Choosing Keywords for SEO
This should be the first step of your search engine optimization campaign. Choosing the right keywords will drive relevant traffic to your site and assist in conversions and sales. Ranking high for irrelevant terms serves no purpose and optimizing for the wrong keywords can waste time and money.
We recommend using services like Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery for keyword research and analysis.
So how do you choose the keywords from the lists generated at these sites? Well, it depends how competitive your field is and how much money or time you have to spend on SEO. If you have a limited budget, it's best to choose the long tail keywords - long tail keywords include several words in a phrase and are normally less competitive than the more general terms. The good thing with these is that they're less competitive. That is to say, fewer sites are competing for high rankings for them.
For example, if you're selling blue shirts, perhaps choosing the term "blue shirts" will be too competitive - there may be other large web sites with a strong web presence ranking in the top 10 results. If that's the case, do your research and you might find terms like "rare vintage blue shirts" or "french blue polo shirts" come with less competition and still get a number of searches per month. Optimize a page for each phrase.
Occasionally you will notice that a relevant term to your site is not listed as being searched for at all. If it still applies to your site, don't be afraid to use it. You will get a small stream of hits from many variations of that phrase. But look for other related terms you can also include in your on-page copy. A handy tool for this is the Google AdWords Suggestion Tool. It acts as a thesaurus for the Google advertising search database.
Our last tip for choosing the right keywords is to keep checking the keyword research tools on a consistent basis. Every industry has its trends and you may find new buzz words to capitalize on, or you may find that existing phrases go out of style and don't get searched for as often. Analyze your web site's visitor statistics as well to see the kind of traffic each keyword is sending to you.
If you need further help choosing keywords for your search engine marketing campaign, Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery both have help sections worth looking at.