As I have mentioned before and I am sure you know a huge part of your website being successful is search engine optimization or SEO. You can have the most expensive and the best website on the planet but if nobody see’s it your site becomes worthless. A key step to getting your keywords ranked on Google is the keywords research step. If you were to skip this step or do it incorrectly you could be spending thousands of dollars and tons of time on keywords that aren’t even relevant. So how do you make sure to maximize your keywords to get the most return on your investment or ROI? I will explain the steps that you must take to complete this process. This process will take sometime but spend a little time now and save a lot of time and money later.
- Make your site SEO friendly from the beginning – Now this isn’t a necessity. If you already have a site and it isn’t SEO friendly you will still be able to have work done to make it SEO friendly it just will take a lot of extra time and money to complete. If you are just creating a website make sure you tell your web designer to make sure to take into account SEO when they are coming up with the architecture of the site. If you already have a site have your web developer check the SEO friendliness of the site and if it is not get them to change this ASAP.
- Brainstorm – Begin brainstorming keywords/phrases that you believe your customers will be searching for. Write down all the keywords/phrases that you come up with. I would suggest putting it in an Excel file because it will be easier to complete future steps. Go check on forums and ask your current customers what they would search for when looking for your business. As you may be surprised by what people who don’t know that technical terms will search for.
- Do your research – Next you need to use a keyword research tool. I will recommend using Google Ad words as it is free and does the same thing as most of the paid services. You can begin using it by going to https://adwords.google.com/o/Targeting/Explorer?__c=1000000000&__u=1000000000&ideaRequestType=KEYWORD_IDEAS. You will want to search the keywords that you brainstormed by copying and pasting them into the given box. Make sure you mark “exact search” as marking a broad search will skew the searches to look like they are getting a lot more searches than they really are. For example if I were to search for Phoenix Arizona Web Design I would want the tool to only search for the exact phrase not a bunch of different phrases with those words in it. After you run a search make sure to mark the number in your Excel file.
- What is the competitiveness of your keywords? – After you have compiled the information about how many people search your keywords you will want to determine the competitiveness of each keyword/phrase. What you will want to do is go to Google and search each keyword phrase. If I were to Google Web Designers in Phoenix it will pull up 1,590,000 search results now that is a very intimidating number but that is a skewed search result. What you will want to do is word your search like this ( all in phrase ” Phoenix Arizona Web Design” ) This will show only the websites that have this exact phrase in them and will show your direct competition. When I run the Google search like that it now gives me I had 8,010 results. Now that is still a high number but a lot less intimidating.
- Using data to determine great keywords – Next you will want to use the data you collected to determine which keywords will work best for you. If you are just starting your website you will want to use less competitive words. If you have had a web presence for a while you will be able to use some of the more competitive keywords. How do you read the data that you collected? Well lets take a look at Phoenix Arizona web design. Web Designers in Phoenix gets 78 searches per month and 8,010 websites that pulls up from those results. This is not a good keyword phrase to use. What you are looking keyword phrases that get a high amount of searches per month with a low amount of websites that pull up when searching for it on Google. If you can find these keyword/phrases you will be able to rank you keywords much more easily and it will be much less expensive.
So you see by not doing your research you may choose a keyword/phrase and get it ranked but the phrase as zero relevance. This is why it is so important to take your time and select keywords that are relevant and will increase your ROI. If you need help with this don’t hesitate to call so we can look at the SEO on your page.