How to Create a Highly Effective Keyword List
by Herman Drost
Recently I was asked to optimize a site selling Spanish T-Shirts to attract
lots of traffic from the search engines. Without traffic your site won't make
any sales. On the other hand getting lots of traffic does not guarantee sales
if your web copy is lousy. There are many factors that should be considered when
you optimize your web site.
My example site will be Wild Lily Designs (http:⁄⁄www.wildlilydesigns.com)
a site that specializes in selling Spanish Shirts.
Here are the steps I took to optimize the site:
1. Create a keyword list
Write down all the keywords related to the topic of your site. Try to also
include keyword phrases. ie T-Shirts, Spanish Shirts, Spanish Apparel, Spanish Clothing.
There are probably millions of web sites selling T-Shirts; therefore you need to
narrow your focus. This is why Spanish Shirts or Spanish T-Shirts would a better
niche because it wouldn't be as competitive. If your niche is too competitive
you will have a difficult time getting high rankings. Ideally you want your site
to appear on the first page for one of the major search engines... Google, MSN or Yahoo.
2. Find related keywords
These are words that are similar to the main keyword list you created above.
You may be able to incorporate them into the content of your site as it grows.
Keywords that have a very narrow focus ie Spanish T-Shirts, may not be a popular
search term. If I broaden my search to include "Spanish" or "T-Shirt" I will
find hundreds of words that relate to these topics.
Use a thesaurus dictionary or thesaurus.com
to find similar words besides your main keywords. Another great free tool to
brainstorm related keywords is the
Google AdWords Keyword Tool.
Here is the list of similar keywords generated when I inserted "spanish shirts"
in the Google AdWords Keyword Tool.
madrid shirts
language tee shirts
spain shirt
spanish shirt
shirts in spanish
spanish shirts
spanish t shirts
real madrid shirt
spanish english dictionary
spanish apparel
sign language shirt
language shirts
madrid t shirts
shirt in spanish
hispanic t shirt
spain t shirt
language apparel
hispanic shirts
sign language t shirt
madrid t shirt
real madrid t shirts
language t shirts
sign language shirts
language shirt
shirts spanish
sign language t shirts
spanish t shirt
real madrid merchandise
i love shirts
hispanic t shirts
long sleeve shirts
spain t shirts
t shirts in spanish
madrid shirt
From this list you get both the singular and plural forms of the keywords. You
may also want to include Madrid shirts, madrid t-shirt, spanish shirts.
To find out how often people are searching on these keywords you need to use
keyword tools. I use a combination of both free and paid tools.
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