How To Find Out What Keywords Your Customers Are Searching With

In this article I show you how to capture your most targeted visitors with the search engines by discovering what keywords they search with.

To get high search engine rankings, you must include the keywords that your potential customers are search with, in your web pages.

To find out what your most targeted keywords are, you need a keyword analysis service, such as Wordtracker.

Wordtracker will help you find all keyword combinations that bear any relation to your business or service. It does this by providing analysis of actual searches conducted in metacrawler search engines.

You may wonder why it's important that you need to know what keywords your potential customers are searching with. Let me show you why with some examples.

Here are the most popular searches for the different variations of the search term, "keywords," according to Wordtracker:

Notice the different variations? The second keyword is capitalized. The third keyword is split into two words.

Here are the most popular searches for the different variations of the search term, "marketing strategies," according to Wordtracker:

Why Is It Important?

Well, if you wanted to target search engine users, you would want to include all the different variations of the keyword you want to target. This will help to persuade the search engines that your web page is relevant for the different keyword searches.

Another reason is that some search engines, such as Inktomi, still take case sensitivity into consideration when ranking web pages.

Here's a table of Inktomi powered search sites that provide case-sensitive search results.

Knowing exactly what your customers are searching for is very powerful.

I have used this strategy over the years to help me obtain thousands of top 30 rankings for my web sites, and those of my clients.

If you need to improve your search engine rankings, I highly recommend that you reconsider your keyword targeting strategies.

Read my review of Wordtracker to find out just exactly how it can help you growth your search engine traffic.

About The Author

Michael Wong is a successful and respected search engine optimization specialist, and author of several search engine optimization books. Mike is also the Editor of Mike's Marketing Tools, the leading review site for the very best web marketing tools.

Use Stickysauce Search Engine Tools

DISCLAIMER: The content provided in this article is not warranted or guaranteed by Developer Shed, Inc. The content provided is intended for entertainment and/or educational purposes in order to introduce to the reader key ideas, concepts, and/or product reviews. As such it is incumbent upon the reader to employ real-world tactics for security and implementation of best practices. We are not liable for any negative consequences that may result from implementing any information covered in our articles or tutorials. If this is a hardware review, it is not recommended to open and/or modify your hardware.

More Search Engine Tricks Articles
More By Developer Shed

 

developerWorks - FREE Tools!

NEW! Driving Business Success with Rational Process Library Join this webcast, to learn how the Rational Process Library can help with compliance issues, drive process improvement, and assist in service-oriented architecture (SOA) or Agile development. We will take a peek into the Rational Process Library with content around software and systems engineering (including RUP), operations and systems management, program and portfolio management, and asset and SOA governance. FREE! Go There Now!

NEW! Best Practices: The Integrated Project and Portfolio Management Platform. Hear how IBM Rational Project and Portfolio Management integrated solutions help teams put the right tools and processes in place to maximize the effectiveness and efficiency of project teams and ensure that the business vision is being executed correctly. Learn how to automate and integrate requirements prioritization, top-down project planning, communications and controls, and methodology deployment to keep your scope, costs, and schedules under control. Tackle with an end-to-end approach the management of scope and scope changes, usage of methodology to control and empower project teams, and optimization of resources to align activity costs with the overall project plan. FREE! Go There Now!

NEW! Calling all CC Power Users – and those that would like to be! Join this Rational Talks to You teleconference, featuring Paul Boustany and Mark Krasovich, to speak to the experts about becoming a Rational ClearCase power user. Get a chance to ask your questions and learn tips and tricks for using Rational ClearCase in Agile development FREE! Go There Now!

NEW! Best Practices in Integrated Requirements Management Poor Requirements Management capabilities in an Enterprise have been linked to excessive project failures, escalating IT costs, and failure to deliver competitive advantage into the marketplace. Join Brianna M Smith from IBM Rational and learn about how successful organizations align IT and Business stakeholders through collaborative processes and tools for effective requirements management, and how an integrated approach across the IT lifecycle can provide unparalleled visibility and traceability to ensure that project teams are delivering on the business vision by "doing the right things" and "doing things right." FREE! Go There Now!

NEW! Download a free trial of WebSphere Business Modeler Advanced V6.1.1 Visit IBM developerWorks to download a free trial version of WebSphere Business Modeler Advanced V6.1.1, IBM’s premier business process modeling and analysis tool for business users that offers process modeling, simulation, and analysis capabilities. IBM WebSphere Business Modeler helps you visualize, understand, and document business processes for continuous improvement. FREE! Go There Now!

NEW! Rational Build Forge Express eKit Rational Build Forge Express Edition is an automation framework that packages the latest enterprise-grade technologies into a reliable, flexible and robust configuration designed and priced specifically for small to midsize businesses. The new Rational Build Forge Express eKit provides you with valuable resources – including a case study, podcast, demo, and articles – to help you increase staff productivity, compress development cycles and deliver better software, fast. FREE! Go There Now!

NEW! Test terminal-based applications with Rational Functional Tester Regression testing -- in which code is thoroughly tested to ensure that changes have not produced unexpected results -- is an important part of any development process. But many testing environments neglect the terminal-based applications that still form the backbone of many industries. In this tutorial, you'll learn how the Rational Functional Tester Extension for Terminal-Based Applications works with other Rational Functional Tester to help test terminal-based applications quickly and easily. FREE! Go There Now!

NEW! Trial download: IBM Rational Method Composer V7.2 Get a free trial download of the latest version of IBM Rational Method Composer V7.2 which helps you deliver customized yet consistent process guidance to your project teams and IT organization, and includes the latest version of IBM Rational Unified Process (RUP), which has provided process guidance to teams since 1996. FREE! Go There Now!

NEW! Understanding Web application security challenges As businesses grow increasingly dependent upon Web applications, these complex entities grow more difficult to secure. Most companies equip their Web sites with firewalls, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), and network and host security, but the majority of attacks are on applications themselves – and these technologies cannot prevent them. This paper explains what you can do to help protect your organization, and it discusses an approach for improving your organization’s Web application security. FREE! Go There Now!

NEW! Webcast: Calling All Testers! Find Application Vulnerabilities Early in the Development Process Where they are Easier to Fix and Less Risky to your Business In this webcast, IBM Rational will discuss the importance of Web application security and will share techniques and best practices to introduce application security testing into current QA processes including: understanding common security vulnerabilities and techniques to integrate security testing with defect tracking and remediation systems in an effort to safeguard sensitive online information. FREE! Go There Now!

All FREE IBM® developerWorks Tools!