SEO for Dummies – Section II
The Pittsburgh SEO Guide – # 2
Keyword Selection
OK, you have your goals, the next step is to select keywords. This is the most challenging, nuanced, complex and, for me, most fun and exciting part of the job.
Most people use the term “keyword phrase” and “keyword” interchangeably, so we will as well .
Additionally , I’ll use the terms “Google” and “search engine” interchangeably. As Google has so much more market share than its nearest competitor (between 63% and 71% according to recent studies), they are the search engine on which you should be focusing. The next closest is Yahoo! with less than 15%. If you could open a restaurant for the same rent on Broadway in New York City as you could on Main Street in Havana , which would you do?
The biggest mistake people make is to be too vague . Continuing with our example, if we tried to use the keyword “ lawyer ,” we will fail. There simply is too much competition for such general words. Moreover, you don’t have any desire for folks in Iowa to be contacting you (assuming you don’t do telephone counseling).
We might have a chance at some of the following keywords:
· Pittsburgh lawyer
· Therapist in Pittsburgh
· Pittsburgh rooter
· Pittsburgh legal help
· Etc.
Now we need to get some more keywords , to build a long list. I like using Google’s Keyword Tool. Simply enter a few keywords, and it generates lots of synonyms . Most of these will be worthless, but a few may be great, and/or spark other ideas for additional keywords.
Google’s Keyword Tool is designed for Paid Search , but it’s still helpful for Search Engine Optimization . It gives you a sense of how many consumers are searching for that term. And it also gives you a sense of how competitive that term is by showing how many people are paying for that keyword.
If a keyword looks very competitive, try a variation. You can try a plural, or even a misspelling. I often transpose the w and y in “lawyer.” Guess what? Some 33,000 people search for those misspellings every month!
Once again, I go back to Marketing Positioning and Branding . If you’ve got the wrong Marketing Positioning, or you are optimizing for keywords that don’t support your overall objective, your efforts will not produce the goals you desire.
Once you get a long list of keywords, start to narrow them down. Criteria can include relevance (of course), number of people that search for the term, and perceived competition for the term.
You might want to start with a list of 10 or so keywords.
Now that we have our keywords, let’s do some search engine optimization, Pittsburgh style!.
Stay tuned for our next article, Search Engine Optimization Part 3.
Internet marketing specialist for Pittsburgh SEO & Pittsburgh Internet marketing
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22. Jun, 2010 