Choosing the Right Keywords

Choosing the Right Keywords – the Foundation for Your Search Marketing

Choosing the right keywords makes the search engines seem to love you. Choose the wrong ones and you’ll be wondering why you never show up. So many times I’ve had business owners tell me they already know what their keywords are to avoid the time or expense of doing some serious keyword analysis. Problem is, they almost always provide me with a list of keywords that more than likely will not bring them any traffic because those keywords either have too few searches, too much competition, or are not really relevant.

In choosing the right keywords, it is important to begin every search optimization, search marketing, and web design project with thorough keyword research and analysis if you want to rank well. Start with the general search term(s) for the type of business services or products being offered. Plug those keywords into a keyword suggestion tool such as Google Adwords keyword tool. (Just google “keyword tool” to find it.) From there, keep choosing the most popular relevant keywords and repeat until you’re satisfied. Look for the keywords and phrases that have the most traffic while still being highly relevant to the business. You will end up with a HUGE list of relevant and related keywords and phrases to download. Download these as a text file.

Then begin analyzing your long list of keywords and phrases with robust keyword analysis software. To do this right and save time, you really need to have some good keyword analysis software. Spend a bit of time searching the Internet and reading the reviews and perhaps try out a couple that come with free trial periods. With the software, you can look at things like the commericiality and competition of those keywords. Choose keywords that have a lot of searches and manageable levels of competition. Adding geo-modifiers such as city and state immediately reduce your competition and hone in on your local target market.

From all of this, you will distill a list of relevant, popular keyword clusters to build your website around. Generally speaking, your home page should be optimized for the most general of search terms you selected, the main navigation pages for the second level of specificity, and subpages of the main navigation pages should be optimized for the most specific of your keywords and phrases.

If you take the time to do this right, your site will have the highest possibility of ranking well on Google, all else being equal of course. Choosing the right keywords is the first step, but it is the most important step because this is your foundation for all of your search marketing strategies.