The simple truth about keywords Advanced E Books

Now, I want to dwell upon one very important and rather contradictory thing. It's about the length and composition of keyphrases. To make it all simpler, let's use this scheme:

Influence of keyword length on website's conversion

When people make searches in Google or other search engines, most often they type in 2-word phrases, and just a bit less often 3-word phrases. 1-word phrases get fewer searches, and if the keyphrase is longer than 3, it gets fewer uses, with each word added.

So in general, if you choose long keyphrases, you're getting less traffic.

The only exception is 1-word keywords. They also don't get too many searches.

But the coin has its reverse. Let's talk about targeted traffic.

Please think of this: if a person types in headphones, who can guess what exactly one expects to find? Say, my son is in fact interested in inexpensive headphones for running, and you sell professional stereo headphones. So Mike comes to your website, maybe thinks it's well designed — and hits the back button in his browser.

But what if he were looking for 900 MHz wireless stereo headphones and would type it in Yahoo! ? If you sell this kind of headphones, then your chances to get Mike as a purchaser would at least double — and this happens with any visitor.

Here's what we call targeted traffic: people come to your website because they are looking for what you offer.

If they type in a search term, find your site, come to it and buy — this means that the search term they used converts.

If they come to your site after the search, look it through and leave — the keyword does not convert. You only get a visit, but not a sale.

So remember: you need keyphrases that convert.

Now look at the diagram once again. You see an arrow at the bottom and it says there "More targeted traffic and faster results". Here's what this means: normally, the longer and the more precise your keyphrases are, the sooner you'll get your traffic.

Why? Because it's easier to optimize a site for a unique phrase with little competition.

So here's the summary: it's rather hard and not wise to get to the top with a single-word or rather broad-sense keyphrase.

The longer and more precise your keyphrase is, the fewer visitors you get, but the more targeted your traffic is.

The narrower the search term you target, the greater part of visitors convert into real customers.

My recommendation is: try to find the golden mean. If you're not sure, start with two- or three-word keyphrases that better express your customer's needs.