How to chose keywords for your website pages
Why do we refer to a search term as a keyword when it is most often not a word but a phrase? This is one of the questions that clients often ask if they are new to Internet Marketing and SEO (search engine optimization). It’s true that it is not typical to have a single word as a search term. Too many search results would be returned and they would not necessarily be relevant to what the person was searching for. Two to four word phrases return much more relevant results. This is something to keep in mind as you research your keywords or keyword phrases.
Keyword research is very important to the success of your Internet Marketing Plan. How can you hope to attract visitors to your website and convert them to clients if you don’t understand what they are searching for. When choosing your keywords, you have to put yourself in the head of someone searching for your service or product. The search engine will return a list of pages that are most relevant to the phrase that the searcher “googled”. Most people have learned to be specific when searching for a product or service. Here are some things to keep in mind when you research keywords for your website pages.
- Start with keyword phrases that visitors have used to find your site previously.
- Look for keyword phrases that get a high number of searches per month if possible. There are tools available to find this information.
- Who are you competing with for the top 20 search results? Google it and find out. If your direct competitors have the first two pages tied up look for a similar keyword phrase with less direct competition. The search volume of a singular versus the plural of a term can be thousands of searches.
- If your keyword phrases are too specific to your product or are too technical, try to find a different way to describe it. For instance, describe what it does rather than what it is. Many times people are looking for solution to a problem, not necessarily a product.
- Consider specifying the geographic area in which you do business as part of your keyword phrase. A lawyer that is practicing divorce law in Westborough, Massachusetts does not necessarily want leads from all 50 states or other countries. By adding the words Massachusetts, MA, Westboro (it can be spelled two different ways) or New England to the term divorce lawyer he or she will get leads that much more likely to convert to a client.
When you have a list, optimize your pages or blog using the keyword phrases (a topic for another post) and then monitor your traffic. If you are not successful in drawing the right type or amount of traffic to the page, try different keyword phrases