Before You Do ANYTHING Else…

If you want your site to rank for a keyword, before you do anything else, you must first decide that that keyword is!

Which keyword should you focus on?

I’ve gotten a couple people asking me that very question in the last week. The answer is tricky, but needs to be answered before you do anything else.

The first consideration is “what do you want to be found for?” What do you want people to think of to get to your site? What is your site about? Who are you? What are your desires in this?

The second consideration is what are people looking for when they find you? What are they thinking of when they want to get to your site? What are they about? Who are they? What are their desires?

The third consideration is how many other web pages are targeting the same keyword? How much competition is there? How good is that competition?

Deciding what you are about if pretty easy. Just say it. Say it a few different ways.

Now do some research on what they are looking for. Use the Google Adwords tool to look up the number of searches for your terms.

You might find out that people don’t search for what you think they search for. They use different terms than you use. They say it a different way. They misspell the words.

Recently, I was looking for a black backdrop for some video tutorials that I’m working on. I looked up “material” in Google maps. Not a lot to be found. I looked up cloth. Still not a lot. I thought and thought. What did my mom call that stuff that clothes are made out of?

Fabric. It’s called fabric. I don’t call it fabric, but everyone else does. I found a “fabric” store and all was well with the world.

It’s that kind of stuff that you need to consider for the “who are you” part of this.

Google Adwords will tell you how many people search for a specific term on average, compared to other words. That’s one thing to know.

You can search for your term yourself and see what that “1 through 10 out of blah, blah, blah” number. This is your competition, the second thing to know.

Then, look at your Analytics. What keywords do people find you with now? Are those good keywords? There are always some strange ones in that list. You can also ask your clients if you have that kind of relationship with them.

The hardest part of this is that you have to think about it, use deductive reasoning. You have to look at the data you can find and figure out what the best keyword is to target. You might have to do a little math to get ratios if you know how to do that.

Look for a keyword that makes sense for you, makes sense for your clients, has enough traffic to make it worthwhile, and doesn’t have much competition.

That sounds easy, doesn’t it?