Search Engine Ranking Optimization Articles

How to use keywords and keyword phrases to maximize your search engine ranking

The first step in optimizing your web site for search engines is to decide on which keyword phrases you should be targeting.

A search engine spider decides how relevant a Web Site is by indexing its key words and keyword phrases. It achieves this through the use of algorithms.

Why phrases?, Because with over one billion web sites it is impossible to target single keywords.

Consider the keyword 'hairdresser', a quick search on Google returns 221,000 pages. However, 'hairdresser liverpool' returns 4090 pages, and 'men's hairdresser liverpool' returns 238.

The idea is to use keyword phrases that have a chance of ranking. Also, check on what keyword phrases people are actually searching on - it's no use majoring on a phrase that no one is searching on.

Once we know which phrases to target, we need to know where to position them correctly in the correct elements of your web page.

So how do we decide which phrase is right? We use a tool that suggests keywords related to the keywords we are considering and also tells how many people are using them and how effective they are.
For this, we use the Wordtracker service. At the time of writing this tool cost you just USD 6.60 for a day, and a day should be all you need.

When you use Wordtracker, you can enter some keywords, and Wordtracker will return additional keywords that may or not be usefully for your business.

Not only that, but the service will also tell you how competitive those keywords are (how many other Web pages have been optimized with those keywords in mind) and how many people have actually searched for those keywords in the past 24 hours at each of the major engines.

If you decide to use Wordtracker you will need to understand what KEI ( Keyword Effectiveness Index ) is.

The following extract is taken from the Wordtracker website.

( If you want to skip this go straight to keywords and phrases part 2 )

The KEI compares the Count result (number of times a keyword has appeared in our data) with the number of competing web pages to pinpoint exactly which keywords are most effective for your campaign.

In a nutshell: Look for the keywords near the top. The higher the KEI, the more popular your keywords are, and the less competition they have. Which means you have a better chance of getting to the top.

The KEI is a measure of how effective a keyword is for your web site. The derivation of the formula for KEI is based on three axioms:

1) The KEI for a keyword should increase if its popularity increases. Popularity is defined as the number present in the "Count" column of WordTracker. This axiom is self-explanatory.

2) The KEI for a keyword should decrease if it becomes more competitive. Competitiveness is defined as the number of sites which a search engine e.g. AltaVista displays when you search for that keyword using exact match search.

Exact match search means that a search engine searches for only those sites which use the keyword exactly as typed in by the user. It is the equivalent of entering:

Partial match search means that a search engine also searches for sites which contain the individual words of the keyword but not necessarily occurring together or in the order typed in by the user. It is the equivalent of entering:

Partial match search presents a distorted picture of the competitiveness of a keyword because when you optimize your site for a particular keyword, you are actually competing with sites which have used the keyword exactly as typed in by the user.

So to clarify, competitiveness is defined as the number of sites which a search engine displays when you search for that keyword using exact match search, that is with quotes surrounding the term. Rather than those web sites returned when entering the phrase only partially, that is without quotes.

Note: When you select KEI Analysis, quotes will be added temporarily to each of your search terms for the purposes of the search.

3) If a keyword becomes more popular and more competitive at the same time such that the ratio between its popularity and competitiveness remains the same, its KEI should increase. The rationale behind this axiom requires a more detailed explanation. The best way to do this is to take an example:

Suppose the popularity of a keyword is 4 and AltaVista displays 100 sites for that keyword. Then the ratio between popularity and competitiveness for that keyword is 4/100 = 0.04.

Suppose that both the popularity and the competitiveness of the keyword increases. Assume that the popularity increases to 40 and AltaVista now displays 1000 sites for that keyword. Then the ratio between popularity and competitiveness for that keyword is 40/1000 = 0.04.

Hence, the keyword has the same ratio between popularity and competitiveness as before. However, as is obvious, the keyword would be far more attractive in the second case. If the popularity is only 4, there's hardly any point in spending time trying to optimize your site for it even though you have a bigger chance of ending up in the top 30 since there are only 100 sites which are competing for a top 30 position. Each hit is no doubt important, but from a cost-benefit angle, the keyword is hardly a good choice. However, when the popularity increases to 40, the keyword becomes more attractive even though its competitiveness increases. Although it is now that much more difficult to get a top 30 ranking, spending time in trying to do so is worthwhile from the cost benefit viewpoint.

A good KEI must satisfy all the 3 axioms. Let P denote the popularity of the keyword and C the competitiveness.

The formula that we have chosen is KEI = (P^2/C), i.e. KEI is the square of the popularity of the keyword and divided by its competitiveness. This formula satisfies all the 3 axioms:

i) If P increases, P^2 increases and hence KEI increases. Hence, Axiom 1 is satisfied.

ii) If C increases, KEI decreases and hence, Axiom 2 is satisfied.

iii) If P and C both increase such that P/C is the same as before, KEI increases since KEI can be written as

KEI = (P^2/C) = (P/C * P). Since P/C remains the same, and P increases, KEI must increase. Hence, Axiom 3 is satisfied.

Note that the formula for KEI is not unique. In fact, this is one of the nice things about the KEI. If, instead of using 2, you use any power of P greater than 1, the resultant formula will also satisfy the 3 axioms. For example, (P^1.5/C) and (P^3/C) both satisfy the 3 axioms. The exact power of P that you choose depends on how much emphasis you want to give to the popularity of a keyword viz-a-viz its competitiveness. Higher the power of P in the formula, higher will be the emphasis on popularity. If you are very confident about your search engine positioning skills, choose a higher value for the power of P. If you are not that confident about your search engine positioning skills, choose a lower value for the power of P (but the power should still be more than 1). Thus, the KEI can be adapted to your skill level! Feeling confused as to which power you should choose? Stick to 2. It maintains a nice balance between both popularity and competitiveness.

Please note that Wordtracker defaults to 2 (P^2/C) as described above.