Optimizing Keywords

The single most important thing you can do to try to get your website top search engine rankings is to optimize your choice of keywords. Your choice of keywords should guide every decision you make about building your website, putting content on your website, and marketing your website on the internet. Marketing on the internet is in some ways similar to offline marketing, but in other ways it is quite unique due to it being primarily a search oriented media.  In brief, the amount of exposure you get for your website is more dependent upon keyword research and optimizing your list of keywords than anything else you do.

Keyword research is the  one aspect of building a web business should be the most closely managed project you have. Whether you are a do it yourself type. or outsource some or all of  the marketing of your business on the internet, you must be actively involved in keyword research.  Matching as many search terms as possible that are used by your target customer base is what determines the success of your internet business. You may think that you know what keyword phrases your potential customers use to find businesses such as yours, but more than likely you are wrong more than you are right. In addition you have no idea what the competition for any keyword phrase is going to be without doing the research. WIthout adequate keyword research you are almost destined to be disappointed in the performance of your website.

You start your keyword research by having a clear idea what specific products or services you wish to market,  and understanding exactly who you think would be interested in your offerings. If you skip this step, you might be successful in generating a lot of traffic, but very little would convert to sales and you would waste your time and money. Once you have an idea what you want to promote and to whom it is time to start brainstorming a list of initial keywords of interest to you. Once place to start this process is at Google’s keyword tool. Their tool is free and useful for this initial step.

Once you have a  list of initial keywords, it is time to start expanding the list. Here you want to take the core list of  one or two word phrases you just developed and expand them into many short two to five word phrases that will be the primary target of your keyword optimization efforts. Then you must determine how much competition you have for the keyword phrases of interest to you. You are generally much better off  to initially target a variety of less competitive terms relevant to your business  than to go after the most competitive ones.   If you are serious about your business, you need to invest in software to help you or use one of the online paid keyword research tools. Obviously another option would be to pay someone to do it for you.  This may be the best choice for many business owners that don’t want to become experts in the details of internet marketing. Only you can determine how your time is best spent.

So you have all these keywords now, so what do you do with them?  The keywords are used for all aspects of your internet marketing. You initially use them to plan the content and structure of your site. You want to have pages on your site who’s content is targeted at your primary list of keywords. You want to use links in your site that reflect the keyword terms of interest to you. After you have planned your site around the keywords it is now time to use them outside your site to drive traffic to your site. If you are using paid search advertising, such as Google Adwords, this list will guide your advertising strategy and budget. If you are going for top listings in the natural search results, the list will guide all your efforts to improve your rankings in the search engines. No matter how you intend to promote your site, you must make keyword research your first priority.

The single most important thing you can do to try to get your website top search engine rankings is to optimize your choice of keywords. Your choice of keywords should guide every decision you make about building your website, putting content on your website, and marketing your website on the internet. Marketing on the internet is in some ways similar to offline marketing, but in other ways it is quite unique due to it being primarily a search oriented media.  In brief, the amount of exposure you get for your website is more dependent upon keyword research and optimizing your list of keywords than anything else you do.

Keyword research is the  one aspect of building a web business should be the most closely managed project you have. Whether you are a do it yourself type. or outsource some or all of  the marketing of your business on the internet, you must be actively involved in keyword research.  Matching as many search terms as possible that are used by your target customer base is what determines the success of your internet business. You may think that you know what keyword phrases your potential customers use to find businesses such as yours, but more than likely you are wrong more than you are right. In addition you have no idea what the competition for any keyword phrase is going to be without doing the research. WIthout adequate keyword research you are almost destined to be disappointed in the performance of your website.

You start your keyword research by having a clear idea what specific products or services you wish to market,  and understanding exactly who you think would be interested in your offerings. If you skip this step, you might be successful in generating a lot of traffic, but very little would convert to sales and you would waste your time and money. Once you have an idea what you want to promote and to whom it is time to start brainstorming a list of initial keywords of interest to you. Once place to start this process is at Google’s keyword tool. Their tool is free and useful for this initial step.

Once you have a  list of initial keywords, it is time to start expanding the list. Here you want to take the core list of  one or two word phrases you just developed and expand them into many short two to five word phrases that will be the primary target of your keyword optimization efforts. Then you must determine how much competition you have for the keyword phrases of interest to you. You are generally much better off  to initially target a variety of less competitive terms relevant to your business  than to go after the most competitive ones.   If you are serious about your business, you need to invest in software to help you or use one of the online paid keyword research tools. Obviously another option would be to pay someone to do it for you.  This may be the best choice for many business owners that don’t want to become experts in the details of internet marketing. Only you can determine how your time is best spent.

So you have all these keywords now, so what do you do with them?  The keywords are used for all aspects of your internet marketing. You initially use them to plan the content and structure of your site. You want to have pages on your site who’s content is targeted at your primary list of keywords. You want to use links in your site that reflect the keyword terms of interest to you. After you have planned your site around the keywords it is now time to use them outside your site to drive traffic to your site. If you are using paid search advertising, such as Google Adwords, this list will guide your advertising strategy and budget. If you are going for top listings in the natural search results, the list will guide all your efforts to improve your rankings in the search engines. No matter how you intend to promote your site, you must make keyword research your first priority.