Selecting the correct keywords to search engine optimize your web site will make or break your website’s search engine performance. You simply have get this right if you want to out perform your competition and put eyeballs onto your brand.
The first step in any web development project should not be the development of the site it should be the development of a keyword strategy.
Why? Because your key word strategy will be used :
- To select a domain name. A keyword rich domain is highly desired from a search marketing perspective
- To create web page URLs
- To name all images
- In ALT /Titles
- Anchor links
- Navigation menu items
- In heading tags
- In web page content
And, of course, the keyword strategy will be the core of each web pages’ Title/Meta Description and Meta Keywords.
Given the above, why would you start a web site project without first formulation your key word strategy?
In working with my clients I find that almost all of them ‘drink their own Kool-Aid” in that each client speaks a language of their particular industry but that language often differs from the language of their customers. Web sites must speak the language of the target customers. While attorneys make use the term “estate planning” to describe this segment of their business, the search term “wills” is much more commonly used. I am not advocating that we ignore “estate planning” but that we build the term “wills’ into the keyword strategy
This is easy to validate thanks to Google’s Ad words tool. We can use this tool to find the most popular, relevant, keyword/keyword phrases with respect to the term that you are investigate.
So, before you begin a web development project, understand the language of the target market with respect to the products and services on offer and then validate with Google Keywords tool.
Be prepared to learn new information about the language of your customers, this can be quite revealing.
