Keywords, the most important aspect of any SEO campaign. But keywords in and of themselves don’t matter at all if the wrong ones are chosen for optimization. Understanding how to choose the right keywords for your website, and your niche market, is crucial. Choose the wrong keywords and your site may never be found by those that will actually purchase from you.

Before you start researching potential keyword phrases, let’s talk about what you shouldn’t do. First, save industry terms for your printed brochure, not your Title tag. Your potential client searching on the web for your type of product or service is totally unaware that you call the synthetic blue widgets you make “SynWidgers”.

Next, don’t assume you know what your audience is searching for. Unless you have a crystal ball, there is no way for you to know exactly what your visitors are searching for and how often. Hence, keyword research tools are your friend.We’ll talk more about those in a minute.

And, finally, don’t try to rank for single keywords or very broad keyword phrases. I’m telling you right now, you will NEVER rank for “business software,” or “white paper,” or “real estate agent”. Your goal is to find targeted keyword phrases that your potential client is actually using.

So now that we know what not to do, let’s discuss what to do.

1. Start with a brainstorm list. This is where you do sit down and think of all the possible keyword phrases a visitor will use to find your site. Remember, this is not the final list, so we aren’t breaking our 2nd commandment. We’re just giving ourselves a starting point.

2. Next, get to know your keyword research tools. We use a variety of tools when conducting keyword research. Each have their pros and cons, so you have to decide which to use, or if you want to use a variety of tools.

• Google AdWords Keyword Tool
• Keyword Discovery
• Wordtracker
• Google Suggest
• Thesaurus.com – to name a few…

3. Plug your brainstorm list into one (or more) of these tools. The key is to not only look at the average monthly searches, but you want to look at the competition as well. Understanding the competitiveness of a keyword is crucial. The more competitive a phrase is, the harder it will be to rank for it.

4. Do an actual search for the keyword phrase in Google. Now look at the top 10 results. Are the sites in the top 10 relevant to your industry? Do you see some competitors listed? How do these top 10 use the keyword phrase? Is it in the title alone; in both title and description? How many inbound links does that domain have? In other words, analyze the results and cross out the phrases that aren’t ideal.

5. Finalize the list. Now that we crossed out words that are overly competitive or irrelevant, it’s time to look at your list and compare it to the content on your website. Do you have the content needed to rank for that phrase? If you do not, then put those words on a separate list until you do. For example, you may really want your site to rank for “blue suede shoes” because that keyword phrase has a high search volume and a low enough competition volume. However, you haven’t made blue suede shoes yet, and right now are only offering “brown suede shoes.” If you optimize your site for blue suede shoes, but the visitor does not see those on your website, then you may drive traffic, but it will be traffic with a high bounce rate.

6. Optimize your site! Choose one to two keyword phrases per page and include your keywords in the copy, Title tag, meta Description, header tags, alt text, and anchor text of internal links.

7. Monitor your progress and rinse and repeat. Keyword research is never finished. To really be successful, you have to keep an eye on how keywords change as far as search volume, competitiveness, and those that drive traffic and convert to sales.