Keywords are the point around which your entire SEO campaign revolves. The keywords you choose are the search terms that internet users will type into their search engine to find what you are offering – and so you need to get the keyword choice right in order to have the best chance of success. Choosing keywords that are very industry generic will mean that every other website offering similar products or services to you will probably be ahead of you in the results list because they have domain age and search engine authority on their side. Good SEO can of course help to change this over a long period of time, but the best way to ensure more success in the shorter term (under 12 months) is to do proper research into the best keywords possible for your website to target.

Where to start?

Start with the very basics. What services or products to you provide? What are the likely search terms someone might use for finding that service or product? What would you type into a search engine if you wanted to find your kind of website? If you are stuck for ideas about search terms for your products then you can use a keyword suggestion tool for some useful clues.

You can check how popular your potential keywords are by using a Google Adwords tool. This will tell you how many people type those keywords into their search engine so you can see how competitive those search terms are. Choosing keywords which are highly competitive means that your chances of making the front page of search engines results will be more difficult and take longer because so many other websites will have the jump on yours. Choosing keywords which are not competitive at all means that hardly anyone types those keywords into search engines so you run the risk of not attracting enough traffic to your website to make your SEO campaign worthwhile and give you a return on your investment.

The secret (which isn’t so secret) to choosing the optimum keywords for your SEO campaign is to find a balance between the two. A good way to do this is to target your keywords geographically, especially useful if you operate a service in a particular area of the country. For example if you operate a dog grooming service in the South East of the UK, there is little point trying to target the whole of the UK by choosing keywords like “dog grooming” or “dog clipping” because they will be unable to take advantage of your business, but you will undoubtedly have better results by choosing “dog groomers in Sussex” because that is a search term likely to be used by people looking for that service in that area.

Finding out what search terms your main competitors are targeting can help you to choose keywords which will help you to stand out from the crowd. As will all SEO tools, the information you get back from them is only useful if you know how to make it applicable to your website and circumstances. This is where a good SEO company comes in. A good SEO company has the experience and knowledge to work with you to devise the best possible keywords for your business which will help you to raise your online profile and start reaping the rewards of SEO – i.e increased appropriate traffic to your website and better conversion rate (from users to customers) which will give you a good return on your investment in your Search Engine Optimisation campaign.

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