This week’s last post on Google and SEO is a second guest-post by Alex Papa. His follow-up to Monday’s post outlines how to find your best keywords for Search Engine Optimization.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be frustrating, particularly for bloggers who are only interested in providing great content to readers. The internet is filled with systems, tools and the supposed ‘secrets’, all promising to help move your site to the top of search results. Distinguishing between proper and nonsense advice is complicated for the beginner and intermediate webmaster equally.

At this point, the Google Keyword Tool takes the stage. It does not optimize your site for you; however, it will allow you to find the keywords that are most suitable for what you want to achieve with your blog post. This free tool is provided by Google. It is designed to show you the number of Global Monthly searches and the Competition for an individual keyword. Your aim should be to find the keywords that are higher in the volume of searches and low in competition.

Google Keywords is not meant for people who blog for fun. Instead, it is meant for blog owners who are focused on marketing their business or their products and services through their blog. This may sound like a little distinction and leads to the first tip of taking advantage of Google Keywords for SEO.

Tip 1: Always Work With Exact, Not Broad and Not Phrase, Keywords

Within the context of Google Keyword Tool;

• Broad is defined as searches that come close to an individual keyword. For example New York Photos can be New York City Pictures or even Photographs of New York Buildings.
• “Phrase” denotes searches that include the words in any order within a phrase.
• [Exact] refers to user searches that are the exact word or phrase.

Taking New York Photos as an example, you want to know the search volume for New York Photos and you type it into Google Keyword Tool. If you select broad as your filter (default setting), what Google Keyword will return is a search volume number for New York Photos that consists of the traffic for that term plus various related terms. The number you get is not the real number of people who are looking for New York Photos. If you select Exact as your filter you will get a different number which is usually more realistic.

Be certain that your searches are filtered by Exact match, as seen in the example and the number of the Global Monthly searches you get will be precise.

Tip 2: Check the Competition Bar – But Do Not Rely On It

That bar that shows an estimation of competition for a keyword is another Google Keyword oddity. The problem is that the bar displays competition amongst advertisers to buy the relevant keyword for Google Adword campaigns and it does not indicate the number of websites that rank organically for a keyword.

Obviously, the exact keyword [New York photos] attracts more competitors than the phrase or broad keyword, but this should not mean anything to you, because these figures usually are related to competition in pay per click (PPC) advertising and not to competition in organic ranking.

Fortunately, finding your SEO competition for a keyword is not a daunting task. To start with, search Google for the relevant keyword.

To do this just click the little search icon next to the term and Google will initiate the search for you. Scroll through the first page or two of the displayed results. Assess the quality of the pages displayed, especially how focused they are on the relevant keyword.  If the pages are messed up; and if the apparent focus is low, then the more conquerable the keyword.

Tip 3: Choose Keywords that Drive Qualified Traffic to Your Site

Imagine you were promoting your New York Photos on a page you have in your blog, and while conducting  research on Google Keyword Tool you notice numerous keywords that were neglected in this genre. They seem to have high volume of searches and low competition. Without delay you write them down and set off a plan of content optimisation in your blog post.

No more than a month later after numerous hours of work you become aware that there have been many visitors in your New York Photos page but no buyers. An explanation for this is simply that the keywords you chose did not drive qualified traffic. In your case, the keywords possibly attracted enquirers instead of the buyers. Unfortunately, keywords like “New York Photos” or similar might bring people whose intentions are to view or copy your photos. If you want to sell photos then you need to find and analyze ‘buying’ keywords, such as [buy New York Photos] or [low cost New York Photos]. ‘Buying’ keywords attract buyers instead of enquirers to your product page.

Once you identify these keywords your next task is to use them in your website content (on-page optimisation) and your backlinks (off-page optimisation).

In choosing keywords, the question you should be asking yourself is: What kind of traffic will this keyword draw? What kind of conversions percentage is possible for that traffic to generate? And what would the value of those conversions possibly be.

Alex Papa is an internet entrepreneur who writes blogs about Internet Security solutions. In his blog you can find the latest Norton discount coupons codes. He is also a contributor to businessopportunitiesexpo.com