Continued from the How to build a Keyword List Tutorial, Part I of our Building a Keyword List Tutorial

Finding base keywords

As we mentioned in part one of this tutorial, the first step in building a large, relevant keyword list is to discover your base keywords.  Your base keywords are the most fundamental words or phrases which your customers use to search for your product or services.  For instance, if you sell auto parts then car parts, auto parts, and automobile parts are three of your base keywords.  Other base keywords might be brake calipers, fender flares, and fuel injectors.  The question is, how do you develop as large and comprehensive a list as possible of these base keywords?  Below, we outline some of the steps that you should take to just that.

Developing your base keyword list

Step number one: Look at your natural resources.
Try to think of as many base keywords as possible.  Check out your website, product line, catalogues, etc.  For instance, returning to our example of an auto parts website, let’s check out the website http://www.autopartswarehouse.com/.  You will notice that they organize their products by category, by brand, and by make of car as follows:

The words and phrases found in these different groups are excellent base keywords (i.e., words such as auto mirrors, Injen Intake, and Acura Parts or Acura Accessories).  The goal is to find as many base keywords as you can without having to look anywhere besides your own natural resources. 

Step number two: Check out your competition
You can start by making a list of all your known competitors.  Your can then supplement that list by searching for your main keywords on Google, Yahoo, and MSN and noting which sites show up in the search engine (note: this is also a good way to determine which keywords your competition is targeting).  Once you have your list, start analyzing these websites for base phrases that you may have missed.  Look at the text on their page as well as their meta tags. 

The meta tags can be found by looking at their source code.  With Internet Explorer you can do this by clicking on View (or Page in the latest version) in the browser menu up top and then Source (or View Source in the latest version).  With Firefox you click on View in the browser menu up top and then Page Source.  You will then see some code which looks something like this:

meta name=”keywords” content=”Cell Phones, Cingular, Verizon, Cell Phone…

This is the meta keyword tag wherein many websites add keywords which they wish to rank well for or which are relevant to their web site or web page.  Often times you can find some important keywords in your competitors meta tags.

By the way, a word of caution concerning using your competitor’s company name, product names, or trademarks. There are court cases which suggest that such use can be interpreted as trademark infringement. If you are unsure about the legality of a particular keyword, consult your own legal counsel. This website is obviously no substitute for qualified legal advice.

Step number three:  Use Quality Keyword Tools

There are a variety of quality Keyword Research Tools which can, among other things, help you to find quality base keywords.  These tools record actual searches done online and thus are excellent sources of keywords that your customers actually use.  You can see a list of recommended keyword tools by checking out our Keyword Tools Tutorial

Step number four:  Cover all your keyword variations
Often times you can find competitive advantages merely by optimizing your site for a common variation of your base keyword (such as misspellings, plural forms, synonyms, merged or hyphenated words).

Misspellings and grammatical mistakes
Common misspellings or grammaticallyincorrect versions of your keywords can sometimes be an easy source of traffic (for example, WordTracker shows that there are more searches for childrens clothing than children’s clothing, even though the first version is grammatically incorrect).  Whenever your research indicates that a misspelling or a grammatically incorrect version of a keyword is common you should consider optimizing your site for both versions of the search term.  If you don’t want your customers to see the incorrect version then place it in your meta-tags or creatively mention the common misspelling on your page. For instance, you can include a small section on your page entitled common misspellings, wherein you include the misspelled version. Alternatively, you can mention by-the-by the common mistake (such as, “When looking for a miniature golf course (commonly misspelled minature golf course) make sure…”)

Plurals and synonyms
In general, the search results for singular and plural versions of a keyword are rarely ever the same (even though the search engines employ technology to identify plural versions of a keyword). This means that you should optimize your site for both versions by working them into the visible text on your web pages. The same can be said for common synonyms. For instance, as we mentioned above you don’t just want to optimize your site for auto parts, but also common variations such as car parts, auto parts, and automobile parts.  An example of how this may be done is the following mock paragraph: “Looking for the best price on car parts and accessories? You’ve come to the right place. We’re your vehicle’s one stop source for the lowest priced auto parts and accessories. If we don’t have the high quality automobile parts you’re looking for, no one does!"

Merged and hyphenated words
Some keywords may be commonly merged or hyphenated (such as web host/webhost; e-commerce/ecommerce). It’s important to realize that the search engines will treat each version as a different keyword.  Also, your visitors may also treat the two versions differently. In some cases, both versions of a keyword will garner an equal number of searches.  In other cases, one will far outstrip the other. WordTracker, and other similar keyword tools, can help give you an idea of the relative number of searches for a particular keyword variation.  If your research suggests that you should target both versions of a keyword then make sure that you work both of them into your web pages (as well as into your webpages).
 

Next tutorial: Finding qualifying keywords
Previous tutorial: How to build a Keyword List

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This tutorial written by:
Moshe Morris
President of SEMBasics
Chief Research Analyst at Internet Marketing Initiative (www.internetmi.com)

The content on this page is based on SearchEngineNews.com’s e-book Winning The Search Engine Wars.
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