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Anyone who has ever broached the subject of web design or search engine marketing is familiar with the term ‘keyword’. If you do any pay-per-click advertising then you should be spending a fair amount of time researching and tailoring your keywords to maximize your advertising budget.What I’ve found though, as time goes by, is that most people have truly only scratched the surface in terms of their knowledge of keywords and keyword phrases.

So What is a Keyword
A keyword – or more accurately – a ‘keyword phrase’ or ‘keyphrase’ is a word or phrase that people will use to search for a person, place or thing on the internet. Simply put, if I want to look into GPS tracking, I would go to my favorite search engine (Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, etc.) and search for, you guessed it – “GPS tracking”

Yeah…So?
So if I’m in the business of selling GPS tracking devices, I need to make sure that my website will be one of the first sites displayed when my prospect searches Google for such a product – PERIOD. If your site is not showing up in the search engines, it’s a waste of time and money.

Research has shown that most internet searches find what they need in the first 10 results. Choosing the correct keyphrases is the first step in effective search engine marketing.

Choosing Keywords – A Primer
So where does one begin? The best place to start is with the obvious. If I own a website that sells amplified phones, then the cornerstone of my keyphrase analysis is going to be ‘amplified phone’.

But not everyone is going to search for the phrase amplified phone. Some prospects will search for ‘amplified telephone’. Some will search for ‘phone amplifier’ and some will more than likely search phrases like ‘telephone for the hard of hearing’.

Google has a great keyword tool that’s free to use. It not only gives you keyword ideas, but shows you their individual ’search volume’ – how often the phrases are searched. When I plug in amplified phone, I learn that the most commonly searched variation is actually ‘amplifier phone’. This is news to me. I have some work to do!

OK… Now What?
I’m glad you asked. Now you gather a list of what you believe will be your top 15 or so keywords. The more keywords you use, the less ‘relevant’ the search engines will deem them, so less truly is more.

In my next keyword post I’ll discuss long vs. short-tail keywords, targeting prospects who are ready to purchase, and proper implementation of HTML Meta tags.

My 7-year-old, Matthew and I sat down last night and redeemed a Wii points card that he received for his birthday. For those unaware, you can download classic video games like Pac-man, Punchout and Super Mario Bros. directly to your Wii and play them to your nostalgic heart’s content.

The funny thing is this. My kid’s been playing video games since he was about 3-years-old and by the time he was 5, he was playing games like HALO and Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell – games that involve wielding automatic weapons and fending off giant aliens and government assassins. It’s not that I’m bragging, or overly proud of this, but at 5-years old, Matthew fully grasped the concept of the “headshot” and the necessity of hiding the bodies of the bad guys so as not to sound alarms later in the game.

These are stressful games. The lighting, music, and action are designed to keep you on edge and stressed out, but Matthew’s always been able to handle them. Kid’s these days are pretty amazing.

So last night I learned something that I find hilarious – the boy has no problem laying waste to hordes of gigantic intergalactic bad guys, but Pac-Man? Forget it. Being constantly chased around a maze by 4 brightly colored ghosts proved to be WAY too intense for the boy!

Another thing I discovered was that the boy had no concept whatsoever of “points”. To him – eating the ghosts was a waste of time because “they come right back”. Kids today play to rescue the princess or defeat the evil overlord. Back in the day, ALL games were a quest for the same all-important title, the “High Score”.

So I called my best friend, and fellow gamer, Adrian this morning because I knew he would appreciate my finding and of course – he winds up being the one person on the planet who’s actually had discussions with others on this exact topic. His two cents:

I hadn’t thought of it that way before but it’s true. What I saw last night was the result of an entire industry forced into a renaisance of sorts in order to keep up with the times. I guess it’s true. Classics are always relevant.

Hope everyone is having a great weekend.