Brainstorm It! -- A Keyword Primer
"What's a Keyword?"
Good question! That term puzzles small business people new to e-commerce. So let's blow away the fog...
There are two ways of looking at keywords, both of them correct. The first is from the Internet marketer's (i.e., your) point of view. For example...
What's your site about?
"Anguilla"
What's that Web page about?
"Anguilla villas"
And that one?
"Caribbean vacations"
"Anguilla" and "Anguilla villas" and "Caribbean vacations" are all keywords. The content you create about each page should focus on a keyword. We call that keyword a "Specific Keyword." And we call the page a "Keyword-Focused Content Page." We call the site a "Theme-Based Content Site."
Your site is about a specific theme. This "Theme-Based Content Site" is a collection of "Keyword-Focused Content Pages," arranged into 3 tiers for easy navigation by human visitors and Search Engine "spiders."
We call your site's theme the "Site Concept." And we call the Specific Keyword of your home page, the "Site Concept Keyword."
In other words, a keyword is merely the topic for the content of a Web page. All the other words on that page are "content"... information about that Specific Keyword/topic.
"What's the Second Viewpoint?"
The surfer's.
A keyword is also the term a surfer enters into a Search Engine when searching for something. These would be words like...
"Anguilla" and "Anguilla villas" and "Caribbean vacations."
(The term "keyword" includes single words as well as multi-word phrases. Most searches are not actually single-word searches. Why? Because most searchers quickly learn to enter two or more words in their searches in order to get better (more precise) results. We call that entry a "keyword" even if it has 5 words in it.)
Surfers use the Web to find information. Search Engines (ex., Google, Yahoo! Search, Bing (formerly Live Search), Ask) are, by far, the #1 way that your pre-customers use to find that information (your "content").
When a surfer searches for a certain keyword, the engine delivers a "Search Engine Results Page" (SERP). This page is a list of relevant and good-quality Web pages. Each listing offers a title, a brief description and a link, like this...
That link is what it's all about. (See the cursor clicking on it above?)
Ideally, one of your pages is ranked among the Top 10 (no worse than the Top 30) on that SERP. When a surfer enters a keyword into Google, Yahoo! Search, Windows Live or Ask, s/he finds your relevant Keyword-Focused Content Page near the top. And then...
S/he reads the title and description (provided by you -- SBI! shows you how as you build each page). Then she clicks on that link to visit you (as in the screenshot above). This is the very best traffic that money canNOT buy...
- It's "editorial" and not an ad. It is, therefore, more credible and visitors do not feel "pitched" on arrival (people raise their guard when they click on an ad).
- It's highly targeted. Your visitor entered a relevant keyword, read your page's title and description, then clicked. It does not get "warmer" than that!
- It's free.
"What are the best keywords?"
That depends on your Site Concept (your site's overall theme or niche, something you choose during DAY 2. The best keywords...
Dictionary.com defines a niche as...
1) A situation or activity specially suited to a person\'s interests, abilities, or nature: ex., "found her niche in life."
2) A special area of demand for a product or service: ex., "niche magazines."
- are specific to your theme. If your site is about "Anguilla," then "Anguilla villas" and "Anguilla hotels" and even "best Caribbean islands" are specific.
- have a high Value Demand. The more surfers search for a keyword, and the greater its "monetizability" (i.e., the more commercial in nature), the better! The Master Keyword List (MKL) part of Brainstorm It! provides the Value Demand for each keyword. This combination of search demand and monetizability delivers a more useful value than search demand alone.
- have a low Real Supply. In other words, not too many other Web pages are seriously about that keyword (the fewer, the better). MKL uses a more sophisticated way to measure Supply than any other keyword research tool in the world. It calls this competitive supply Real Supply.
The higher the Value Demand and the lower the Real Supply, the higher is a Specific Keyword's profit potential (Profitability).
We cover all this during DAYs 1-5 in the Action Guide -- this is just a "keyword primer."
"What's the difference between an ad and a high ranking?"
When you search at the engines, you'll see ads and high-ranking pages. The high-ranking pages (discussed above) are the actual editorial or "organic" search results. If they were newspapers, they'd be the news. They are what the surfer seeks. They are the real search results, the ones that the engines have determined are the most relevant and have the best quality, given the search term entered by the surfer.
The ads, of course, are prominent. The engines do have to make money, after all. Ads often appear above, to the right, or below the actual editorial listings... or all three! Spot the ads here...
Engines try, some more than others, to make the ads appear as regular text listings, as much as possible, anyway. But the law forces them to split ads off from the editorial listings somewhat. And they have to label them as "Sponsored Links" (screenshot above) or "Sponsored Results" or "Sponsor Sites" and so forth.
Here's the bottom line... Surfers come for the editorial results. They learn to sort out the "editorial" from the "ads." But, if the ad is highly relevant to a surfer, s/he will likely see and click upon it
Otherwise, they click on the editorial listing.
"Why don't the engines provide only ads?"
For the same reason newspapers provide news. If newspapers provided only ads, people would not read them -- they'd be flyers! People don't like ads. But, and here's the big "but" that makes the world go round...
When Search Engines and newspapers provide the right ad to the right person at the right time and in the right place, people do in fact act upon them. If that didn't happen, the engines would soon be out of business.
The good news is that surfers do click on ads. And the better news? While newspapers have to create their own content, Search Engines let you do it for them. It takes millions and millions of small businesses to create the incredible kind of diversity that could cover every conceivable search.
"So should I buy ads to get found?"
Yes, you can "buy" ads. You bid for them. And there are circumstances (ex., you have a high-priced product or service to sell) for which buying ads makes sense.
But, as you will see later on, most SBIers normally sell ads. Yes, ads will make you money! Selling them to Google to sell to others is a good strategy, and easy to do!
"I get it! But how do I brainstorm keywords, pick the right ones, and generally find out more about all this?"
Brainstorm It! (BI!) not only makes you an expert "instantly," it does all the heavy work for you. It would take the savviest pros weeks to manually do what Brainstorm It! does in minutes!
Some Web professionals use other brainstorming tools, tools that cost more than all of SBI!. And concepts in those tools (ex., KEI, which puts too much focus on the highest-demand keywords) lead them in the wrong direction.
Brainstorm It! is the best set of brainstorming tools on the market. It guides you towards pointing 
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The Brainstorm It! Process
Here's what you and BI! do (you click the buttons, and BI! does the hard research!)...
- identify the best Site Concept ("theme") for you
- brainstorm that concept to find hundreds of related topics ("keywords")
- determine profit potential of those topics -- discover the Value Demand and Real Supply for each of your keywords
- investigate and plan your monetization mix
- develop a preliminary, 3-tier site Content Blueprint
- refine/optimize your final Site Concept
- find your perfect domain name (which you register on DAY 5).
If this sounds complicated, it's not. Each is one little do-able step. And taken together, the results are powerful.
BI! points you to your best Site Concept, the Specific Keywords that will form the basis for your site's content and 3-tier structure, and even your perfect domain name (which helps at the engines).
After that, DAYs 6-10 help you build a site that gets found by all those highly targeted surfers who are searching for your keywords. Grow and monetize all that juicy, targeted, "PREsold" traffic.
Remember, people search for information online... knowledge, solutions, cures, etc. They use keywords to do that. Your job is to provide that information in the form of high-value, relevant content. You use keywords to do that.
"Keywords searched"... meet "keywords provided."