5 Tips For Selecting The Right Keywords For SEO

Companies optimize their web pages for search by using certain keywords or key phrases on their pages. Thus picking the right keywords is crucial not just for paid searches, but also for organic searches. Ideally, you want to pick keywords that are not competitive but still get a lot of searches.

Keywords are the words or phrases that millions of customers type into Google every day. Some keywords such as ‘SEO’ get lots of searches every day. However, if you pick a key phrase such as ‘San Diego SEO’ the number of searches is still pretty high but lower than the generic keyword ‘SEO.’

If you are in the process of building a new website or redesigning an existing one, ensure that your San Diego web design company understands your most important keywords. Because in order to market your product or service effectively, your website should be properly optimized with the right keywords from the very beginning of your campaign. For instance, is the cereal you are selling ‘healthy’ or ‘delicious’? Are your clothes ‘trendy’ or ‘classic’? If you don’t know what your keywords or key phrases are, you will have difficulty driving traffic to your website, and if you are selling something, you will get low results because you don’t know what your customers are searching for online. So how do you pick the right keyword?

1. Think hard about what your customer is searching for. List down all the words that you think appeal to your customers, and this could serve as your preliminary list of keywords. For instance, if you are selling, ‘Brightly colored pillow covers’ your initial list could include some of the following words: colorful cushions and decorative pillows.

2. Use your list to search for the keywords you think your customers are searching for and see what Google comes up with. Next, scroll down to the bottom of the page to the ‘Searches related to Brightly colored pillow covers’ section and take a look at the other keywords people are looking for and see if you can pick any relevant keywords from there.

3. To find out if people are actually using your keywords to search for your niche, use a keyword tool. These are several online tools with which you can find out how many times those words or phrases were searched by people in a search engine each month. The Google Keyword Planner is a good tool to use and it is completely free. The Google Keyword Planner will show you how many times your keyword was searched. The idea is to pinpoint the keywords that get a decent number of searches but low competition. Define your criteria about the number of searches. Depending on your objectives you could look for keyword search volumes between 1000 to 10,000 per month.

4. Go for a less competitive niche. To find out how competitive it is, Google it and look at the number of results that turn up. The niche with few results is the one you should consider. On the other hand, if it has page after page of authoritative, high-quality websites, then you won’t get far because that niche is saturated. Choose one that has low competition and decent search volume.

5. Select broad keywords and key phrases if you want to target as many people as possible, but pick your keywords carefully. The problem with using general words is that your website ad could appear in unrelated searches which would get you irrelevant traffic. You will have to test general keywords and see which ones give you a better result.

Selecting the right keywords is perhaps the most important part of the SEO process. It’s important to take all the time necessary to conduct research in identifying the most lucrative and productive keywords for your business. If you are just starting an SEO or PPC campaign, ensure to discuss the details of your keywords with your Online marketing company. Need help with keyword research? Give us a call, and we will be happy to help.