Preparing the comprehensive list
Most people who run their own website would know the importance of keywords. Those who are not yet familiar with the importance of keywords can read one of the other articles in this section that talk about keywords and their importance.
So, now that we know that the use of proper keywords can do wonders, where (and how) do we find the ‘right keywords’ for our website?
The first step is to think of the audience for your products / services / website-content. In fact, it would be a good idea to sit down with a pen and paper while doing this exercise. Just keep jotting down the various sets of people who would be interested in your products / services etc.
The next step would be to put yourself in the shoes of each set of people one by one i.e. think of yourself as one of those who is looking for the products / services that you are offering. Now, if you were to look for such products or services on the internet, what search text would you enter in the search box of a search engine? Write them down on the paper against the relevant group of people. Repeat this exercise for all groups of audience. You could have 20-25 different search texts. What you now have is a big list of ‘Search texts’. These are actually the key phrases or keywords that you were looking for. But there is still more to it.
The final step, towards arriving at the comprehensive list of keywords, starts with you numbering the keywords (assigning them appropriate priorities). However, do not spend too much time on this activity of prioritizing keywords since you will need to repeat this later. Now, go to the following website address – http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/. This is where you can check the popularity of your keywords i.e. how many times a particular keyword was used as a search text.
Pick up your first keyword and check its popularity using the above link. Overture will bring up a list of relevant keywords (some of these might be the same as or be very similar to your other keywords). Overture also shows how many times a search was made using that keyword / key phrase.
Pick up the top 3-4 keywords and also note the number of searches against it. Repeat this for all your keywords. That’s it; you now have a comprehensive list of keywords.
Part 2 of this article will discuss how you can refine this comprehensive list in order to make it suitable for use in your SEO strategy.