I was going to call this post ‘don’t start a fight you can’t win’ – but for the minute we’ll stick with choosing keywords, but it’s a tough call as to which is more appropriate!! For those of you who are interested in developing the web side of your business, you might already know a bit about SEO and how important choosing keywords that let your site rank in the search engines is – for those that don’t, read on to find out probably the single most important thing you’ll need to get your site ranking in google.
The basic theory of search.
Right, just to get everyone up to speed, the basics of how search works are this. Your small business website gets launched into the world, the search engines ‘read’ your website and try to work out what your site is about – it does this by looking for words or phrases that repeat throughout the site, your keywords. Now, when people search for the keywords that feature in your site, the search engines know that’s what your site is about and your site appears top in the search engine results, thousands of people click on the link, buy your products and you get rich very quickly. Back in the real world, there are also thousands, or possibly millions of other websites all over the world trying to sell exactly the same thing as you – so the search engines use backlinks from other sites to judge how important your site is in relation to the others in the list and return results in that order. A simple overview, missing out lots of very important bits, but that’s the basic theory and leads us to the important bit for small business owners looking to benefit from the power of the internet.
Don’t start a fight you can’t win…
Had to get it in somewhere, but there’s also a lot of thruth in it! Choosing keywords is all about balance, you need keywords that will get you traffic to convert into sales, but you also need to be choosing keywords that aren’t impossible to get ranked for. The three main things that affect how easy or difficult a keyword is to rank for are the number of other sites chasing the same keywords, the number of searches that are carried out on that particular term over a period of time and the ‘pagerank’ (the ‘quality’ of the website, in the search engines’ eyes) of the other competitors in the results.
Lets say you own a small grocery shop somewhere and you want to sell them online - try for the keywords ‘online groceries’ and you’ll fail – sorry to say it, but it’s the truth. You’re going to be up against Tesco, Asda and Sainsburys, all of which spend literally hundreds of thousands of pounds a year making sure that they’re at the top of the results. Unless you’re going to be spending that kind of money, you’re not even going to get a look in. You need to think about choosing keywords that might not get the number of searches that ‘online groceries’ does (around 25,000 a month) and concentrate on something that gets 1000 searches a month where you can realistically get onto the front page, or even the top of the search results – this way, you’ve got a chance of actually getting some business from your website, rather than a website that no one can find.
Start a fight you can win…
Keyword research is a crucial first step in choosing keywords – the example above is a bit extreme, but it’s the same across all sectors. Look at it this way, would you rather get 10 clicks a month out of 1000 search results or no clicks at all from 20,000 – that’s the basic maths and it needs to drive the keywords you choose for your small business website. Spend time thinking about what you sell, who buys it, what they search for and how strong the competition is and you can build a good amount of traffic to your site, choosing keywords that are too difficult to rank for and you’ll see no benefit at all from your hard work. On the other hand, if your business depends on getting lots of search traffic from very competetive search results, you need to think about getting help from someone like us who understands about choosing keywords that will get your seo off to the best possible start.
Let us know what success you’ve had with your seo for your small business – did you go for a ‘niche’ keyword or try to beat the big companies at search…
I’ve tried to pick and choose my keywords, but I’m not good at it. Right now, I’m just writing what I want to write and now worrying about the SEO. It’s a short time experiment to see if it makes any difference. If I get less traffic this way, I’ll go back to picking and choosing the words as you advise.
Randy Cox´s last blog ..By- Dean Saliba
This is a really good article and if you take the advice and keep building pages that attract 10 clicks here and 10 clicks there you will soon have a website attracting 100s of clicks
I have also my website. And I believe that choosing the right keyword for your website or blog is very important in ranking with the different search engines. Good Keywords could always be use during your search engine optimization for your website. I agree with this Idea hope many could read this insight. Thank You.
Virginia DUI Lawyer´s last blog ..Hello world!
Yup, this article is so true. In choosing keywords you’ll have to put yourself in the place of the searcher. If he wants something that you have what are those words that he/she will type in search engines to look for your products. Your keywords should likely be what you are selling in your site and where is your area. You cant just put cable as keywords when you are selling cigars or spain when you are in europe right?
Albany DWI Lawyer´s last blog ..Hello world!
everything you say is so true. In my limited experience keywords are the key to the whole of SEO, and if you choose the right ones then you are halfway there.
solicitor in liverpool´s last blog ..VHCC Panel
Great advise things are so competitive online now, no site stands a chance without proper keyword research. Once you have decided on your main keywords to target, using a thesauras can be helpful to expand your keyword theme, also using plurals – can be helpful to expand as well. Thanks for the post!
Good article. I try to pick ‘long tail’ keywords and work on them at first. I have three levels from these to the top terms and try to work from getting easiest ranked for first. By the time you are ranked for these and the medium term keywords you will hopefully have time and website authority on your time to go for the big ones!