Tuesday, July 15, 2008
In
Keywords, keywords, keywords. It seems to be all you hear about if you have a site. Choose the wrong keywords and your site might not be found by customers.
But how do you choose the right keywords?
The first rules is not to use “keywords” at all – use “keyphrases”. These are usually two or three words stuck together and mirror common phrases people use when searching the Internet.
Most people use two or three different word combinations and very rarely use single words. Coming up with these keyphrases is not too hard, and involves a bit of careful thought.
Think like your customers
The best place to start is to think like your customers. Imagine you are looking for the service your company is providing. How would you search for it? Perhaps focus on the products you are selling – if you were looking for a particular product, how would you enter it into Google.
Avoid tunnel vision
A danger in this is tunnel vision – you may well think slightly differently to a lay person when it comes to your products. You might call them slightly different things (a classic example is an electrician calling a light bulb a “lamp”, not a “light bulb”) or place greater importance on product codes than product names.
There are two ways around this. First of all try searching for a few products or service that is completely to what you do. Write down your search phrases and analyse how you searched for them. This gives you an insight into how someone searching for your products might behave.
A second, and possibly better, way of avoiding tunnel vision is to enlist the help of volunteers and ask them to search for your product or service. Make a note of their search terms and how they browse the search results. This might throw up some interesting behaviour and search phrases you may not have thought of.
Location, location, location
You may have found this site using the keyphrase “web design Leicester” or “Leicester web designers”. Most service providers operate locally or regionally. For these companies, adding locations into search phrases and essential if you are offering a local service.
It doesn’t hurt to include as many locations as appropriate – anyone searching with a localised search is almost certainly looking for the service you are offering and in your area.
Target your keywords
There is no point trying to compete with common keywords. If you are selling televisions, you are highly unlikely to appear anywhere near the top of Google for the keyword “television”. Instead, focus on regional searches and product specific searches. You have a better chance of appearing at the top of Google for “Sony KDL-52W3000” than for just “televisions”.
Identifying successful keywords isn’t that hard, you just need to think like your customers and target your keyphrases.
For more information about our range of search engine optimisation services, contact us today.