How to choose the right Keywords
If you have tried your hand at Search Engine Optimization before, you would have been bombarded with the term ‘keywords’.
If there is one single thing which is of utmost importance in your SEO quest to make your site stand out, it has to be choosing the right keywords, and that is what this article is all about.
Before choosing the keywords you’d like to work on for your website, ask yourself these questions
- Who are my audience
- What are they looking for
- If I am in their shoes, what search string will I look for
- Who are my competition
- What are their keywords (you can use Google to check that out)
- What is my budget
With these questions answered on a piece of paper, get down to work. Write out a list of all words related to your business, even if they run into hundreds. Then look at the answer of question number three. What are the most important keywords your customers will be looking for? For instance, if you are into the mortgage business, and your specialty is foreclosures, the search string ‘mortgage foreclosures’ or ‘how to avoid foreclosures’ would be much better than just ‘mortgage’ or ‘foreclosure’. Get the drift? These keywords are called longtail, and they will bring down your advertising budget by a huge amount.
Use a good keyword research tool to check out the conversion rates and the cost per impressions of these keywords. If you have a SEO consultant, he will do this for you as part of the deal. Next step is to compare your keywords with the best provider in your genre (top of the competitor table in other words) and see how his keywords and costs measure up. A fundamental mistake that people do is they just pick up and copy competition keywords. Now, what is so unique if all websites are answering to the same keyword queries? You want your business to be unique and so should your keywords be.
Check out your budget, and see how much percentage of it you are willing to allocate to keyword related marketing campaigns. If you don’t have too much money set apart for this, don’tworry. There are other ways in which you can promote your campaign – like focusing on content and using the right tags. The effect might be slow, but you’ll get there eventually.
Choosing the right keywords is probably the most important part of your online marketing campaign. You don’t want to hurry in this area and repent later. Remember, the closer you are to the search string your customer is looking for, the better your chances of making the connection.
