Keywords Selection – How to Begin the Process

If you are reading this, you are likely designing a website, or doing a website redesign, or maybe you are in the beginning stages of optimizing your website for search engines.  Regardless, you are searching for information on keyword selection and a how to process for choosing the right keywords for your website.

You know keywords are the words and phrases that people type in a search field when looking for something on the Internet.  And you also know keywords are very important to SEO and website performance in terms of attracting target visitors to your site.  But what you want to know is how to go about the keyword selection process.

Finding the Right Keyword is like Finding Medium Porridge

Similar to Goldilocks and the Three Bears, choosing the right keyword to target on each website page is like finding the right porridge -  not too hot, not too cold, but  just right.

In terms of keyword selection the trick is finding the right keywords that are not too popular, but popular enough to achieve high ranking among search engine results.  You also want to select keywords it that describe your website content but that are not too generic, yet not too specific that few people use the term.

If you are wondering where to begin the Keyword Selection Process, fortunately, there are keyword search tools available to help you find popular search words and phrases people commonly type in search engines.  Google offers a free keyword research tool that is one of the most popular.  Another popular keyword tool is WordTracker.  If you do a search for “keyword tools” you'll see there are multiple tools available, some for free and some for a fee.  Take a look and select one to try, but a word of caution here… paid tools are not necessarily better than free tools.  If you need to learn about a tool, search for comments in an online forum.

After you select one of the tools, you can use the following basic outline as a guideline to help you in your keyword selection.

1. Brainstorm Initial Keyword List
Brainstorming is a great way to start defining which keywords you will want to target on your website.  Think about how your customer or ideal visitor uses your product or service, and how he or she describes your business.  Start listing out phrases that come to mind, and keep the ideas flowing.  An Excel spreadsheet is a great place to record your list, and will come in handy later.

2. Checking Keyword Research Tools
Using one of the many online keyword tools discussed above, enter one or two generic keywords that are relevant to your website and let the tool go to work.  The result will be a list of popular search terms that related to the keyword you initially entered.  Copy and paste the results in an Excel spreadsheet along with your list of terms from brainstorming.

Go through the list and look for keywords you would like your website to appear in listings on search engines. I recommend using an Excel spreadsheet to create a list of terms to save.  Think of yourself as the person searching for your products, services, or information on your website.  What words would you use to search for your site?  The key is to not be to specific or to generic.  For example, if you were searching for a company to create a website for your business, "web design" is a popular search phrase. People searching for “web design” may want to find web design schools, web design books, or web design templates... the phrase is too general to know for sure.

On the other hand, if you type “web design agency” or "hire web designer" the list of search results will be more relevant to what you are looking for. The other nice benefit about choosing keyword phrases that are longer is they are less competitive because they are used less frequently in search, however the traffic is more targeted, and it often takes less time for your website to appear in search results.

3. Choosing Keywords
Choosing effective keywords is about making sure your site ranks highly in returned search engine results for popular search word phrases.This is the point where you put the information from your research together and decide which keywords are going to deliver the best performance for you, not necessarily the ones that will deliver the most traffic.

Once you have your list of keywords, it's time to start strategizing how to put the words on your website.  Begin by breaking down your keyword list into logical keyword groupings creating 2 or 3 keyword phrases.  To go about this, you will want to think about how the words relate in terms of delivering information on a website page.  The keywords you select to target on your website in on-page SEO structure should also be present within the actual content of the page.  If they are not, you will want to revise your webpage content to reflect the keywords.

4. Analytics
After you've chosen your keywords and optimized your site, you need to track and measure your efforts to see whether your work is delivering the amount of traffic and conversions to meet your goals. This is the beginning of the on going process of making adjustments to refine your keyword selection and web marketing strategy. 

Read more information on keywords, SEO, and website design.  Thanks for reading.