Understanding Keywords

If you are like me, you’ve subscribed to the “if you build it they will come . . .” approach to web marketing. You’ve built or paid for a pretty website. You’ve made your global debut and now you sit and wait. And wait!

One of the key elements to search engine optimization (SEO) is developing keywords. Simple you say. Maybe not.

Recently I was working with client and we were discussing what keywords she wanted for her website. “Bookkeeping,” she boldly replied. We searched bookkeeping on Google (it has 65% of all traffic, so we tend use it as a barometer for search) - 20,900,000 responses for bookkeeping. Ugh – that’s a lot of web pages to try to compete with for attention.

“How about SF bookkeeping?” 1,060,000 responses for SF bookkeeping – better, but that’s still a lot of folks fighting for a top spot on Google.

“How about Noe Valley, SF bookkeeping?” 10,800 for Noe Valley, SF bookkeeping. So, instead of competing with 20 million users of a single keyword, we build “keyword phrases” to target our customers and increase our chances of being found on Google.

Targeted keyword phrases can include references to locale (Noe Valley), community (gay, hispanic) or whatever else distinguishes your business from all the other bookkeepers (or what ever it is that you do) out there.