Keywords - Niche

So now you have established your business website objectives, you need to find your most effective keywords (a single word frequently entered into search engines) and keyphrases (a collection of keywords entered into search engines). Keyword research tools can be found at:

• http://inventory.uk.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion (free)
• https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/Login?sourceid=AWO&subid=UK-ET-ADS&hl=en_GB (may require free account to use)
• http://wordtracker.co.uk (requires payment)

These tools will tell you how many people are searching on these terms, usually for search engine traffic monitored from the previous month.

As most visitors to a website come from search engines, then it makes good business sense to make sure your website is "search engine friendly" to ensure they refer traffic, or at least the right kind of traffic, to your website. Many factors affect the type and number of visitors visiting your site but content and services are the most important. If your content or services are poor then so will your website results. Poor content can be summarised as that which offers little or no value to website visitors e.g. pure advertising and marketing "waffle" and services cover useful features such as online calculators, research tools etc.

Your new website will be more successful to start with if you concentrate on a specific area of your business with limited or no competition in search engine terms.

Search engine users typically enter 1-3 words into a search engine to find the information they are looking for e.g. cheap holiday Egypt and rarely go past the third page (30th result) of search engine results pages (SERP's) as they have usually found what they are looking for by then.

As we mentioned before, single search words are called keywords e.g. holiday and several keywords together are called keyphrases however a competitive keyword or phrase is generally accepted as one that many websites are trying to make their website "search engine friendly" for.

Using less competitive keywords and keyphrases should make it quicker and easier to be listed within the top 3 pages (10 results per page) for that particular keyword or key phrase. The closer you can get to page one, position one within the SERPS (search engine results pages), the more likely a searcher will click the link to come through to your website.

Being listed within the first 30 results in a search engine for a given keyword or key phrase means you "rank well" for those or your site is "optimised" for them.

By all means, still use the keywords and phrases that apply directly to your business that are competitive but expect these to be slower to deliver Internet traffic due to many other business websites competing for them. For example, if you are selling books then it is very unlikely you will pose a threat to www.amazon.co.uk and have your new website placed above it in the search engine results pages for people looking for the general search term books.

Having your website shown at the top of the SERP’s for such a highly sought after phrase would take an expert a lot of time and money. Instead concentrate on a specific line of books, as it would be easier to rank higher for engineering books than for just books.