If you’ve been online for any length of time, you’ve probably already realized that most people find what they are looking for by going to search engines and typing in keywords or “search terms”. Online marketers are well aware of this and, thus, they try to target specific search terms when they are designing their websites or paying for ads, so they can drive a targeted group of potential buyers to their products and services. But how do they find the best keywords?

In today’s day and age, it’s likely that most, if not all, of the big players online are using some sort of search term tool to help them identify profitable keywords. Most often, a search term tool tends to be a sophisticated piece of software that has the ability to scour the internet and return statistics on the keywords being searched for on search engines like Google and Yahoo. They can often give you detailed information on how many times a particular search term has been searched for, how many competing sites there are for a given search term, how many people are paying for ads for a given search term, and other statistics.

Search term tools can make finding the perfect keywords a breeze, but there are a few things you should keep in mind about search terms in general, so that you can get the most out of your search term tools.

Singular versus Plural

When searching for the best search terms, singular versus plural matters. In fact, it’s really quite amazing the difference a simple “s” can make when it comes to both the number of searches being performed on a given keyword and the competition for that keyword. Just as an example, I was using one of my favorite search term tools the other night and came up with the following results for a specific keyword:

“search tools”–searched for 0 times and had 36,500,000 competing sites for the term “search tool”–searched for 4,122 times and had 19,600,000 competing sites for the term

I think the above is a clear illustration of just how different the results can be for the singular and plural forms of search terms. Keep this in mind when you start using a search term tool to help you identify profitable keywords.

Reverse the Order and See What Happens

Don’t fall into the mind trap of thinking that everyone searches for things the way you do. You can often find good keywords by trying to think of other ways people might search for a particular term.

For example, if I was looking for information on black bears, I would probably go to Google and type in “black bear” or “black bears”, but keep in mind that other people might actually type in “bear black” or “bear grizzly” if they were searching for information on grizzly bears. I’ve found a lot of great keywords with little competition by simply remembering this when I’m using my favorite search term tool.

Size Matters

In general, the longer your search term phrase is, the less competition it will have, and the more specific it will become which often results in a higher sales conversion. Let’s just do a quick search on Google for one of my favorite subjects, fishing, so I can show you what I mean. We’ll start general and work our way down to specific.

If I go to Google and type in “fishing”, it returns 204,000,000 results. If I get more specific and type in “fly fishing”, I get 11,200,000 results. Let’s get even more specific by typing in “fly fishing for trout”. I get 101,000 results. Ok, you see the pattern, but let’s keep going. How about “fly fishing for trout in Idaho”. Wow. Just 2 results!

As you can see, as we added more keywords to the search term phrase, the number of competing websites went way down. If I was trying to sell a guidebook about fly fishing for trout in Idaho, I would be much better off targeting the keyword phrase, “fly fishing for trout in Idaho”, than I would be if I just tried to target “fishing”.

Someone typing in “fishing” may be looking for bass fishing information, fishing boat information, or any number of things that may or may not be related to what I’m trying to sell. So as you use your favorite search term tool, remember to look for those longer phrases that might get a lot of searches and have very little competition.

Keep the above tips in mind when using a search term tool to help you locate profitable keywords. You might just find a goldmine!

About the Author

Derek Blandford is the co-owner of a successful online splash page design company, and his passion for online business is contagious. If you’d rather be sitting on the beach with your favorite ice-cold beverage while all the most profitable keywords are handed to you on a silver platter, click here: http://www.businessangler.com/searchtermtool.html

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 17th, 2007 at 9:15 am and is filed under Search Engine Tactics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.