Your Keyword Selection Strategy

Last week I talked about how Search Engines work in Search Engines Explained, now we need to focus our attention on the critical aspect of identifying your business's targeted keywords.  In practical terms, you need to identify the keywords that your target audience uses.

Identifying the keywords your target audience is using to find the products and services you are offering, is the most important part of your web site marketing strategy.  This compilation of keyword phases (two or more keywords) will be used in:

• Web page titles and headings
• Content of the web site
• Linking between web pages
• Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising

In formulating your keyword strategy, it's generally considered best to take a top-down approach.  That is, identify the two or three major search terms that describe your business.  These terms will be much to general to target individually, but we'll use them to develop your specific keyword phrases.

As an example, let's assume that you own a car dealership in the Chicago area.  The major search keywords will be:

• Cars
• New cars
• Used cars
• Car dealership

Think of each of these major keywords as separate sections of keyword phrases.

The next step is to add what are called modifiers.  These are words that are likely to appear next to your major keywords.  Modifiers come in all sorts of varieties.  Here are a few:

• Local towns or regions
• Using brand names
• Related services

If your business depends on attracting traffic from the surrounding geographic region, then you will definitely want to add the names of towns as modifiers.  In our example, the use of "Chicago used cars dealerships" or "Cook County used cars", would be excellent examples.  For more information on this subject, see my post on Attracting Local Traffic.

Using Brand names as modifiers is an excellent method for attracting visitors.  Modifiers such as "Ford dealerships in Chicago", or "Chevy used cars in Cook county" would work well.  But you need to be careful in this area.  It would be unethical, if not outright illegal, to use the brand names of competitors to attract traffic to your site.

Adding related services to your list of major keywords will also help generate a lot of traffic.  When people shop for a car, they also would be interested other services as well such as: servicing, financing, indoor showroom, or no hassle negotiations.

By following these steps, you should easily come up with hundreds of keyword phrases to use in your marketing efforts.

Pro Tip: There are two excellent web sites that will help you find all sorts of keywords:

• Overture's Keyword Suggestion Tool
• WordTracker.com

Now that you have a good idea of what your targeted keywords are, we need to analyze them to make sure that these are the terms that your audience are using.  More on this in my next post.