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Choosing the Right Keywords for Your Website

Choosing keywords for your website is a simple task that combines basic research with common sense. But many website owners gloss over this important step to web writing, or they skip it entirely.

By doing a little homework up front, and by choosing the right keywords for your web content, you'll earn higher traffic levels and greater overall success.

Before you can improve your website's search engine visibility, you have to identify the keywords and phrases under which your site should be found. By this, I'm referring to the words and phrases your target audience would enter into a search engine when researching products or services like yours.

Choosing keywords for your website (and putting them in the right place) is a critical step toward search engine success. The only way to connect with your key prospects through search engines is to know what phrases your key prospects are searching.

Don't Guess When Choosing Keywords

You don't have to guess which keywords and phrases people are searching and which ones they're not. You can find out by using either a paid search tracking service such as WordTracker.com, or by using one of the many free keyword tools online today. Regardless of what tool you use, the process is the same. You will start by entering a particular word or phrase (something related to your products or services), and the keyword tool will tell you how often that phrase is searched. It will also give you a list of related phrases that people are searching, and this can be extremely useful. It can help you develop content for your website that is built around actual search behavior!

Armed with this information, you can optimize your website or blog for phrases people are actually searching. No more guessing! That's the proper way to choose keywords for your website, and you should do it before you begin writing the first page of content.

Focus on Relative Volumes

Different research tools deliver different results, because they all get their data in different ways. So don't get hung up on the numbers — focus instead on the relative volumes of search. For instance, if one keyword or phrase gets five times the search volume of another, you'll want to be sure you include that phrase in your SEO plan (if it's relevant).

Keywords & Longer Phrases

Don't be misled by the term "keyword." It's rarely a good idea to focus on a single word when optimizing your website. That's why I use the term "key phrase." Few people enter a single word into a search engine these days. Most people enter two, three and four-word combinations (or more). Keep this in mind when choosing keywords for your website or blog.

It's also important to note that longer, more specific phrases often convert better than shorter, generic phrases. Longer phrases are usually less competitive too, and therefore easier to rank for. So be sure to include a good mix of highly competitive (short / generic) phrases and highly targeted (long / specific) phrases on your site.

Other Tips & Ideas

Don't automatically select the keywords and phrases with the highest number of searches just because of their search volume. Instead, choose the phrases that most accurately reflect the services or products you provide. If those matching phrases have a high volume of search, great. If they have a lower volume of search, that's okay too.

The point is to have your website found by the kinds of people who need your services (i.e., qualified traffic). And the only way to do that is by choosing keywords and phrases that reflect what you do.

The last thing to keep in mind is competition. Generally, a higher number of searches for a particular phrase means the phrase will also be highly competitive. In other words, other search engine marketers have done the same research you're doing, and they know which phrases get the most activity. So you can bet they're optimizing their websites for those phrases as well. With that said, the person who optimizes most effectively wins!

Related question: How do search engines rank websites?