SEO for Begineers – How To Find The Right Keywords

From my experience, I have seen it is very difficult for freshers to learn about SEO. The
major problem that they face is information overload and being new to this trade most
freshers are unable to distinguish between ethical and proper SEO methods and stinky spam
techniques. Unfortunately, though the internet is overloaded with SEO information,site’s
providing information on how to spam search engines are more easily available than the ones
that teach about proper SEO methods. From this line of thought I have made up my mind to put up short write ups on this blog about different aspects of Search engine optimization, in
plain and simple language that can be understood by newbies – yes, the very basics only and
if you can grasp this, you can definitely climb your way up the ladder.

One of the first thing that people should learn while considering SEO is how to find the
right keywords.

There are ample tools available on the web that help SEOs with keyword research, however, it
is often noticed that people fail to identify the proper keywords. The most common mistakes
that people do is that they target the keywords that show maximum number of hits.But that is
not the only thing a SEO should look at while search for target keywords.

There are two main factors that any SEO should consider while choosing his keywords for
optimization of any website.a) The number of hits for that keywordb) The competition on that keywordc) Most importantly, how closely is that keyword related to his site and what is the
possibility of conversion.

Generally, the keywords with maximum hits will have maximum competition, however,if you can dig deep into the keywords and analyze your website properly, you are sure to find keywords that are very specific to your niche. These keywords have manyfold advantages :a) As they are specific to your niche, the chance of conversion is very highb) These keywords generally have a lower competition, with not so low number of hits. As a result these keywords are easy to optimize for and get results and also once you have optimised a website for such keywords the conversion rate for your site is also most likely to increase.

For example, if you are a Tourist Guide in Kolkata it wont be of any help to you to optimize for a keyword like “Tourist Guide” – of course this keyword is going to have much more hits compared to niche keywords like “Tourist Guide in Kolkata” – however, people searching for “Tourist guides in Kolkata” are more likely to be interested in your service than someone searching for “Tourist Guide”. So it is definitely beneficial for you to optimize for “tourist guide in Kolkata”.

The objective of a SEO keyword research should be to find keywords for which the competition is low but number of hits is high. To judge these two parameters for different keywords on a even platform SEOs use a Formula called KEI or Keyword Effectiveness Index. To put in very simple word this is a ratio that identified the most effective keywords.Originally invented by Sumantra Roy – this formula has been modified by various SEOs at times.

The higher the KEI for a keyword, the better it is.

The KEI formula can be represented as given below:
KEI=p^2/C

where,
P = popularity of the keyword
C = Competition for that keyword.

This formula is based on three axioms.

a) If the popularity of a keyword (p) increases the KEI should increase.If value of p increases, p^2/C will definitely increase.

b) if the competition for the keyword (C) increases the KEI should decrease . If value of C increases, p^2/C decreases.

c) If both popularity and competition of a keyword increases the KEI should increase.If both the value increases, the value of p^2/C is sure to increase.If P and C increases such that P/C is same as before p^2/C = p/C*p is sure to increase.

In his original formula he has defined competition as the number of sites that Altavista displays for a keyword when you search for a keyword using a Exact match search (keyword within “”) and populrity as the figure displayed in the “Count” column of Wordtracker for that keyword.

However, in my opinion, it is better to take the competition figure from Google because in most cases they display the maximum number of results for any keywords and the popularity figure from Overture (http://inventory.overture.com/ ) because Overture network receives much more hits/month compared to the meta Crawler/Infospace database used by wordtracker.
KEI is definitely a good way to start your keyword research but it is most oimportant that your keywords are absolutely related to your niche.

I hope this helps you to understand the basics of Keyword Research, in case you have any questions please feel free to shoot a mail, I will love to be of any help to you.