When working on the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) of a website, one of the initial jobs is to identify the keywords that will be used throughout the Meta Data / Content / Structure of your website. A good way is to cross reference the searches. As an analogy; I could say that the keywords are grapes, the website is the bottle filled with wine which is your content.
Do you follow me?

Amongst other techniques, you can harvest your keywords mechanically (with a software/application) or handpick them.
To illustrate our search, let’s assume that I am working on an Ecommerce website which sells brass instruments.

1. Mechanical Harvest : Paid / Unpaid keywords tool

Paid Keywords tool

Wordtrackerâ„¢
I personally use Wordtracker™ as a foundation for any keywords research. It gives me many keywords variations and I can refine the search from this initial “picture”.

Wordtracker search results

Wordtracker ranks the keywords and gives you the amount of time they have been searched in their search engine partner for a year period. This number is indicative; it shouldn’t be used as an absolute figure, this is only a slice of the global search. Also, some marketing companies use automated tools to check the ranking of their clients for specific keywords and those searches may slightly distort the results.However, it is definitely a good starting point.

Free keywords tool

Google Adwords Keywords tool
This online keywords tool is interesting; especially for products based keywords search. The difference with Wordtracker is that the results are more product based as those are suggestions for the Pay per Click (PPC). Where Wordtracker search results would have been more general, Google Adwords Keyword tool tends to unveil the long tail searches. I would recommend a blend of both search suggestions.

2. Handpicked keywords - Free keywords tool

The main search engine (Google, Yahoo, Bing) have introduced keywords suggestions in their search features. This gives you the opportunity to see the most popular searches according to the main search players.

Google keywords suggestion

Yahoo keywords suggestion

Bing keywords suggestion

Google wonder wheel

One of my favourites is Google wonder wheel; again this tool is more adapted to pick all the keywords that are hiding behind the leaves. You will find gems! The tool is a bit hidden amongst the recent new search options introduced by Google. Below the search results, click on show options:

The wonder wheel is listed amongst the features on the left hand side. It is particularly useful as it will bring you alternative keywords and the molecular visual results are brilliant.

Quintura

Alternatively, you can use Quintura which is slightly different from Google wonder wheel and will give you alternative themes around your main keywords

This post is more about the tools rather than the keywords choice, there is a lot to say about the way you organise your keywords and how they relate to each other. I will write an single post about keywords hierarchy / taxonomy and organisation of a website content. Meanwhile, I’d like to quickly introduce an amazing tool, the Visual Thesaurus, which provide visual results of keywords interaction.

I hope these few tips will help you with your keywords harvest and produce an attractive website. The head sommelier Google will probably pick your website if you propose fine content.

Tags: keywords search, seo

This entry was posted on Monday, December 7th, 2009 at 11:22 AM by Guillaume and is filed under SEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.