For the past two weeks I have covered the topic of keyword research. If you are a new subscriber or did not get a chance to read the last articles they can be found online. They covered:
> Choosing potential keyword targets
> Determining which phrase will produce the greatest return on investment
In this crucial first step in the optimization there is an additional aspect of choosing your keywords that has yet to be covered and that is how to choose multiple keyword phrases to target in a single promotion.
Lets take for example a baby shoes company. Having recently done a review for a fantastic baby shoes manufacturer I noticed that there were many different phrases that could be targeted from “baby shoes” and “kids shoes” to “baby booties” and “booties”. So how do we choose the phrases to target?
One might start under the assumption that choosing those with the highest number of searches would be the obvious choice. There are two reasons why this may not be the case. The first was brought up the last week’s article in which it is pointed out that the various competition levels must be considered. The second reason is specific to those who wish to target multiple keyword phrases in a single promotion.
While it is possible to rank for completely separate phrases (for example: “baby shoes” and “booties”) if you wish to target multiple phrases in a single promotion you will have much greater success if you choose phrases with a common thread. What is meant by this is that if you can choose a single keyword that ties multiple phrases together (the word “shoes” or “baby” for example) you will find that you have a much greater level of success. This is for a number of reasons.
First, the search engines are becoming smarter. They are looking for common threads among the pages of your website. If they visit one page that focuses on the phrase “baby shoes” and find that through the rest of your site there is little on no mention of either of those words again then the relevancy of those words (as far as the search engines are concerned) is very low. If you have targeted phrases with a common word across your site however (“baby shoes” and “baby booties”) and keep the word “baby” mentioned consistently throughout your website this will build a relevancy for this keyword and also the keyword phrases you are targeting.
An additional benefit in this approach is in the building on links to your website. The text that is used to link to your site (called “anchor text”) also builds the relevancy of those specific keywords on your site.Thus, if the anchor text to your site reads “baby shoes” and you are targeting “baby booties” on a separate page the relevancy of the word “baby” is further reinforced through the links and will additionally benefit the targets on other pages.
On the other side of that, if you are targeting completely different phrases the links to your site will have far less relevancy for the other phrases and you will either have to additionally build links using different keywords or suffer the reduced rankings that will be attained.
So do your research, find multiple phrases with a common thread, and cast a big net. One targeted phrase per page should be your limit and keep them related. Do this right and you’ll find a lot of fish jump right into your net. 24 hours a day, 365 day a year.