Keyword Selection - Finding A Good One! - Part 2
by: Tony Stockill
To refresh your memory from the previous article, we looked at how we can get a list of keywords from Overture. Go to overture search and enter your basic keyword. You will get a list of up to 100 keywords and key phrases using your initial keyword.
The number given for each phrase is the number of searches performed on Yahoo for the previous Month. At this point, if you see a keyphrase that you would like to expand on, you can click on the phrase and get a new search on all terms using that phrase.
Then we test these keywords in Google to see how many pages of info on these keywords there are.
The next thing to do is to enter these keywords in a spreadsheet, we will use excel as an example, but any will do.
You will need four columns of Data.
First column is the keyword list from Overture, which is up to 100 keywords or phrases.
Second column is the number of searches found by overture, corresponding to each keyword.
Third column is the number of pages found by entering the keyword search in Google. The note below the search box says "Results 1-10 of about 3,198,000 for "keyword". This is the figure to enter.
Fourth column is very important. This is the ratio of searches to results. To make it usable, calculate this ratio as follows SearchesX100/Results. In case this doesn't print properly it is Searches multiplied by 100 divided by Results. You must do this calculation for each keyword. (easy with a spreadsheet, but out of the scope of this Article!) The x100 gets the figure to a manageable size, centered around 1.
Now ensure the list is sorted in order of column 2, which it should be if you transferred it from the yahoo printout. Delete any rows where the second column value is "too small" - say less than 500.
Re-sort the sheet in order of column 3. Delete any rows where the number of results is "too large" - say more than 1,000,000.
Re-sort the sheet in order of column 4. We now have a list of keywords, in order of "value", that is greatest demand for least supply.
Eliminate any keywords you don't want, for example off topic words.
Now if you are setting up a niche website, the first keyword in your list is the master keyword for the Home page, the others are one for each of the other pages.
You can use the same principle for Adwords etc.
Note! both Yahoo(Overture) and Google have different searches for Geographical regions, like North America, UK, Australia etc. It is worth looking at different results if you are targeting different markets.
About The Author
Tony Stockill is a retired computer engineer, now working from home on the internet, latest venture - keyword calculation. His Keyword Value Calculator is available now -
http://www.tonystockill.com for more information. Go to
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ for the Overture tool.
