Last time, I wrote a brief overview of how the search engines work.  A the end of that post, I promised to write in more detail about how to get links and about how to rank for the right keywords.

Let us start with the last.

First Of All, What Do I Mean By The “Right” Keywords?

As noted in my last post, anyone can rank for gibberish words, such as “kkhbjdbfka”.  Nobody searches for “kkhbjdbfka,” as evidenced by this google search.  If they did, there would be some reason for people to target that keyword.  In fact, by using “kkhbjdbfka” as my gibberish example, I will probably be the only one ranked for it (check here). 

Update: If you do this search you will get three results, and all are my this article.

Why does nobody target it?  Because it does not answer any questions, or solve any problems.  If someone’s infant gets a hold of the keyboard, I might get some traffic.

Spending money is a serious matter.  No one searching for “kkhbjdbfka” is going to be spending any money.

When people have problems, they ask questions.  In order to solve problems, people are willing to pay, either with time or money.     For business, we would like to find people with more money than time.  So, the right keywords are the ones that people who spend money to solve problems use to search for solutions to their problems.

So, the indicators or the “right” keywords are:

• They have substantial search volume; people actually search for them
• They have some monetary competition.  Zero competition means there is zero opportunity for business.
• They relate to solving problems or answering questions

How Do We Know If We Have The Right Keywords?

There are a number of tools and techniques for investigating the quality of your chosen keywords.  This is known as Keyword Research.

The first tool is Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool.

Simply enter one or more keywords (I used:  dog training, how to train a dog, dog obedience training),  fill out the captcha, hit search, and you get this.

Another piece of the puzzle is the estimated average AdWords cost per click (CPC).  By knowing what this, you can gauge the commerciality of your keywords.  For example, if you find that the average CPC of “dog training” is $13, then you know that the keyword “dog training” is a potentially lucrative one.  How lucrative?  Enough that business owners are willing to pay $13 per click on their ads.  People use this keyword to solve their problems.

Warning:  CPC advertising is potentially extremely expensive if your ads do not convert to sales.  It’s cost per click, not cost per sale.

A third tool is Google Trends.  Using this tool we can break down the search traffic by region, city, or even language.  See this example.

Notice that there is no seasonal fluctuations.  There is a steady volume of searches.  This is generally a good thing.  You don’t want keywords that only get used in the month of May, for example (unless you’re a seasonal seller, but the internet is evergreen).

What To Do With This Information

Now that we’ve found the right keywords, how do we get ranked for them? The goal is to get other sites related to your keywords to link to your pages.  The more links you get, the better you rank.

Go ahead now, and try playing with these tools yourselves.  There is a ton of information out there, and many ways to profit from it’s use.  In my next post, I’ll discuss the basics of link building for search engine rankings.

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