored-link ad campaigns.

The biggest challenge for the established company will be to keep a fresh perceptive and attempt to view their old and well-known Web site through the customer's eyes.

Companies with existing Web sites that have had little or no attention paid to effective keyword choice will have to begin the process just as if they were starting anew. The main difference will be that the Web site page content will need to be completely reworked for correct keyword balance and density. This can be more difficult than writing it from scratch.

What are the steps involved for choosing the most effective keywords?

Keyword research can be performed in many ways using a variety of tools with different degrees of accuracy, cost, and involvement. As with any marketing research strategy, a few basic steps and principles apply.

Step One: Brainstorming

Thinking inside the box, outside the box, and diagonal to the box will be a very good start to identifying how customers think and act!

Begin by making a list of all the products or services offered. Let's use an example of a family-owned shoe store and repair shop looking to expand to offering its quality footwear online. The owner starts his list:

• shoes
• men's shoes
• ladies shoes
• high heeled shoes
• sneakers
• hush puppies shoes

He continues his list until all kinds of shoes are listed. Now the challenge is to start thinking like the customer. He asks his daughters, and they add these:

• sling-back clogs
• peep-toe pumps
• silver three inch heels

Asking customers, family, and friends how they search for your products online is essential when conducting your own keyword research. What kind of keyword phrases are your competitors using for search engine marketing? The aim here is to gather as big a list of keyword phrases as possible. The best choices will be narrowed down from this list of candidates.

Step Two: Target market research

It is essential to find out as much about how the ideal customer thinks and buys as is possible. Keyword choice should reflect what real customers are typing in the search window to find the products and services they need on the Internet.

Conversion

The goal is to find not just search terms used when interested in learning more about a product, but the keyword phrases customers use when they are actually ready to buy! The goal of effective Internet market research is to get inside the customers' heads and find out what motivates them to buy and how they behave during the selection and buying process.

Who is the Customer and what makes him tick?

Different levels of target market research are available for online business ventures, depending on the resources of the company and the goals or mission of the campaign.

Market research companies offer plans such as research database access, targeted demographic analysis, and custom-designed data gathering and industry intelligence. For small-to-moderate-size businesses, membership in a high-quality research database service can be an affordable and effective option.

For example, Jupiter Research, a well-known and well respected marketing research organization, offers a "Syndicated Research Program." Clients have access to a tremendous variety of in-depth market research and demographic data.

Examples of research reports available from Jupiter and other quality research agencies include topics such as the online buying behaviors of Americans age 25-34 and increases in online buying in the Hispanic American market. Research data is available for virtually every industry, whether business-to-business or business-to-consumer. International Internet consumer data is also available.

Being alert for opportunities to learn about the ideal customer is imperative.

Even the new ecommerce entrepreneur can conduct target market research in a variety of ways if he has the basic principles in mind. Plenty of data is available online for free or at low cost. Simply asking current customers, shoppers at competitors' stores, or friends and acquaintances how they search for products online can be invaluable.

The goal is to identify keywords that not only drive traffic but also lead to conversion and sales.

The rule of thumb is that more specific keywords tend to convert more highly. A Web site optimized richly for several moderate competition, more specific keyword phrases such as "nine west black pumps" is much more likely to create sales then a site with only generic terms such as "women's shoes":

• What exactly are searchers typing in Google and Yahoo?
• Which search engines do they use?
• What do they do when they are ready to buy?
• Ask about the specific product offered and how they would look for it online.

Step Three: Choosing the best keywords for your online business venture

This is the step that focuses all that creative process into an arsenal of tools that will bring this Internet business high visibility in the major search engines; well-matched Web site traffic; high-quality potential customers; and increasing conversion to sale.

Choosing the right keyword phrases from the list of possibilities is essential for online success. The factors involved with correct keyword selection are four:

1. Which specific keyword phrases are your ideal customers using to search?
2. How many people are searching for those phrases every day?
3. How many competing Web site pages exist for each keyword? (Another consideration is the quality of that competition, which takes some finesse to determine.)
4. What is the "value per customer" of each specific keyword? This relates directly to its conversion power. What is the average amount of revenue earned per customer using the keyword searched?

(A note on "value per customer": This factor is not as easy to determine at the very beginning of a venture by the businessperson conducting informal research. Market research companies can provide valuable information on this through analysis of competitors and the marketplace in general. As the new business begins to collect information about Web site traffic patterns, more information on value per customer will become available. It is crucial to set up detailed Web-site tracking parameters to get a clear picture of the effectiveness of keyword choices.)

How can the right search terms be narrowed down from the hundreds or thousands developed through brainstorming and market research?

Keyword Research Tools: Your new Best Friends

A host of keyword research tools exist for the Web site business owner. Many are free and many are quite expensive. The best of the keyword research tools are on the higher end for pricing, but the power, accuracy, and flexibility of these premium tools makes them a worthy investment value if resources are available.

In their most basic form, these tools provide information on how many people are searching and competition levels for specific keywords.

Free Keyword Tool Options

Many of the well-known keyword suggestion tools offer free trial or demo versions that offer the basic functions of keyword research without the bells and whistles available with the paid version of the product:

• Wordtracker is one of the most well known and respected keyword-suggestion tools. The company offers a free demo version, and the tool queries data from over 300 million searches over a two-three month data-collection period. The paid version offers options for common misspellings and fuzzy strings (phrases with abbreviations and different word order) at a moderate price.
• Google AdWords keyword-suggestion tool: A free keyword suggestion tool is offered that gives data strictly on Google traffic patterns. This is a good starting place also for "keyword spinning," getting ideas for alternative keywords and related topics.
• Agency-provided tools: Many Internet marketing agencies offer free keyword research demos on their Web sites as a tool for prospective clients. Digitalpoint.com, for example, offers a wide array of free webmaster tools. Its keyword-suggestion tool pulls data from both Wordtracker and Yahoo Overture's free keyword demos for both keyword suggestions and number of impressions (how many people are searching using that term). The Web-site keyword developer who is using these programs will need to manually look up competition levels for each keyword phrase.

Paid Keyword Research Tool Options

Several options can measure number of searchers (impressions), competition levels, and the ratio of these two variables, known as KEI, or keyword effectiveness index. KEI is not a direct ratio of the impressions vs. competition levels; it also takes into account other variables related to the relative quality of the competition and the saturation of the marketplace. In general, the higher the KEI, the higher the potential value of the keyword. Direct measure of competition vs. impressions can give a rough idea of keyword effectiveness. KEI gives a much clearer picture of true potential.

• Wordtracker: As noted earlier, this a tried-and-true keyword-suggestion tool at a moderate price. Solid basic data is provided and tracked over a 90-day search window.
• Trellian: Their keyword tool at www.Keyworddiscovery.com has swiftly become the keyword research engine of choice for the most respected search engine optimization and marketing companies, along with major corporations with in-house Internet marketing teams. Although the price is on the high side, the value of this powerful tool is well worth the investment. Search data is collected over a 12-month period rather than the three months that most services offer. Seasonal trending, phonetic word matching, and fuzzy-logic capabilities make this a versatile tool in the marketing arsenal.

Wise keyword choices target both the ideal customer and the major search engines!

* * *

Up to this point, the creative force has been driven via brainstorming; a good picture of the ideal target customer as been developed through market research; the list of possible keyword choices has been narrowed to the top 100 or so with the best potential to drive quality traffic that converts to sale, along with moderate-level competition so that high search engine rankings can be obtained in a relatively rapid timeframe. It has been a lot of work, but this groundwork is essential for a successful Internet business venture.

Many options are available to conduct keyword research, depending on budget and time resources. Powerful keyword suggestion tools can assist in narrowing the choices to the most likely winners.

The whole point of this exercise is to gather the raw materials to construct a Web site that will rank well in the search engines and become a powerful sales converter.