keywords

We say much about keywords, positioning, and optimizing,

but the real path to high search position lies in understanding your target market. Aligning your website with the goals of your visitors... addresses their wants and needs and insures a high likelihood of business success.

Typically, your prospective customer is searching for a specific product, a category of products, or a type of service.  Although many start searching with a single key word, experience has shown that searchers will eventually enter a phrase or word group – even when seeking a specific product – in order to find what they want.  Most search engine users do not get the group of results they are seeking on the first pass.  Almost all will keep at it, though, and intuitively modify their search with modifiers… words that refine the search results down to a smaller and more accurate list of sites they are seeking.  In doing so, they end up entering a search phrase – or group of keywords.

How do you figure out the best keywords or search phrases?  Broadly speaking, here are our suggestions:

Do your research and understand the psychological demographics of your customers.

Know the geographic scope of your market and the linguistic variations that might exist.

Be aware of the reasons your customers buy your offering.

Carefully refine your understanding of the benefit statement(s) your offering presents.

Comprise what you feel are the most likely search terms and phrases your customers would use.

Try them out in several search engines and see if these keywords get search results similar to your offering.

Ask your customers how they would find you if they were using a search engine. CAUTION! – Don’t inadvertently put your own keywords and phrases “in their mouth.”  Find a way to express this request without contaminating the results.

Compile and test the new keyword results again.

Study the websites that come up in high search results position and see if you can discover new search words, terms and phrases in their content.

Test those new search words and phrases to see if you get similar search results.

Contact us when you feel you’ve compiled a meaningful group of target search terms and phrases.