Keywords and Keyword Phrases

The term keyword and keyword phrases is used extensively on this site and Keyword research is fundamental to building a website.

Done properly it will identify good niches and help eliminate unprofitable ones.

Not only is keyword research done in finding a niche it is also used extensively when writing articles and planning website content.

What are Keywords?

But what exactly do we mean by the term “keyword” or “keyword phrase”

The term “Keyword” has two meanings depending on whether you are :

1. Searching for something or
2. Writing a webpage

For Example, if you were looking for a information about cruise holidays you would go to your favourite search engine and enter:

These are the keywords from the searchers’ perspective. You should note that the searcher usually enters more than one, 2-3 word searches are the most common, hence the term keyword
phrase.

From an Internet publishers perspective a keyword or keyword phrase is the topic or theme for a web page. For example if you were going to write an article Mediterranean cruises then the
page keywords would be Mediterranean cruises and the content would all be focused on that.

What is Keyword Research

Keyword research is about finding out what Internet surfers are actually searching for. Are they searching for:

You don’t want to make a website or write a web page on cheap Mediterranean cruises if no one, or very few people are searching for
them.

Keyword Research Tools

There are number of tools available, most are free, for conducting keyword research:

• Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool -This is probably the most commonly used tool for keyword research and it is entirely free. The tool is also used by many third party keyword
  research or suggestion tools such as Good Keywords and the brainstorming tool from Site Build-it.Overture is a pay per click search engine and the results returned by overture are the results of searches done on the overture search engine. Because the tool is research tool
  for pay per click marketing the results can tend or seem to be inflated to encourage you to buy those keywords.

  However the main disadvantage
  with this tool is that is doesn’t distinguish between singular an plural.

• Wordtracker -Wordtracker is commercial software but does offer a free limited trial version on the website. This software was developed specifically for keyword
  research and hence has no keyword bias in either direction. It also provides alternative keywords based on synonyms and keyword analysis and profitability reporting. It does
  differentiate between singular and plural.

Wordtracker and Overture Compared

Even though Wordtracker and the Overture keyword suggestion tool usually give slightly different results both tools are very worthwhile and usable. Overture and its derivatives are very
good for quick research, and Wordtracker for more detailed research and plural checking and brainstorming keyword variants.

Because Overture and most of its derivatives are free it remains the most popular choice.

Keyword Resources:

• Overture keyword suggestion tool
• Wordtracker
• Good Keywords - A free downloadable tool that uses overture but provides a nicer interface and remembers queries so
  that you don’t have to repeat a search. It also allows you to query other search engines like teoma and lycos.
• Digital point Wordtracker and Overture suggestion tool.-shows results from both tools on a single
  screen.