The correct choice of keywords is crucial to the success of your website and
keyword research is the first and the most important step in the optimization process.
The idea being to choose keywords that people are actually searching for, and at the same time,
are relatively easy to rank well for.
Fortunately you don't have to guess as there are a number of keyword research tools that you can use that take data from actual web searches.
The most popular ones
used to be the Overture Keyword selector tool however it has been replaced by
either the
free Wordtracker tool, or even better the
Google
keyword tool.
The aim of keyword Research is two fold.
- The first is to find
the keywords that are most often used by searchers
- The second is to find
the keywords that you can compete on.
To explain this I will just give a quick research example. The example we are going to examine is a fictitious computer consultant.
Important Note: The example below uses the Google
keyword tool
From this list you can see that there are over 5000 searches for computer consultant which shows healthy demand.
However if you go Google a search for "computer consultant" (using quotes) you see that there
are nearly 1 million competing sites.
However if you look slightly down the list you will see that computer consultant services has over 700 searches and a check for the competition on Google shows:
Only 800 competing sites.
Computer consultant services is a much better choice than just computer consultant and it as a bonus it means that you are also targeting the term computer consultant as well.
If you look further down the list you will see that many searches are looking to find a consultant in their area.
This is typical for any type of local service and so if you are offering any type of local service you should also always ensure that you include the locations you serve on your site.
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