What Makes a Good Keyword Phrase?

Matt from Washington asks:

“What makes a good phrase?”

A good phrase is one that is closely targeted to your product or service and reveals intent on the part of the searcher.

That’s a mouth full. Let me break it down for you:

When people do research they often focus on keywords that are far too general. Let’s say I have a site where I sell digital sheet music for classic rock songs. Here is a list of possible keywords:

Sheet music Digital music Lyrics Music lyrics Classic rock Rolling Stones …and so on

There are a couple of problems with this list:

1. They are only loosely related to my core product—digital sheet music for sale.

Take “sheet music” for example. Do you sell sheet music? Sure you do. But the sheet music you sell is very specific. Most people who are typing “sheet music” into Google are looking for something other than what you are offering.

Would it benefit you to target this phrase? If you got to the top of Google for this phrase it WOULD result in sales, but because it is only loosely targeted to your product it would likely not be worth the effort you would put in to get there.

2. They don’t reveal intent on the part of the searcher.

Let’s consider “classic rock.” When someone types that phrase into a search engine, they may be looking for the phone number of the local classic rock radio station, a way to download classic rock music or lyrics to a specific song.

These aren’t likely to do you a lot of good.

Here’s how you can improve your search terms, decrease the competition you have to overcome and get more sales per visitor:

1. Look for keywords where intent is clear.

Let’s look at the term “lyrics”.

While you DO sell lyrics, adding a few words to the term will help it be much more closely targeted to your product.

Classic rock lyrics 60’s rock lyrics Rock lyrics of the 70’s

Can you see how these specific terms reveal what the searcher is looking for?

2. Target keywords

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