By focusing your businesses online marketing efforts on getting ranked in search engines for keywords that will drive a lot of traffic then you will setup your business for long-term success.
First, think about the products and services your business offers and write down the words you would use your self in a search engine to find those products and services in your location. If the sites that you would consider buying from show up then you know that the keyword or phrase is relevant to your target customer. A lot of misconception from small business owners is that inserting the keyword as many times as they can will do their website good. This is not the case. Creating a webpage that has stuffed keywords into it can and will result in a penalty from search engines.
Keyword Tips
Many SEO practitioners will tell you to use the the keyword 2% of the time in the content. In theory, this can be good advice. You know that an individual that works at the search engine isn’t checking every website and a math formula has to be used to index sites based on relevance. However, I recommend using the keywords just enough to get your point across. If you can get to the 2% mark then thats great but don’t sacrifice quality content. Your website will look like a robot and although you might get a few more visitors, these won’t necessarily and often don’t result in more sales.
Another great tip is to view your competitors near you and companies in the same industry in highly competitive markets who are showing up at the top of the search results for your suggested keywords. If you view the source code a lot of the times they will have the keywords that they’re trying to rank for in the header under “meta keywords”. Although this used to be a sort’ve relevant, its now just a place for you to gather information from your competitors. When viewing the websites take notice of the page content and the use of the keyword in the title tag, meta description, title tags, alt tags, and links. Use this information as a point of reference to see what similar service providers are doing in the most competitive markets.
Finally, use Googles keyword planner tool to find more suggestions. For your keywords, think of the services you offer (shoes, real estate, accountant), your title (accountant, lawyer, realtor) the location you serve (Palm Beach, Florida, Virginia), the price (affordable, cheap, expensive) and quality (best, high end, luxury, top of the line, great). These are common characteristics for search terms and the Google keyword planner tool will help you get suggestions and the estimated traffic that each keyword brings.
