Select Keywords Strategy

[iivgi]

Hi, when planing a strategy for the keywords i am looking at the following parameters: 1. Using Google Analytics i check what are the queries that cause my website to appear in search results 2. I am trying to understand what is the message the website (the company) want to deliver 3. I am trying to find the best keywords that will have lower competition to minimize the costs The Q 1. Any other parameters that i missed? 2. What will be the best way for me to check the competition and the costs for each keyword before i select it? Thank you very.... SEOwiseUs

[AlanBleiweiss]

I don't select a category (industry) - I prefer to allow Google to bring back a variety of results so I can make the industry evaluation without relying on their system to figure that out for me. Other than that, I also don't just put in one phrase at a time - I usually put in a few - up to five or six, that I have already identified as related from my previous process.

But other than that, it's the same as what you do

[iivgi]

Thank you Alan, What do you mean " i run these keywords thru Google keyword tool" I am using this tool - the way i use it is: i write my keyword, select category(industry) select region and language. and press "search" The results are - monthly (local and global) searches for this keyword, competition. And bellow - a list of suggested keywords from google Do you use the keywords tool in a different way? .

[AlanBleiweiss]

I take the keywords I think the site should rank for (understand the market, think "what would a prospective visitor/customer/client use to search for this"), as well as similar top level phrases on the site (home page, top category page or top services pages).  I then run a few of those at a time through the Google Keyword tool.  I export the results into an Excel spreadsheet and do that for each batch I run.

I then review the results to see which ones that come back have the highest volume of search volume but that are also closest in match to the true focus of the site.

You can then sort those out by competition difficulty.

Sometimes it helps to also go into Google during the process, do a search for one of the phrases, then when you get the results back, below the search box in Google, there's options for web, images, maps, etc.  on the end of that row is a "search tools" button.  Click that and you can then use the middle drop-down to show "related searches".

That gives you more ideas to work with based on popular search variations.