Chapter 5
Picking Powerful Keywords
In This Chapter
Thinking up keyword phrases
Using a free keyword tool
Using Wordtracker
Sifting for the right keywords
I
was talking with a client some time ago who wanted to have his site rank
well in the search engines. (I’ve changed the details of this story a tad to
protect the client’s privacy.) Let’s say the client is a company with annual
revenues in the millions of dollars (as indeed this client is), in the business
of, oh, I dunno . . . staging rodent-racing events.
I did a little research and found that most people searching for rodent-racing
events use the keywords rodent racing. (Big surprise, huh.) I took a look at
the client’s Web site and discovered that the words rodent racing didn’t
appear anywhere on the site’s Web pages.
“You have a little problem," I said. “Your site doesn’t use the words rodent
racing, so it’s unlikely that any search engine will find your site when people
search for that."
“Oh, well," was the client’s reply, “Our marketing department objects to the
term. We have a company policy to use the term fur ry friend events. The term
rodent is too demeaning, and if we say we’re racing them, the animal-rights
people will get upset."
This is a true story, well, except for the bit about rodent racing and the furry
friends thing. But in principle it happened. This company had a policy not to
use the words that most of its potential clients were using to search for it.
