Evaluation aims are to thin out your list to a smaller amount of keywords and phrases that will direct the largest number of quality pre-qualified visitors to your website. "Quality visitors" means those shoppers who are most likely to make a purchase rather than just surf or browse around your site and take off for somewhere else to shop.

In researching and evaluating the effectiveness of keywords, bear in mind three elements -

* Popularity

* Specific value

* Motivation

Popularity:

This is the easiest one to investigate because it has an objective intent. The more popular your keyword is, the more likely the chances are that it will be typed into a search engine which will then bring up your URL.

Software in various forms, free and purchased is available that will rate the popularity of keywords and phrases by giving words a number rating based on real online search engine activity.

Software such as Word Tracker and others will even suggest other variations to the choices on your whittled down list of keywords and phrases. The higher the number this software assigns to a given keyword, the more traffic you can reasonably expect to be driven to your site.

The only challenge to this software number option is the more popular the keyword is, the greater the search engine position your website will need to obtain. If you are way down on page 10 or possible even lower at the bottom of the Google or other search engine search results, the person searching that phrase will probably never scroll down to find you.

How far do you scroll?

So Popularity isn't enough to make that keyword necessarily the best choice. Using the next criteria will help you evaluate the word further.

Specific Value:

For instance let's take a look at an imaginary example. Suppose that you have obtained popularity rankings for the keyword "virtual assistants." However, your company specializes in legal work only. The keyword "legal virtual assistants" would rank lower on the popularity scale than "virtual assistants," but nevertheless it will provide you better qualified traffic.

Instead of having a large number of people interested in everything from an online email service to full virtual assistance you will end up with only those who are wanting "legal VA's" searching for your keywords and being directed to your site.

In other words, consumers ready to buy your niche services are the ones who will immediately find you.

Consumer Motivation:

You need to figure out what motivation induces a person searching for a service or product to punch in a particular word or phrase. Take yourself away from your known keywords, pretend you know nothing about your site and do a search. As a web surfing consumer what are the search terms you would use? What is it you are actually looking for.

Usually this will mean that the search words used have some sort of relativity to the person searching.

Let's look at an example again. Say you have moved to a new town and are looking for a job in PR.

Do you write 'New town jobs' or do you put in 'New town PR jobs' ?

Which of these is going to benefit your potential customer more? Obviously as a PR consultant the second one is going to be more relevant to the searcher who is looking and is what motivates the keywords they use.

Using the second keyword targets people who know what they are looking for, have the essential know-how as a PR, and are ready to use your advertised product or services to further their career.

You want to attract people to your site who are ready to take action or make a purchase. This requires clever tinkering of your keywords until your find the most specific and directly targeted phrases to bring the majority of motivated traffic to you site.

Once your keywords are chosen that is not the end of it.

You should always continue to evaluate performance of the keywords and site across all the search the major search engines. Times, trends and popular keywords change!You cannot rely on your website traffic log analysis alone because it will not tell you the amount of visitors who actually made a purchase after landing on your site.

There is software available that analyzes consumer purchasing (or not purchasing) in relation to the amount of consumer traffic. This allows you to discern which keywords are bringing you the most valuable customers. You will want to track your results.

This is a crucial thing to grasp. Log numbers alone do not determine the best keywords you need to find for your site or product.. It is how much profit per visitor per word that determines if your keyword choices are right.

Keywords that direct consumers to your site who actually purchase your merchandise, fill out your forms, or download your E-book or other virtual products. This is the most important factor in evaluating the efficiency value of a keyword or phrase, and should be the basis for which you continue to use or discard, replacing ineffective or less valuable keywords with ones that are better converters to profits

Ongoing testing, evaluation and keywords analysis is the principle rule for success with search engines.

Yes! It is a lot of work. Anything successful usually is. If you don't want to do it yourself...think about outsourcing it.

In the end the amount of careful informed effort you put into your keyword campaign will ultimately have a greater impact on generating your business turnover and profits.