What Makes a Good Keyword, or Keyword Phrase

Simply put, a good keyword or key phrase is one that will attract visitors to your website; a term that people search for on Google, so that Google can direct them to your website by using the search results page. So, if you can learn what words and terms people (future customers), are using in their searches, you can exploit those keywords to your advantage.

So think about this – if you were some one else, looking for the information or products that you have on your website – what word or words would you enter into Google in order to find your website? That is the essence of targeting good keywords.

And usually the best keyword is not a word at all, it’s a phrase.

Long-tail keywords

Long what?

Long-tail keyword is just another term for a keyword phrase consisting of three or more words, that collectively are much more specific than a single keyword.

These long tail keywords are what people use to search for a more specific topic.

Long-tail advantages

These long-tail keywords are more likely to generate sales, than the more generic single word search terms for two reasons. First is that there is less competition for ranking high in Google’s search results pages.

For example, there are 1.3 million results shown by Google on the search results page for the keyword ‘dog training’. However, there are only 317,000 results for the long-tail keyword ‘springer spaniel puppy training’.

And secondly, people who are looking for a very specific item are closer to buying a product than people doing a more generic search.

For example, if you have a product for training a springer spaniel puppy, and you were targeting ‘dog training’ as your keyword, you’d get many visitors who weren’t really looking for what you are selling.

But if you were targeting ‘springer spaniel puppy training’ mostly those people who were specifically looking for your information would find your website. This is free targeted traffic. The very best kind.

This is the second in a series of articles entitled 'Keywords for Newbies'. So if you want to start your keyword research with an easy to understand, step by step approach, then follow the link to find out more about keywords and keyword research.