Best keyword search strategy
Uses thesis & writing skeleton™ as basis

An efficient keyword search strategy allows writers to use long tail keywords from their working thesis to locate evidence to flesh out their writing skeleton™. By contrast, an inefficient strategy will use only the writing topic or associated topics as search engine keywords.

Before we go too deeply into this subject, you need to be sure you understand how a search engine defines keyword.

What are keywords?

A keyword is the key that allows access to a document. A keyword can be:

• An individual word, or

• A phrase, or

• A series of words (omitting articles and other unnecessary or common words)

that someone types into the search box of a search engine in order to find a web document containing that that keyword. Writers with an efficient keyword search strategy enter keywords that they know will appear in documents containing the information they are seeking.

A long-tail keyword comprises four or more words. Entered into a search engine without quotation marks the long-tail keyword returns documents that contain the each of the individual keywords. Entered into a search engine inside quotation marks, a long-tail keyword finds only documents that has those words in that exact order.

To see how the quotation marks work, enter the long-tail keyword staged Civil War battlefield photographs into a search engine first with quotation marks around it and then without the quote marks. Notice the differences in the results you get.

(Note: As you are teaching writing, a student project investigating what happens in response to various ways of entering search terms can be an interesting and useful team activity.)

Long tails from writing skeletons™

Student writers do not need hundreds of documents on their subject. Joshua and Caitlin need only a few documents on a limited portion of their subject.

Students need a keyword search strategy that allows them to search efficiently for information to support the topic sentence of each body paragraph for which they lack adequate support.

Depending on the topic and the requirements you set for a specific assignment, students may not need to do research for every point of their writing skeletons.)

When beginning writers are just starting out writing papers using published source material, show them how their writing skeletons™ can form the basis of their keyword search strategy.

Because the writing skeleton™ contains the topic sentence of each body paragraph stated as a reason for believing the thesis statement to be true, each point of the writing skeleton™ contains the essential keywords for searching efficiently for evidence to support that point.