Keyword Optimization— A Simple SEO Technique Cheat Sheet

When it comes to SEO—which is not and never will be “extinct”—it’s all about the keywords, baby! The entire campaign circulates around this one fundamental element.

Which keywords do you want to rank for?

Choosing keywords can be very tedious. At first, it’s easy: focus on the services or products you provide. Then you have to include crowd filtering add-ons such as regional info (city, state, zip code, etc.), adjectives (cheap, quality, funny, etc.), and specialized niches.

One primary key word (like ‘photography’) can produce dozens of keywords (like ‘wedding photography Houston’). Chances are high you’ll have more than one primary keyword. Anticipate a very long list of search phrases to analyze.

You need a long list of keywords so you can hack away and eliminate the phrases or keywords that are just plain useless.

How valuable are your keywords?

Next: roll up your sleeves and do a little digging. You may use different words and phrases when describing your products or services. The keywords you want to focus on are phrases that customers use.

Looking at search volume and related search terms will keep you jumping back and forth as you cross off low value keywords but add new phrases you hadn’t thought of yet.

Primary keywords will always have a higher competition than the secondary search phrases including add ons. (There are far more websites optimizing for ‘photography’ than ‘creative wedding photographer in Houston’.)

Focusing on secondary search phrases can be messy in content optimization if the phrases are too lengthy or awkward. Long tails also have lower search volume… but make up for it in potential for reaching qualified traffic and higher conversions.

Choosing keywords and establishing on-site SEO is just the foundation… the beginning of an ongoing SEO campaign.

How valuable are your keywords? (Part II)

After some time, you can use a number of tools to analyze how valuable your keywords are. Here’s a tool you can use to track your position in the top 3 search engines for any number of keywords.

For Google specific info, you can get a wealth of information by looking at Google Analytics to find out your leading traffic sources including top 10 search phrases used by search-driven traffic. (Don’t worry, #1 is always ‘not provided’.)

With this knowledge you have the ability to fine tune your SEO marketing strategies to focus on the keywords that bring you customers, not just traffic.