Imagine yourself as your customer or prospective visitor and think about what keywords would you type into Google or one of the other search engines to look for your site or that of your competitors.

It may be a good idea to write a dozen or so of these down to refer to later. Next step is to do some keyword research, this is one of the steps that is often missed but it is also the most important.

Now we’re going to use a keyword research tool like Trillian or Wordtracker Keywords to see just how many times people typed in those keyword phrases that you collected above.

Wordtracker also has a free keyword tool

If you just have 1 or 2 sites you want to search engine optimize get the free trial, if your going to make SEO a full time job like myself then your going to want the extra features like long tail keywords offered in the full version. Firefox has a Wordtracker plugin I use for quick keyword searches.

SeoBook also has a good keyword research tool derived from Wordtracker.

Either way you do it you are going to need some tool to find out what keywords are searched most often in Google.

Try different combinations and write the number of times searched next to the keywords.

The words or phrases that were searched most often are going to be your main keywords.

For example when I was doing research for a trade show exhibit display company ttskyline.com I found that “trade show displays” was searched for 1000 times last month and “trade show exhibits” was only used about 300 times.

That meant to me that “trade show displays” was going to be a lot more important and it ended up being the main keyword I used for that project. I wasn’t going to forget about trade show exhibits but I was going to use those keywords less often and in the body of my web pages.

Don’t forget about checking the single and plural of words, “coupon code” is searched a whole lot more than “coupon codes” is by the way.

What about a website that has a regionally targeted market? Just add the region like city or state to your keywords and see what you come up with.

I would spend at least an hour at keyword research per site, sorting and checking for other combinations of words and seeing what ones are used most often in searches. You should check your competitors websites too, at least the ones that come up high in Google and see what they use for their keywords also.

As I’m writing this post I’m checked to see what is searched more often “keywords” 184 or ” key words” 38. Wordtracker says.

Ok do you have a list of high ranking keywords written down? Do Google searches using these keywords bring up webpages that show products or services that you have to offer?

Good, now lets hold that thought and talk about keyword competition next.

Below is a link to a free keyword research guide put out by Wordtracker.

Wordtracker Keyword Research Guide

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I’m a Website Designer, Network Analyst and SEO Specialist. I have been working in the computer industry since before the internet was a household word, back in the days of the 8086 and DOS, 10 Meg. hard drives and 5- 1/4″ floppy diskettes.

I started out as a traveling computer consultant then I settled into a network management role for a few major Chicagoland companies.

A year or so ago one my tasks was to get my employers website on the first page of Google. I did accomplish that mission although it had many challenges, I learned a lot from that experience, so much that I branched out to create my own web design and search engine optimization company with some affiliated marketing thrown in to help pay the bills.

I’m creating this informational blog on search engine optimization to help people learn the steps to getting their own websites and blogs the attention they deserve from the search engines, and in turn their prospective customers.

I hope you enjoy the journey and I’m sure we will all learn even more along the way.

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