How to start a website in the right way with the correct Search Terms - Keyword Research

SEO Keyword Research

It is a good idea to put together a business case for your site, to focus your effort on the goals of the site. As you read through this article you may have cause to realign your goals to make it easier to achieve success. This is good news actually, as it means that you have used completely understood your websites' purpose, and have eliminated that which is inefficient, given your new found understanding of your customers, your competition and what you are wanting to offer.

Search Term Selection

Hey! Are you listening? Concentrate, don't miss this information. To make it worth your time putting together a website, you need to make sure that it is making use of keywords that search users search for. You could be position number one in Google for keywords that nobody searches for, in which case the whole effort was totally pointless.

Advertising your products is going to cost money, are there easier ways to drive traffic that has a lower cost? Are there other opportunities, other keywords out there that are more easily attainable for you?

Research your websites' focus

Have you a niche? You need a focus for your site; otherwise it will not make any sense. When your visitors think about your niche, you want them to first think of your website.Is there some aspect of your niche that customers are particularly interested in and how would you know? Keep an eye on internet resources such as forums, chat rooms and blog comments associated with your niche subject, listen to people, ask your friends, look in niche publications. Is there something that people are looking for? Is you niche something that people talk about? Is there a core phrase that you could use that would describe your niche?

Understanding your Competition - How do they rank, and why?

A good way to start to understand your competition is to open up your favourite search engine, let's use Google, most people do, and type in a search that you would expect would find your site when you build it. When the results are displayed in the search engine, a number at the top of the results indicates the total number of matches found.

Open up some of the search results - who are the competition, do they offer the same product or service that you are intending to offer? Is their location a factor in their domination? Could you offer a localised version of what they do? If your customers have been around for a long time, offer the same products and services, in the same location as you, you're going to have your work cut out for you, to beat them.

If you really wanted to get into the nitty gritty, you need to know for each of those sites, their age, the number of inbound and outbound links, page rank, body content - all these things are big factors in the ranking of that site.

Search Phrase Discovery Programs

There are a few tools that allow you to understand the number of monthly searches that are performed for your core phrase, and how competitive it is. The good thing with these tools is that they are also able to suggest other keywords that may be applicable to your core phrase.

Tools can be found from the following:


Adwords External Tools: Keyword Tool from Google, which is free

Keyword Research - keyworddiscovery.com

Wordtracker


Correct Keyword choice drives Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

If nobody searches for the search term that you are focussing on, it makes it much more difficult to generate money. Without planning the search phrases that you target carefully, using scientific methods that quantify what is required to achieve your goals, your SEO efforts are likely to be wasted. You will get traffic, but will not achieve the true potential of the site. It isn't too late - we can change that starting now, but redefining what the keyword focus should be, and concentrating our efforts there.

Your website structure should be clear given that you know your target keywords, the right page titles, webpage addresses, headings, link anchor text, body content, image tags, metadata will easily be found by the search engines, and will allow you to rank better naturally than you would without planning. As you can probably see from the list of items that feature in making the site rank well, changing from the wrong keywords to the right ones is likely to require a lot of rework.

Can I choose keywords myself, or should I pay someone to help me?

Build the site last - understand fully that you are trying to achieve before you start, including your competitors, niches, and alternatives.

This is something that you can do. The only downside is that it can be time consuming if you have never done it before. The effect of getting the whole process of SEO will generate traffic and sales way in excess of the initial outlay, so it is more a matter of priority.

Article source: How to start a website in the right way with the correct Search Terms - Keyword Research