In our previous post concerning why you can’t afford to ignore search engines, we discussed search engines playing such a big role in today’s businesses marketing plan. In this post, we will be discussing how you can actually start planning to be seen in the search engine results. It isn’t difficult. You have to try out some keywords to see which ones might be best for your company to utilize.
Why do Keyword Research?
It’s simple really. Why choose a keyword that would be too hard to get to the top of the search engine results? For instance, lets say that you are a brand new bank. If you try to go for the keyword “bank” then you will probably fall behind companies such as Bank of America or Chase. These people have been in the online marketing business a lot longer than you have. It would be suicidal going for these keywords. The competition is too high.
So my main Keyword is taken, now what?
Well, hope is not lost. Now is where the brainstorming comes into play. Think about your company/website. What is your niche or thing that makes your company/website stand out? Think about what keywords you could shoot for. If you were a smaller bank then you could go for terms such as reliable bank, bank with low interest rates, a bank that cares, etc. From here you should have a good list of keywords to work with and test out. This list is for your potential short tailed keywords.
Seeing if your potential Short Tailed Keywords are profitable!
Now that you have a list of keywords that sound like might they might work well for your company, you now need to test these keywords to see if they will give you the traffic that you are looking for. Utilize the Google Keyword Tool to see how much traffic your keyword brings in each month. This information is provided directly by Google, so you know it can be trusted for the most part.
One thing that you may want to note is that just because 1000 people search for something every day, it does not mean you will get 1000 people visiting your website. Only the top links in Google get the most clicks. That’s why it is essential that you get to those spots if you are really trying to make an impact. The top link for a Google search will usually receive around 40% of the clicks, while the second spot will jump down to around 12%, and the third usually around 8%. As you can see, it is essential for your company to find a keyword that is both high in traffic and low in competition. This can be a real challenge, but you must be patient. This can often be the most time consuming part of SEO.
Ok, I have found my Keyword, now what?
Now that you have found your main/short tailed keyword, you now need to prove to the search engines that your website knows a lot about the subject. You have to become an authority. This is where long tailed keywords come into play. For instance, lets say you decided to go with the keyword, “Banks that Care.” From here, you could make several pages on your website or several blog posts that talk about how you are a “Bank that Cares.” You could make posts such as, “Why we Care About our Customers,” “What Our Bank does to Show the Customer that we Care”, “The Difference between the Other Banks and Us – We Care.” As you can see, a long tailed keyword is just an extension of your short tailed keyword. Of course, these are hypothetical, but when people search for these longer terms they might find your article about how your company cares. As time goes on and you continue to make posts on the subject, your authority continues to grow. Over time you could make it to the number one spot on Google if you play your cards right.
In the next post in this series, we will go over on page optimization. Now that you have your keyword, you need to make sure you place it on your site in several places. This is so that the search engines can see that this is the subject that you are talking about. We will discuss this more in our next post.
– David P.
David P. is a Web Developer for SurpassHosting.com, Inc. and has been in the web design and search engine optimization industry for the past seven years learning several web based languages along the way such as PHP, MySQL, HTML, and Javascript.
Do you use keywords to help with the content of your website? Is less best or is more better? Let us know at our Facebook Page, our Twitter, or by sounding off in the comments below!