Looking at your keyword data is an easy way to identify the phrases that consistently send good traffic from search engines to your web site. Knowledge of these keywords allows you to optimize your website content for these phrases, improving search engine rankings and bringing even more visitors to your website.

Found in the traffic sources section of the navigation menu on Google Analytics, keywords lists all of the words and phrases that visitors have entered into search engines to get to your site.

Keyword Analysis in 4 Steps

These steps show how you can analyze this data and generate more qualified visits.

1. Go to the traffic sources > keyword page. You need some volume so change the display to show the top 50 or 100 keywords. If you don't have a lot of different terms, broaden the time frame to 6 months.

2. Vet the list. Ignore keywords that include company name, brand names, and people's names. Your web content is optimized naturally for such niche phrases. Focus on the generic keywords - the one's people type in when they want someone who does what you do but don't know anything about you.

3. Don't just focus on phrases with the highest search volume. Quality is also a factor. Sort the keywords based on pages per visit, time on site and bounce rate. Look for phrases that rate better than average.

4. For each phrase you want to investigate, complete the following:

a. Click the phrase in Google Analytics. This will take you to a screen that isolates those searches. From the Dimension dropdown, select source. This will show you the search engines that were used. If you are using an analytics package that doesn't have this option, it is a good guess to check Google first as they serve more than 80% of the search market.

b. Go to that search engine and search on the phrase. Where do you rank? If you are in the top 3 leave it alone. If not top 3, try to make some content edits.

c. What page does it link to? Click to the page and evaluate it for the keyword phrase. Does it appear in the title tag? Navigation label? Headings & subheadings? Main body content? Can you work the exact phrase into the main copy?

Caution: don't sacrifice readability for the sake of the search engines. At the end of the day it is the Searcher you need to make happy so make sure they can read and understand the content without tripping over your words.