Keyword Research Made Easy

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can expect an impressive flow of traffic from Google and other search engines as a result. All of those visitors are prospective sources of income. They may click on ads, buy a product or otherwise engage in some kind of behavior that will profit the site owner. In some cases, the visit itself is worth money. This is true when the VRE site is monetized with pay per view advertising and/or when ad space on the site is sold base, in large measure, on site exposure. Keywords are the lifeblood of successful virtual real estate ventures. If you know the keywords people are using and can rank highly for them in the search results, you can anticipate a highly profitable site. What Makes a Keyword Good? Search Volume Obviously, traffic is a key to VRE success. If you aren't getting visitors, you aren't making money. That means you'll want to target keywords that people use on a regular basis. All other things being equal you'd always consider the more frequently used keyword more valuable. All other things are rarel
y (if ever) equal, however. That's why the total number of searches for a particular keyword is only one of the factors determining its desirability. Competition Our objective is to rank near the top of the search engine results for our chosen keywords. Other sites are also making use of the same term. That means we'll need to do a better job building our VRE and utilizing the keyword than do those competing sites in order to get a top slot in the search results. Competition isn't always a reason to reject a keyword for targeting, but it does make ranking toward the top of the results much more difficult. By comparison, it should usually be easier to secure high rankings for a low-competition term. You're probably beginning to notice an interplay between search volume and competition. These two factors and how they relate to one another is at the very heart of good keyword research--but there is

another factor. Convertability Some keywords are more likely to be indicative of a visitor who is likely to take a profit-generating action while on your VRE site. Those keywords are especially valuable for that very reason. Consider the keyword "where to buy blue widgets". Compare that to the keyword "blue widgets". Which term is likely being used by someone who plans on purchasing a widget in the near future? The "blue widgets" searcher might be a buyer. He or she may also be interested in reading about the history of blue widgets or in looking at photographs of blue widgets. It's hard to tell and it's safe to assume that most users of that particular query are not imminent buyers. The person searching with "where to buy blue widgets", on the other hand, are far more likely to be motivated and ready to make a purchase. That means they'll also be more likely to click on a relevant advertisement or to purchase a widget via your website. We refer to the act of a prospect making a purchase or otherwise engagi
ng in profitable behavior as a conversion. Conversions are how we make money with VRE, so it makes sense that we'll uniquely value these more easily convertible keywords. How Do These Factors Relate? It's easy to see why we'd prefer a term that gets a lot of searches to one that gets very few. It's easy to understand why we'd rather go after a term that has few competitors than one that has many. It's also pretty obvious that those easily convertible keywords offer real potential. But how do we sort it all out when looking at keywords. Would you rather have a low-volume, low-competition term or a high-volume, high competition keyword? At what point does a shift in one value have an impact on that determination. There's no perfect way to make that decision. First, different keywords "behave" in different ways and it's impossible to make accurate predictions prior to seeing them "in action". Second, the tools we use

to conduct keyword research are not perfect. The numbers they provide are estimates and reality could fall on either side of the prediction. That hasn't stopped people from creating systems by which to compare the relative merits of keywords. The Keyword Effectiveness Index is a good example. Devised by the creators of WordTracker, a keyword research tool, it uses a mathematical equation based on search estimates and competition to render a number ostensibly indicative of the keyword's value. Here's the equation. P represents the popularity of the keyword, as represented by the number of searches for the term. C is the number of competing sites. KEI = (P^2/C) Basically, KEI represents the square of the popularity of a keyword term divided by its competitiveness. Those who live and die by KEI claim that if the number is at 40 or higher, it's well worth pursuing. Lower KEIs may not be worth the effort. KEI isn't a perfect measurement, though. The previously mentioned limitations of the data decrease its accur
acy and some believe there are ways to tweak the formula to provide more meaningful results. KEI isn't the only method people use when assessing keywords. Advocates of the "Bum Marketing" method introduced by Travis Sago argues that an keyword-optimized article placed on an article directory site can often rise to the top of the results when its competition is at around 30,000 sites. It stands to reason that a well-designed VRE site should be able to do well with such a term, too. In this case, the site owner is left to his or her own devices to determine whether search volume is high enough to justify use of the term. Other proprietary keyword tools may have other means of assessing keywords. Their accuracy will vary, but they'll generally give one a good idea of whether a keyword is worth the effort. You may have noticed that none of these strategies take into account a term's convertibility. That's because convertibility can only really be assessed after the fact. It's a matter of feel, a wholly subjectiv
e variable. By using a variety of tools and working with keywords regularly, you'll eventually develop your own feel for what works. Although keyword