Picking the Right Keywords for Your Small Business
It is critically important for all of your small business online marketing campaigns that you choose a very small handful of keyword phrases to optimize your advertising to rank well for, in fact for optimum SEO and PPC effectiveness it is recommended that you choose 2 to 4 phrases to focus your efforts on. If ranking for multiple phrases is important, creating extra sections or pages on your website that focus on those terms can be a good strategy.
The keywords that you choose to optimize your site for will determine when your page will be found by users. Say for instance you have done a great job of using the techniques taught here and have optimized your site for “best salon in Boulder”, and there are very few other web sites that have optimized for this phrase. When a user searches for the phrase “best salon in Boulder”, it is very likely that your site will rank well in the results. However, if you have not optimized for a phrase such as “best hair color in Boulder” and someone performs a search using that term you are unlikely to rank well.
Obviously choosing the right keywords is a critical decision that can determine the kind of customers that find your website and become new customers of small business.
Until you have decided which keywords you want your site to be ranked for the optimization process cannot move forward. Because you know your business better than anyone else it is important to really analyze what types of search terms customers in your area will use to find your business.
You also need to make sure that the search terms you choose are relevant to what you offer and will attract paying clients. For example, again using the salon example, you do not want to optimize for ‘best hairstyle pictures’ even though that keyword may have a high search volume and be related to your industry. Hairstyle pictures are not something you offer, and any traffic that you do receive from that term will not be receptive to your services. They are looking for pictures of the latest styles not necessarily some one to cut their hair.
The Best Free Tool for Keyword Research
The best free tool to do keyword research is Google’s External keyword tool. Below is an example of a list of possible words that could be used for a salon in the Boulder, CO area. In the first column is the keyword, the third column will tell you how many searches were performed last month for the term, and the 4th column gives a monthly average of search volume over the last year.
The Google Keyword Tool can Help Your Small Business Pick the Perfect Keywords
