Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Keywords For Your Seo Campaign


Business entrepreneurs are often bombarded with emails advertizing how they can help get your site to the top of the search engine lists. During these tough economic times, most small business owners don’t have extra funds floating around to pay for a search engine optimization (SEO) service. You disregard the emails, hoping for some inexpensive way to improve your SEO.

Although improving your SEO isn’t difficult, it does take some time.First of all, start by creating a list of good SEO keywords. Whether you work on your SEO on your own or with a professional, keep the following things in mind as you develop your keywords list:Use Common SensePut yourself into your customers’ shoes. What kinds of things keep them up at night and how can you help solve their problems? What keywords would you use in their place as you searched for something you have to offer them?Create a list of any and all words you could use for an internet search for your site. Don’t forget to include industry jargon, simple terms and phrases you hope they would use when looking for your site on search engines.Check Out the CompetitionTo find out the keywords the competitors are using, go to their sites to see. What keywords they are using? Incorporate appropriate ones into your list of possible keywords.Discover the Really Good Words.With your list of words in hand, including all the common sense words, all the keywords you could think of, and keywords the competitors are using, it’s time to see what are the real words people are using when doing searches. To find out actual words used in searches, check out one of these free sites:Google “Keyword Tool” and follow the link for one of the sites listed. You enter one of your top keywords, and the service will tell you actual words used by people when doing searches related to that keyword. Add the results of this search to your growing list of keywords.Make ChoicesNow it’s time to start making some choices. You have compiled a pretty extensive list of keywords, so review what you have and select your top 25 choices. This is your starting point, so don’t throw away the rest of your list. Start using these 25 keywords in your online copy. Track the results with Google Analytics or a similar program so you will know how successful the words are.Stay on top of what words are actually used to get to your site. If some of the 25 keywords you selected aren’t getting a lot of attention, swap them out for another word until you find words that do. Use your keyword list to incorporate new words into your online copy as needed.Make sure to monitor the most heavily used keywords regularly. By making sure your keywords are getting used the most, you will help both your customers and the search engines get what they are looking for.
By: Shawn Olson