Keywords are one of THE most important aspects for getting traffic.

Well, not necessary getting traffic but getting targeted traffic which is really the only kind you want to have.

It really does you little good to just get traffic if none of the people are interested in what you have.

Keywords are, well, key to getting targeted traffic.

Get the right keywords and you’re profits will soar.

So the key is finding good keywords.

There are many sophisticated tools and techniques but you can do a good job with some free Web sites and a bit of time.

Here’s how to do it…

Start with Google’s Keyword Tool

The first thing to do is get a list of keywords for your Web property that you want to be the destination.

Let Google Tell You

You can do that with Google’s Keyword Tool, you’ll see something like this:

Click the “Website content” radio button and enter the Web address (URL) of the Web property you want to drive traffic to; here I am using my partners Web site http://www.eBusinessToGo.com.

Click “Get Keyword Ideas” to see potential keywords.

Select and add all the keywords that are applicable, this will be most of them but you might find a few that aren’t applicable and don’t add them, or remove them later if you see them after you’ve added them.

At this point you’ll probably have a number of keywords but you can get more!

Now Focus on the Best Keywords

Find one of more keyword phrases the look really promising, use the information Google is telling you as well as your own knowledge and intuition of keyword phrases someone would enter if they were looking for your you have.

For example, if you are a copywriter (or photographer or whatever) then “copywriting service” would probably be a very promising keyword phrase because someone entering that is rather liking to be want to pay for the services of a copywriter.

Go to the top of the page and click the “Descriptive words or phrases” and copy and paste the promising keywords into the box, one per line.

Enter the “Captcha” characters and click “Get Keyword Ideas”.

Search through the results and add the good new keywords Google finds.

Repeat the process if you find more promising keywords phrases.

When you are done, go down to the bottom of the list of keywords and download and save them as a .csv file.

Find Competitors and Their Keywords

Now, go to http://www.Google.com and take the MOST promising keyword phrases and, one by one, enter them into Google’s search box.

Look at the results.

You can get two sets of keywords from this:

1. Your top competitors keywords, go to one of the many tools to get competitor keywords (just search Google) including Alexa (an easy free tool is http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo and enter the URL of the site who are on the first page of Google; you can go deeper and look at multiple pages if you like.



2. The URLs themselves are keywords also, include them in your list of keywords (and bid on them if you do PPC)

Do that for every important keyword phrase

If you want even more go to one of the typo generators tools like http://tools.seobook.com/spelling/keywords-typos.cgi and get common typographical errors.

Finally, go to Yahoo! and find who they have on their first page. It’s probably similar but you usually will find a few new ones.

Now you have a good set of keywords, they will be targeted (assuming you properly filtered them).

What’s Next

Use this information in your pay-per-click campaigns by creating ads that target specific keywords.

Also you can use this in you free traffic campaigns by creating articles, Squidoo Lens, Hub Pages, etc. that target one or two keywords and for each one and drive them to your Web property.

Conclusion

Getting a good set of keywords can be quick and easy and will make you more profitable. This isn’t something you should skip.

Just follow these steps:

1. Start with Google’s keyword tool and let Google scan you site for good keywords
2. Focus on best keywords by putting them in the keyword tool
3. Find competitors by doing a regular Google search on the best keywords
4. Find your competitors keywords by using Alexa
5. Double check competitors with Yahoo!
6. Use the keywords in your pay-per-click campaigns
7. Use the keywords for target content like articles, Squidoo Lenses and Hub Pages

Remember though that the keywords might not all have a lot of buyers or they might have a lot of competition and we’ll look at that in the future, but the above steps will narrow down the keywords that you should be targeting and be much better than you just randomly picking keywords.

Please leave a comment and tell me what you think.

Talk soon,

David

The Shameless (Ethical) Marketer

http://www.Twitter.com/DavidHusnian
http://www.8-8-8Sale.com
http://www.MusicForInternetMarketers.com
http://www.SecretsOfGoogleAdWords.com
http://www.MadMondaySale.com
http://www.2ForTuesdaySale.com

O.Y. If you want more heavy duty keyword tools, I use Keyword Elite and Market Samurai.

O.O.Y. If you’d like people to write content targeted to your keywords, I use NeedAnArticle and ArticleZ.
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