amyrivers.com

When optimizing a website, you’ll need to first identify the keywords that are most relevant to your business and are most likely to be used by potential customers to search for you. There are a variety of tools online that you can use to come up with your list of keywords, but before you start using a tool, I recommend brainstorming a basic list yourself.

First, think of all the words and phrases you would use to describe your core services. If you sell necklaces, perhaps you’d use keyword phrases like “buy necklace” or “jewelry store” to describe your business.  Try to think of at least 10 phrases relevant to your business.

Next, use the thesaurus. While you may use “car sales” to describe your business, your customer may be looking for “auto sales” or “buy new truck.” It’s important to think about the different ways a potential client might try to find you.

Then, look at competitor sites! It’s always a good idea to know what your competitors are up to, and they may have thought of wording that you hadn’t considered.

Finally, once you’ve come up with the widest variety of possibilities on your own, then you can use an online tool to figure out how many people are searching for the keywords your chose. You can use Overture, Wordtracker, or a variety of free tools you’ll find by searching for “keyword research tool” in Google or your search engine of choice. These tools allow you to search for a keyword and find out how many people searched for it over a period of time. You can use this information to prioritize your keywords.

For instance, if 1000 people searched for “auto sales” but 10,000 searched for “car sales,” you might want to use the higher volume phrase in your optimization efforts. On the other hand, more searches means more competition and it may be harder to rank high for high volume words. Tools like Wordtrackerwill also allow you to run a competiton search to see how competitive each keyword you chose is.