By now you have a better understanding of the importance of keywords and the role that they play in SEO. Below this section are some sample keywords and phrases but as I said before, they are probably just a drop in the bucket once you really start thinking about them and writing them down.

You may end your SEO brainstorming session with so many words that you don’t know which ones to start with. That’s where keyword selector tools come in.

Keyword selector tools work in a number of ways. One way that they assist you is by listing the alternative keywords and ranking them by popularity. There are a number of keyword selector tools that are free for you to use.

• GoogleAdwords Keyword Tool
  This is an excellent SEO tool that costs nothing to use but provides you with valuable information. There are two main sections, Keyword Variations and Site Related Keywords. Under the Keyword Variations section, you can search by keywords only, or keyword popularity. The keyword popularity option will let you know how popular the keywords you chose are. This will give you an excellent basis upon which to select your keywords.The Site Related Keywords section is another valuable tool to use and once again it’s free. You can type in your web site’s URL and it will review your website and return with a suggested list of keywords that you should consider using.
• Yahoo!Search Marketing Keyword selector tool
  * No longer working.
  The Yahoo keyword selector tool is extremely slow to use, when it even works. I typed in Kentucky homes for sale and this was the result:

As you can see on the right hand side, the number of times this key phrase was searched for is indicated for the month of October, along with different variations that the phrase was searched under. It would be wise to check your keywords here on a monthly basis since, as you know, popularity of keywords will constantly fluctuate.

There are paid keyword selector tools such as WordTracker, but try the free ones first and see how they work out for you. You can always opt to use a paid service later.

So now you’ve brainstormed and come up keywords and phrases that you think will work well with your site. You have utilized the free keyword selector tools and come up with even more, paying close attention to their popularity.

You might think it will be in your best interest to use as many of these keywords as possible, all at once. That’s not the case at all.

There’s no set rule on how many keywords you can use but you don’t want to over do it. Don’t forget that you will be changing them on a regular basis so you will have the opportunity to use all of your favorite ones.

Ten keywords actually cover a lot of ground because you won’t be using them all in one section of content on your site. Let’s say that you’re going to write a newsletter to be used as content on your site and on your keywords list you have Kentucky Homes, Kentucky Listings and Kentucky Investment properties.

You wouldn’t write in your newsletter, “If you’re looking to buy a Kentucky home, then you should really consult our Kentucky listings and while you’re at it, you should take a look at the Kentucky investment properties that we have.”

It might sound ok to you but each type of content that you have on your site should focus around a particular keyword and then that keyword should be sprinkled throughout that particular section, be it for blogs, articles, newsletters and so on.

The reason that this is necessary is because keyword relevance to your site is something that the search engines use as a basis for determining if your site is what the searcher is looking for.

Having one article or blog that has a concentrated amount of one keyword or phrase will let the search engines know that the phrase that was searched under is relevant to your site.

By focusing on one keyword per content section and sprinkling it throughout the copy, then each section takes on a greater relevance to the search engines.

Since different people are looking for different things, this will broaden the amount of hits that you will get on your site. Including additional keywords dilutes that relevance and the search engine spiders may pass over you and return with another site to present to the user as opposed to yours.

In the world of search engines, the frequency of keywords will play a very important role. As we previously discussed in the last section, each segment of your site should focus on a different keyword so that a variety of people who are looking for different things will be able directed to your site.

Let’s say you decide to write a blog and that you chose the keyword phrase Kentucky Houses for Sale. In terms of logic, it might seem beneficial to use those keywords as often as you can in the blog. Your first paragraph might read:

There has been a huge increase in the amount of Kentucky houses for sale. Because of the increase in Kentucky houses for sale, the sales prices for Kentucky houses for sale have dropped dramatically.

If you have been looking to buy one of the Kentucky houses for sale, now would be an excellent time because Kentucky houses for sale have never been offered at such a low price.

You may then continue your blog in that same vein because, you feel that a person who initiated a search using that phrase would be directed to your site, thanks to the strong relevance using it so many times created.

The search engine spiders would recognize that relevance and direct the searching party to your site. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

That one paragraph contained 68 words and the keyphrase was used 5 times. That means in one paragraph, it made up 7% of the content. In the complicated world of search engines, a keyword or phrase should only make up 7% of the entire document.

There was a time it was considered expedient to use a keyword or phrase as many times as possible. Once people began to understand how search engines worked, recognizing the relevance factor, they began doing what’s known as “keyword stuffing”. They would insert the keyword phrase into their content multiple times, and the search engines would of course respond by putting their site high up on the search results page.

As time went on, the people who program the spiders got smarter and thus so did the spiders themselves. Now, if a site uses a keyword or phrase multiple times throughout the content, this technique will actually cause them to discount that page and ignore it, lowering it in the rankings.

The spiders recognize that you are trying to trick them and they make you pay for it by pretending you don’t exist. This is the last thing you want to happen since the whole point of SEO is to get your pages ranked higher, not relegated to the back of the line.

When you are crafting your content, be careful not to overuse the keyword or phrase. Keep the frequency down to 7% to make the search engines happy and boost your chances of bringing your site to the searcher’s attention.

Search engines are not only looking for relevance in key words and phrases. They are also looking for the popularity of the keywords. You might specialize in foreclosure properties and choose keywords that are relevant to that topic.

Earlier I showed you how to use keyword selector tools to find out what keywords were popular during the month before this one. Now that you have chosen your keywords that you find most relevant to your site, you have to narrow it down even further by using the keyword selector tool to figure out which of them are the most popular.

Another thing that you have to take into consideration is competition. Chances are your competitors are also going to be using the same keywords that you choose to use.

This makes your selection of keywords even trickier because you now have to find a way to choose words that combine relevance, popularity and competition. This isn’t really as hard as it may seem.

a) Don’t Just Choose the Most Popular

Your first thought might be to just use the most popular terms that people initiate searches under that a strong relevance to your site. This might seem like the prudent thing to do but don’t forget the example that I gave in section B.

When I did the Google search under “Kentucky Listings”, two brokers chose keywords that were not as popular among their competitors and managed to wipe out a huge amount of competition by doing so.

This particular phrase may not have gotten as many hits as other keywords, but you can guarantee that it did get some and there was no one but these two brokers returned in the search result pages.

This speaks volumes for the wisdom of choosing keywords that are less popular than those that will return pages and pages of brokers for you to compete with. By choosing these keywords they managed to find a successful balance between low popularity and high relevance.

b) Stay Away From Keywords That Have Lots of Competition

The next things you need to consider are competitive keywords and which ones you should choose. Choosing keywords that are highly competitive in the real estate industry can make it harder to rise up in the search engine rankings, since many of your competitors are using them as well.

Remember the second example in section B when I did another Google search under Kentucky Homes for Sale. This keyword phrase was obviously much more popular with the competition than was Kentucky Listing.

So much more so that it returned pages of brokers who used the same phrase. This does not mean you should not use words that are competitive. If you want to use such phrases then fine but make sure that ones you choose are highly relevant to your site.

In the best case scenario, the keywords and phrases that you choose will be high in relevance, be popular among real estate searchers and lower in competition with the other brokers that you are competing with.

This is why it’s essential to constantly change your keywords and phrases as well as the content that they relate to you. Make sure you keep track of your hits and conversions and keep a chart for each keyword and phrase that you use so you can note which ones were the most effective.

In this chapter you learned the following:

• The importance of keyword selection.
• Choose user focused keywords.
• How to use keyword selector tools.
• Why ten keywords are enough.
• The 7% rule of keyword frequency.
• The popularity, relevance and competition factors of keyword selection.