• Search Engine Guide, Thursday, October 30, 2008 8 PM

Part 9 of this 12-part series on keyword research provides guidelines to help gather, sort and organize your keywords into an effective marketing campaign. As a search engine optimization guru, your job is to make sure searchers find precisely what they are looking for on your site. This means use keywords that reflect the content. If you don't, searchers will quickly leave in favor of a more relevant site.

Stoney deGeyter knows it's often tempting to try and optimize for keyword phrases that are not necessarily represented on the site that you feel will bring traffic from words that reflect a similar topic, but don't. "An example of this would be if Adidas tried to optimize their site for 'Air Jordan' under the belief that anyone searching for Nike Air Jordans might be able to be sold a pair of Adidas instead."

Mistake! It borders on deception. There are some times when you can get away with this type of keyword targeting, but proceed carefully. The most legitimate way to do this is to provide information on alternative products, comparing them with your own, according to deGeyter.

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