How To Choose The Right Keywords

The Key to Keywords in Your Search Engine Marketing

When you initially got your business off the ground here in Florida, search engine marketing was probably not the first item on the to-do list that jumped out at you. That’s if it made it onto your to-do list at all!

Choosing effective keywords for your business’s website is more crucial now than it has ever been. Keywords are simple, concise phrases or words that represent a topic of relevance for a user – they’re the words a user will type into Google’s search engine to find their favorite restaurant, the best mechanic in their selected area or the fastest route to their friend that lives in another state. By choosing the right keywords, you’re increasing the chances of users finding your business online and practicing good SEO (search engine optimization). So, how do you do this?

Get specific
If you own an online store that sells coffee machines and supplies, then broad keywords such as coffee or machine won’t do a great job of marketing your product, as they’re simply too general and will easily spill over and relate to a number of other services, topics or industries. Successful advertisers will choose 5-20 keywords per ad group when running a Google Adwords campaign, which shows you just how specific you can get. By focusing on strategic phrases, coffee machine parts would be a far more effective representation of your service. Plus, by not choosing these general keywords – which no doubt has the biggest search volumes – you’ll also reduce the number of competitors. In summary, understanding how and when to use long tail keywords will be a big boost to your SEO strategy.

Think like a consumer
This can be hard to do when you work day in and day out with your product, but it’s important to at least try to put yourself in the shoes of your target market. If they’re looking for your product or service, what questions or concerns would they have? Why would they need you? What kind of search would they run for you online? This overlooked step in the process – stepping outside your role as the boss or manager – can significantly help you to select more relevant keywords.

Don’t fall victim to industry jargon
As much as your next customer may need your product or service, it’s also a safe bet that they don’t know as much about it as you do. Selecting keywords is not the time to overload on industry jargon or technical language, as these are not the words that people use when running a search online. Keywords should get to the crux of what you’re offering as clearly and as succinctly as possible.

To further aid you in putting these strategies in place, it’s also a good idea to do enough research to determine which searches regarding your product or service offering are historically popular. There are a variety of tools, such as Keyword Planner and Answer The Public, which are available for this. If you’re running an active campaign, you can use Keyword Planner to determine how different keywords are performing, and increase your spend on those.

Before deciding on your final selection of keywords, ask yourself a few simple questions: is this keyword relevant to my website’s content? Will consumers find what they’re looking for on my website if they use this keyword? Will this kind of traffic be appropriate for my sales goals?

We’ll leave you with this gem from Gary Vaynerchuk: “Content is king, but marketing is queen, and runs the household.”

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