The first thing you want to do is to establish a two or three word search phrase that best matches your site's content, purpose and objective. The idea is that if you get a top ranking for this phrase, it will be the most profitable phrase for your site. We'll call this search phrase your "primary keyword". Once you have this phrase it will be much easier to continue building your comprehensive keyword list (ie. Keyword pyramid).

As you research all the search phrases relevant to your web site, you will hear a lot about a concept called KEI. It is not worth delving in depth here in this guide since there is a lot of literature on this valuable concept. Suffice it to say that you need to keep in mind the KEI value of every keyword you are researching because that point value will help you determine the profitability potential of that keyword – ie. how fast you can attain ranking for that keyword and how much competition there is for that ranking as well.

For more info on KEI

One of the things to keep in mind is that the primary keyword phrase you want to target should be one which will optimally generate a large volume of targeted traffic. You, of course, won't be getting that traffic immediately because obtaining top ranking results on a high traffic keyword requires months of optimization and linking. Don't be dissuaded by the time it takes to accomplish the task. It will be worth it in the long run.

Starting Your "Keyword Pyramid"

After you have successfully identified and pinpointed your "primary keyword", your next step will be to build out the rest of your keyword list using a visualization strategy we call the Keyword Pyramid.

At the top of your keyword pyramid is your most desired top search phrase (ie. your 2 or 3 word primary keywords). When you go down one level from the top of your pyramid (think ziggurat) you have a lot more room than just two words. At this level of the pyramid you will be able to have multi- keyword phrases which contain your primary keywords plus additional related search words. You might also have semantically relevant search terms but not exactly the same words as your primary keywords. As you go to the 3rd level, your search phrases become even more laser focused and specific so that you may have 5 or 6 word phrases.

Another way of describing this methodology for long lasting and dominant keyword rankings is to focus your initial optimization efforts on search phrases known as "low hanging fruit" (this means easy pickins for you farmers out there). What this means colloquially is you start the optimization process with "easy keywords", ie. Those relevant keywords which do not have a lot of web pages attached to them from competitive sites and for which there are at least a considerable number of searches per month.

Once you get your pages with "easy keywords" to rank high in the search engines, a good keyword pyramid will enable you to ultimately get your site ranked for upper level, higher and more competitive main keywords. It is worth concluding this section by noting that the strength of your success on the less competitive lower level words gives the search engines the impression that more competitive keywords ALSO should be ranked. This process is called becoming Authoritative and this is a major ingredient in the overall recipe for SEO.

An Example of a "Keyword Pyramid"

The top of our pyramid is the search phrase "shopping cart software" – a highly competitive keyword (there are over 46,900,000 web pages identified by Google alone with this keyword search term.

At the second level of the pyramid we would add one word to the primary keyword phrase and generate some likely search possibilities. For example, "shopping cart software discounts", "online shopping cart software" and "cheap shopping cart software".

At the third level of the pyramid, the keyword phrases might be "programming online shopping cart software" or "shopping cart software discount deals".

Although at the deeper levels, the keyword phrases seem long, and potentially not high volume searches, they are still vitally important because their presence on your site goes a long way to establishing your site as authoritative and thematically linked to searches for other keywords within the full range of "telephone system" searches.