How to Find The Perfect Keywords For Your Website

You want your website to rank high. It’s how you will be found. Having the right keywords for your website will get you on the first page of a search.

Keywords are 2- to 5-word phrases that people searching for you, or a similar business, would type into a search engine.

You may know your business very well, but quite often knowing which keywords to use is not intuitive.  Here are some tips to help you determine your best possible keywords.

Make a List

The first step in determining your keywords is to make a list of phrases that your clients would use to find you on Google. Don’t think like the business owner; think like your customers. How would they describe your business, your products or services?

Your next step is to use these phrases to see if your competition comes up in a Google search. If they do, then you’re looking at the right phrases.

Get Specific

Your keywords should be terms that describe what you do and the products or services that you sell. Consider pairing these terms with words that are more specific, such as your location. For example, if you are a hardware store, it’s great that customers can purchase hammers and paint from you, but by adding your location to your keyword term, you are targeting customers in your area.

Use a Keyword Tool

Take advantage of some great, and free, tools available to you to help choose keywords. I love Google Keyword Tool. Other tools are SEMRush and Moz Explorer.

These tools can tell you exactly how many people are searching for specific terms each month. The tools will also suggest terms you can use and tell you if a specific keyword is very competitive.

Google’s Keyword Tool is free, which is great! Unfortunately, Google has changed the rules and unless you’re running an Ad Words campaign on Google, you can’t access this tool.

Moz Explorer (https://moz.com/)  charges a monthly fee but you can get a free 30-day free trial. SEMRush (https://www.semrush.com/) only allows one free day to try out their tool then you have to pay.

Find a Niche

When many businesses use similar keyword terms, it can be nearly impossible for a small business to make it to the top of the search. Look for your unique niche and use keywords that reflect that niche. Are you a local restaurant that makes a fantastic pizza? I’m sure that there are many such businesses in your area. What if you also make gluten-free pizzas? That is your niche. Add some specific adjectives to your keywords and you’ll increase your chances of ranking high.

Now that you’ve identified your list of 5-10 awesome keywords, it’s time to use them throughout your website. 

5 Tips for Choosing Keywords to Increase Your Website SEO

As a small business owner, you have a great website but are you getting found online? You need to optimize your website by including correct keywords to boost your search

engine optimization (SEO). How do you create a list of the keywords and terms you should use so your potential customers can find you? Here are six ways to research keywords to increase your website’s SEO.

Make a list of pertinent topics

Think about the topics applicable to your business. You can use these topics to help you come up with specific keywords.

If your business has a blog, you can use the topics you blog about often. Other ways to find relevant topics is to take note of topics that come up in your sales conversations.

Use your list of topics to pick your keywords

You now have a list of topics relevant to your business. Using those topics, you can identify keywords that are part of the topics. These are keywords and phrases you think your target customer will probably use when conducting a search for a business like yours.

Research related search terms

Fill out your topic keyword list with related search terms. An easy way to find related search terms is to go to Google.com and take a look at all the related search terms that appear when you type one of your keywords. After you type in your keyword or phrase, scroll to the bottom of Google's results and you will see a list of suggested searches related to your original input. Use these keywords to spark ideas for other keywords.

See how competitors are ranking for these keywords

It is always helpful to see what your competitors are doing. If your competitor ranks high for certain keywords that are on your list, it makes sense for you to use these works too. A great opportunity for you to own market share on important search terms is to use keyword and phrases that your competitor is not using.

Use Google AdWords Keyword Planner to narrow down your keyword list

Now that you've found a great list of keywords, you need to narrow down your list. Google AdWords Keyword Planner is a great tool to use. You can get search volume and traffic estimates for the keywords you are contemplating in Keyword Planner.

You now have a list of keywords and phrases that will help increase your website’s SEO. 

Finding the Right Keywords

To have to correct visitors to your website, you need to make it easy for them to find you through relevant searches. The correct keywords will bring them to your website.

There a different ways to find the right keywords to drive traffic to your website. Here are some ideas for you to consider.

Relevant phrases

Focus on relevant phrases. Choose phrases that answer the question of what services or products you are selling. This is one action that will greatly assist you in choosing the optimal keyword phrases.

Stay away from vanity words

Vanity words are words that have been used for a long time and really don’t specify what your products or services truly are. If you are an insurance company, instead of simply using “insurance” as your main keyword, you should specify the type of insurance you specialize in, such a long term life insurance.

Use synonyms

Over stuffing a keyword is not very valuable, but you can use as many synonyms to refer to the same thing differently. It is an easy way of restating keywords to your advantage. Remember that different people will use different words in their searches and the more the relevant your keywords are the better it will be for you to be found and ranked in the searches.

Look at the keywords you are currently using on your website. Should they be updated? If so, take the time to make these changes and you will find more traffic coming to your website.

3 Ways to Market Your Company Online

Online Marketing is a powerful tool that small business owners are using to promote and brand their products and services. However, to successfully market your products and services, you must get noticed by search engines and other sites. Here are three different ways to do so:

Use the proper keywords in your website 

You want your potential customers to find you online. Use the words and terms that they would use when searching online for a business like yours. This helps search engines place your site in the correct category and people to find you when searching the appropriate keywords to match yours.

Social Media Marketing: 

Social media sites are those where people socialize and websites become a social dialogue site. An extremely popular example would be Facebook. There are many other popular sites such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Digg and Four Square. Creating a site for small business on one, or more, of these social sites opens a new market for you. You can communicate in a different way than on your website with your customers and potential customers. You also help your search engine ranking rise by being visible and active on social media sites.

Blogs and Articles

Write blogs and articles about your industry, services, or products. Make sure your blog is attached to your website as this helps search engines to find your site and moves it higher in search results. Blogging establishes you as an authority in your field with your customers and potential customers. 

Determining Your Best Keywords

The keywords you use for your website are important for your search engine optimization (SEO).  Your keywords are what search engine looks at when determining the relevance of your site to a person’s search query.

Your keywords can be behind your website (in the META tag area) and used in your webpage content. All these locations help raise your SEO.

How do you determine your best keywords?  

A keyword can be a single word or a phrase, but you want to choose a term that users are actually searching for. Keywords should be short. Fewer than 200 characters is best.

Create a list of every possible keyword you can think of (at least 50-100) for your industry. Try singular and plural words, change the order, include commonly used synonyms and even include common misspelling of words. I recommend keeping your list in an Excel spreadsheet for ease of use and so you can add to it as your products evolve.

The more your competitors are optimizing for the same keyword, the harder it will be for you to rank highly using it. You can determine how many of your competitors are trying to optimize a keyword by looking at how many of them are using the keyword in the title tag of their website. This can be done using Google's "all in title" command.

Simply type "allintitle" followed by a colon and the keyword you are evaluating to determine the number of sites optimizing for the keyword. For example, entering "allintitle:speech coaching" (note there is no space after the colon) returns much fewer results than just speech coaching because it only provides the websites that contain those words in their title tag.

If someone goes to the trouble of including specific words in their title tag, you know they are trying to optimize for them.

Sprinkle your keyword throughout your website content and be sure to include them in your blog posts too.