Americans make tens of billions of keyword searches each year. It seems to have become one of America’s favorite pastimes – baseball, hotdogs, apple pie, and Google search. Savvy small business owners know how to harness and leverage the power of search engines to their keyword advantage.
Determining the right keywords to help your website SEO is a fine art. Assigning the proper keywords to your web pages can have tremendous implications on the success of your SEO or PPC campaign. The first keyword you may normally think of is usually not the one you should use. In fact, “keyword” in terms of SEO is a misleading misnomer. While in a very few and rare cases a single keyword may be effective, 99% of the time a “keyword” actually consists of a key phrase.
The keywords and phrases you utilize on your small business website can make or break the success of your SEO marketing campaign. They are the backbone of your SEO and the heart and soul of any online marketing campaign.
Thus, you should spend more than just a little time selecting the keywords and key phrases for your small business website. And here are 4 tips to use in making your key phrase selections.
- Avoid the Obvious – Do you operate a hair salon? The most obvious, but inherently incorrect, choices for your SEO keywords would be anything along the lines of “hairstyle”, “haircuts”, or “hair salon.” What is your specialty? Do you do specialize in bob haircuts? Then “bob hairstyle” may be your keyphrase. “Bridesmaid hairstyle” or “wedding hairstyle” may be a particular key phrase you can use if you cater to the matrimonial crowd. The takeaway with this tip is to avoid using the obvious keywords that will drown your website in millions, or even tens of millions, of results. The more narrow you can get your keywords or phrases, the better chance you have of getting seen in results.
- Focus on Local – At least one of your key phrases should include your local city, suburb, or neighborhood. Particularly if your customer base is local residents, then you want them to find you with their searches.For instance, John operates a small neighborhood market, aptly named “John’s Market”, that specializes in micro-brewed beer in Austin, TX. Rather than focus on keywords where he would get lost in the muddle, he chose to develop keywords in his suburb of Cedar Park.John decided to narrow his 3 main keywords to “John’s Market Cedar Park”, “Cedar Park Beer”, and “Austin Micro-brew”. After he revamped his website with his chosen key phrases, he noticed his results went from somewhere in the top 2 or 3 thousand to the top 2 or 3 pages on Google.
- Look Under the Hood of Your Competition – You can gain some tremendous insight to potential keywords, or even keyword to avoid, by checking in with your main competition or even major corporation websites. Bring up their website, then view the source code. Most browsers allow you to observe the HTML web page coding. While viewing is not illegal, copying or duplicating source code is. This strategy should only be used to gain insight and foster ideas for your own keywords.After the source coding is revealed, take a look at the keywords used in particular places such as META tags, titles, headings, descriptions, etc. Here you can find out how other successful websites utilize keywords.
- Get Help From The Pros – You don’t have to select the perfect keywords and phrases for your business alone. There are tools available (both free and paid) to help you narrow your choices and make sound decisions.
- Google Adwords Keyword Tool – Google Adwords provides a free keyword tool. Simply enter a desired keyword or phrase and watch as Google presents you with numbers of searches, similar words/phrases, and competition status. You can use advanced options and filters to include mobile device searches, location, and to specify how many local monthly searches to include.
- Wordtracker – This is a paid service that you can use to help find the best keywords and phrases for your business, and get strategies about selling online. They include webinars and videos
- Professional SEO Services – If you have the budget, consider using a professional SEO firm, but always check credentials and references. Finding an experienced, proven SEO professional to help you with keyword selection and usage can be well worth the cost with the ROI you’ll get back.
