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June 2006- Keywords: Thinking Out Of The Box
by Je Dunn

Everyday there seems to be another keyword tool or service on the net. How can you decide on which one or ones to use that will provide you with those magic words that will bring in the rankings and the traffic?

Know first that your success online will be determined by your ability to target the right keywords for your market. Ok that's the harsh reality but now here is the good news…forget about all those keyword tools!

Now I am not saying that you won't use them, but first concentrate on your market. Read about the market, talk with people that buy things in that market, (you can do this in forums if you hate people), shop the market yourself. Doing this first, will give your a real world feel and grasp of what people in the marketplace want and the problems out there that you can provide answers for.

Now armed with a real world insight into this niche pick a keyword tool, (I still like using WordTracker in combination with Dr. Andy's Keyword Results Analyzer to find the highly searched low competition phrases in a market that I am targeting), and enter the market through the road less traveled.

Another very important thing about keyword research is "Don't Be in a Rush."

There are two schools of thought when it comes to building VRE empires, one is grab as many keywords as you can find and generate pages fast.

The other is to build a slow but steady growing community of well thought out visitor optimized sites. This type of approach may not generate a quick blast of short term income, but it does provide a greater chance of producing much greater long term profits.

I am not telling which to do but decide on one before you invest time in keyword research.

Let me mention here that quality sites have a much greater sale value.

This is not something to be taking lightly. More and more corporations are looking to dominate a chosen market by buying their way into the niche by purchasing established websites. This could prove to be a real windfall for webmasters that have taking the time to develop high quality virtual real estate as it is called.

Using the 301 permanent redirect properly along with some creativity and you can easily increase your search engine rankings for the keywords of your choice as well. Just don't over do it.

Just like you would not build a house without a blueprint nor you should not plan a keyword marketing strategy before you build your site.

A few quick tips…

When your determine your sites main keywords include in a unique title tags, the domain name, in the meta description tags, in the link anchor text and of course in the content of the pages themselves.

Do not stress over things like the ultimate keyword density. Google, Yahoo and MSN algorithms are advanced to the point of determining the subject of your pages without you keyword stuffing them.

Last but not least, don't write for the search engines. I have seen time and time again pages that have followed all the right SEO rules lag far behind pages that were clearly produced for the benefit of the site visitor.

Simply look at your site as a typical person in the marketplace and ask yourself if you find any value in the content. If you do great, start the process over again in another market or build out in the same marketplace with other complimentary themed sites.

If you can solve problems and provide solutions you will make money!

GoogleBot has never bought one thing from me all the times he has been at my site. Remember it is people that have the credit cards; it is your job to help them keep the economy growing.

About the Author

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Note: These articles do not represent the advice or opinions of Apollo Hosting. They represent the thoughts, advice and opinions of the individual authors.