Choosing the Right Keywords
Adds up to Success for your Website!

A searcher visits one of the major engines looking for your goods or services. He types in what he considers to be the most important topic, or keyword, for his search. Up come the results, usually ten per page.

If you haven't taken time to choose the most effective keyword phrases, you may have done something like use the name of your company as your main keyword. If your company has significant name recognition, like Ford, that's fine. But, if your company is a bit smaller like the vast majority of companies on the Net, optimizing the page for the name of your company has just cost you some business.

How do you choose your important keyword phrases? Don't depend on yourself alone to choose the right keywords. Your searchers are probably not finding you the same way that you'd think they'd find you. Ask your customers/clients, your employees, or someone outside of your business what they would type in the search window when looking for your site.

While it's tempting to choose very general keywords, like "software," don't do it for a number of reasons.

First off, the competition will be fierce. And, more and more searchers are realizing that they can finetune their searches and cut out never-ending search results by searching for phrases rather than single keywords.

Also, research has shown that when a searcher wants to purchase something, he conducts extremely finetuned searches to find it. In other words, if he's searching for a DVD title by a particular actor, he'll search for the exact title or under the name of the actor, rather than simply "DVD."

So, while having a web page that ranks extremely well for a very general keyword seems like the ideal situation, keep in mind that you may get more traffic, but you won't necessarily get more sales.

Some excellent keyword choices are the names of your individual goods and services. For example, if you're a professional writer, create pages that advertise your services, such as "ghost writing" or "technical writing." Creating a page for the very general keyword, "writing," actually may not get you the business you want.

If you can only think of very general keywords, start with a list of those keywords, and then add specific words to each one. For example, if you 're an artist, take the general keyword of "art" and add a specific word or two to it, based on your particular business. So, your keyword phrases may be "art lessons for children" or "modern art."

Use the GoTo keyword suggestion tool. This tool can help identify keyword combinations based on actual usage on the GoTo Search Engine.

Does your business cater to a particular region? If you have a BBQ restaurant in Memphis, for example, your keyword phrase should contain the name of the city or state.

Do people from other regions use different terminology when searching for your keyword phrase? If so, utilize that terminology in your tags or on your page, or create a separate page. For example, in the South, people call "shopping carts" that you find in grocery stores "buggies."

Search for your competitors' sites and see what keywords they're using. Do NOT copy their tags or anything else. Simply review their pages to see if they might be using a keyword phrase that could be helpful to you.