Thursday 1 March 2012

Using Googles Free Keyword Tool To Find Your Best Keywords

This week we are going to take all the keywords you brainstormed last post and use Googles free keyword tool to let Google themselves tell you exactly what keyword phrases will bring you the most traffic.
The tool we are going to use to do this research is the Google Keyword Tool. What source would be better for information about which keywords are the best than Google itself!?

You will doing your keyword research two ways:
1) By entering an existing Web site URL of a competitor who is ranking well in the search engines for the keyword phrases you'd like to rank for. AND...
2) You will also enter the keywords or keyword phrases that you generated in our last post and then have Google calculate for you both how good they are, and what other keyword phases are best to use that are related to the ones you provided but that you missed!
For example if I want to create a website about glass dining room tables, I would type "glass dining room tables" in the search box. The keyword tool will produce a long list of keywords with statistics about each keyword...at this point, don’t get overwhelmed.

Simply start by sorting the Local Monthly Searches column (Local is based of the country you chose and Global is just that, global) from the highest to lowest (simply click the column header to sort). You want to choose the top three to six keyword phrases of 2 to 3 keywords in length that best fit the idea of your project.

Google makes it easy by letting you click each keyword you want to keep and storing it in your own list you can then download when you're done researching.
Once you have your list of keyword phrases you are ready to move on. That wasn’t hard was it?
Professional Insight: It's Crucial to Consider Your City
Whenever you are trying to generate keywords, try to be location specific if you offer a product or service related to a local area.
So for example if you're doing SEO for your lawn care company located in the Denver Colorado metro area, then be sure to add Denver to the end of each of the keyword phrases you find, so you may end up using:
         Lawn care Denver
         Lawn service Denver
         Lawn treatment Denver
         Lawn pests Denver
         Grass care Denver
         Grass treatment Denver

It's very important that you do this because you'll get two GREAT advantages. 1) You'll narrow your competitive market to just one metro area, and so instead of competing on Google with companies all over the country or world, you'll only be competing with companies in your local market! 2) The traffic you get will be many times more targeted and convert better because you'll be sure that the people visiting your site are local too.
P.S. While you're working on setting up your on-page SEO, don't forget the importance of off-page SEO--that is the number and quality of links pointing to your site!

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