It occurs to me periodically that most writers do not understand keywords, and that most of the people who understand keywords can’t write. The result is that keywords are not always used as well as they ought to be.
In an effort to help you understand keywords, I’m going to start a short series of articles on the art and science of keywords. First you need to know what a keyword is. The term keyword is always used in the singular even if the keyword in question is several words. A keyword is the word(s) or phrase that a person types into a search engine to find something.
Let’s say I have an old hound dog and I think he has arthritis. I might be inclined to search the Internet to find out if there is something I can do to alleviate the dog’s pain. What would I Google to find canine pain relievers?
That’s a keyword. The point is, keywords do not live in isolation. They are closely bound up to the person who uses them and that person’s intentions. This is the “art” part of keywordsmithing. You have to get into the head of the person you’re trying to attract and guessing how he or she would ask for what is wanted.
Let’s back up one step. Why do you care? Keywords are the lifeblood of the Internet. If you build a website for any purpose whatsoever, you probably are aiming it at some kind of target audience. It may be a vacation blog that targets your friends and family, or it may be an information site on how to lose weight or it may be a site that sells gourmet olive oils. You can also have a site to promote your rock band or help market your bed-and-breakfast. No matter what kind of site it is, you are looking to lure somebody to that site, and, more importantly, you’re also wanting that certain someone to do something in particular.
For instance, if you are an olive oil purveyor, you true motive is that you want to sell olive oil. Congratulations, that is a noble motivation. So who are you going to sell your olive oil to? Well, you have to figure out who would be likely to buy from you and how they might search for you. A good start for a keyword migth be “olive oil” but then you’re getting the whole olive oil crowd. Let’s say your focus is that you sell extremely unusual, very rare, extremely high-quality, and expensive olive oil. What does the kind of person who wants to buy some extravagant olive oil type into the search engine? Maybe it’s still “olive oil” but maybe it’s “gourmet olive oil.” Maybe it’s olive oil mentioning a brand or region.
The point is, you need to know the purpose of the website, the kind of person you’re looking to attract, and then figure out what he or she is going to type into a search engine to find what they’re looking for.
Keywords are very revealing. For instance, more people search for “free online Bible study” than “online Bible study.” Why? Because a good many people interested in a Bible study apparently don’t want to pay for it. You see a lot of “free” keywords–free recipes, free samples, free information. Most Internet marketers don’t go for these unless they are offering free stuff. Why not? Because the kind of person who types in “free perfume sample” is really not a good candidate for buying perfume.
So let’s say you have a website and it has a purpose (or if you’re the writer-for-hire, your client has a website and a purpose). You know have to figure out the keywords for that site. How do you do it? Well, the first phase is just plain old “figuring.” You start to fool around with things that you would search for. You try to put yourself in the place of your target readers and imagine what they would come up with. You may end up with two or three keywords or a list of a dozen or more.
When it comes to keywords, search engines are terribly unforgiving. For instance, “sail boat” is one keyword but “sailing boat” and “sail a boat” are different. If one of the keywords you play around with is defibrillator (that’s one of mine), you have to realize that many people misspell it and the keyword “defibulator” is not only perfectly valid, it may even be more valuable than the properly spelled term.
These are strange times for writers.
So let’s say you have guessed at a few keywords. You should now do some research. This is the science part of keywordsmithing, and we’ll go over that tomorrow.
