Building a keyword list

There are two elements to building a keyword list.  The first is that the words and phrases in your keyword list are relevant to your products or services.  That is to say, that these are the terms and phrases that your (potential) customers use when they search for your products or services.  We have already discussed the factors that go into making a keyword relevant in our keyword research tutorial.  The second element is that the list be as large and comprehensive as possible.  A large, comprehensive keyword list allows for better analysis.  It increases the chances of finding those golden keywords (targeted, popular and relatively little competition).  It also allows you to create a more sophisticated plan for optimizing your site as you organize your keyword list according to competition and popularity.  Finally, more (targeted) keywords means more varied types of keywords, allowing you to fully engage your customers in all the different ways that they relate to your products and services. 

The different parts of a keyword
As we have mentioned before keywords are the terms and phrases that your customers use when searching for something on the internet.  Usually, they are between 2 - 5 words, although they can be shorter or longer.  It is worth noting, however, that there are different elements to a keyword.  Recognizing this fact will go a long way in helping us create our keyword list.  For example, let’s imagine that you sell auto parts online.    Let’s take a look at some keywords which might relate to your site:

• used car parts
• car parts store
• Honda car parts

• used auto parts
• auto parts store
• Honda auto parts

• used automobile parts
• automobile parts store
• Honda automobile parts

Each of these keywords are made up of two elements.  The first is the base keyword.  Base keywords are the most fundamental words or phrases which relate to your product or services.  In our example, these are the words car parts, auto parts, and automobile parts.  Note that car, auto, and automobile are not your base keywords.  That is because they are too general and do not specifically refer to the basic product that you sell.   

The second element of a keyword is the qualifying keyword.  Qualifying keywords are those words or phrases which modify the base keyword.  In our example, these are the words used, store, and Honda.  What is worth noting about qualifying keywords is that you can have more than one in a phrase.  For instance, in addition to used car parts, someone could search for used car parts Houston, used car parts wholesale, used auto parts online, or even sell used auto parts online. 

Why is this at all interesting?  Because we can take this knowledge and use it to systematically develop a large, relevant list of targeted keywords. 
All we have to do is the following:

1. Develop as large a list as possible of base keywords.

2. Develop as large a list as possible of relevant qualifying
   keywords.

3. Systematically combine all of these various keywords
   together.

Let’s illustrate this by returning to our example of a car parts website.  Let’s reorganize our keywords into their constituent parts:  We can organize the various constituent parts of auto part related keywords as follows:

• auto parts
• automobile parts
• car parts

• Used
• Store
• Honda
• Houston
• Online
• Wholesale
• Used…Online
• Used Honda

And then combine them to create the following keyword phrases:

• Used Auto parts
• Used Automobile parts
• Used Car parts
• Honda Auto parts
• Honda Automobile parts
• Honda Car parts
• Auto parts Store
• Automobile parts Store
• Car parts Store
• Auto parts Houston
• Automobile parts Houston
• Car parts Houston
• Automobile parts Online
• Auto parts Online
• Car parts Online
• Auto parts Wholesale
• Automobile parts Wholesale
• Car parts Wholesale
• Used Auto parts Online
• Used Automobile parts Online
• Used Car parts Online
• Used Honda Auto parts
• Used Honda Automobile parts
• Used Honda Car parts

These keyword phrases (made up of your base and qualifying keywords) make up your primary keywords, i.e., the basic relevant phrases which your customers most likely use to find your products or services.  Your first goal when building a large keyword list is to discover these phrases, as many of them as possible.  And there is a very simple way to do that, simply build two keyword lists, the first a comprehensive list of all of your base keywords, the second a comprehensive list of your qualifying keywords and then combine them (there are programs which make this easy to do, as well will explain later on). 

The advantage of this method is that it allows you to build as large and relevant a keyword list as possible.  Oftentimes your research will turn up a particular qualifying keyword phrase with only one variation of your base keywords.  By using our method of combining base keywords with qualifying keywords you make sure that doesn’t happen since every relevant base keyword is combined with every relevant qualifying keyword.  This is a good way to find quality niche keywords which your competition never thought to optimize for simply because they didn’t turn up in the standard Keyword Research Tools. 

With that said, your next task is learning how to build a comprehensive list of base and qualifying keywords, the topic that we cover in our our next tutorial.

Next tutorial:  Finding base keywords
Previous tutorial:  Keyword Popularity

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