Choosing the keywords for your website is the initial starting point and holds the potential for your business, regardless of SEO or not. We can break down this into a 3 step process that helps identify your best keywords. The key is getting the balance between the specific and the generic

Step 1 – Decide what the main focus of your business is and make a note of 2 or 3 keywords.
Step 2 – Decide your best products and make a note of 2 or 3 keywords.
Step 3 – Decide what a customer would type in to find you or your product.

Using an online computer store as example here is how the 3 step keyword selector is applied.

Step 1. Generally the best keywords are the most generic ones possible, but while these will drive a massive amount of traffic, the hard reality is it will not deliver many actual conversions. For the computer store the generic keywords would be “online computer store”, “computer parts” or “computer components”.

Step 2 – This is when you identify your product. Maybe giving an actual product code or description as a keyword would certainly be easier to achieve high listings, but would be a far way from the level of traffic you would hope for. Examples of this could be “HP Pavilion a6355 AMD Phenom 9500 3GB” or “Sony VAIO NR21J/S T2330 2GB 200GB”.

Step 3 – This is the part of the evaluation where you put yourself in the shoes of the consumer, perhaps a consumer that is not computer literate. An example of this could be “buy a laptop with DVD writer” or “fast PC delivery”.

All of these have to be taken into account when deciding your keywords, it’s a good idea to either use 2 of each variety, or alternatively mix the 3 to make 6 variants.

Related posts:

1. Long Tail Search Engine Optimisation
2. Geographical Targeting SEO
3. How to Write Great SEO Descriptions
4. An idiots guide to page 1 listings
5. Steps To A Better Brand Through SEO

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 20th, 2008 at 2:55 pm and is filed under SEO Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.