Keyword research can be quite a laborious task. Keyword research allows those attempting to optimize their site for search engines to increase their reach for multiple search terms. It may, at first, seem like a reasonably simple task to match a two to four word phrase to each of the most important pages on the website. That is not the case, however. The keywords you pick are extremely crucial as the query a searcher enters weighs very heavily. Here are some tried and true methods for making keyword research for your website a little easier:

• Brainstorm a number of keywords you would like to target for all of your most important pages on the site.
• Once you have compiled that list, research them to see which ones are the most searched and the least competitive.
• Utilize tools such as Wordtracker, Trellian and the free Google Adwords Keyword Tool to discover a keyword’s popularity and add to your list by seeing possible alternatives to your keywords.

Of course, once you have compiled the list of the most valuable keywords with the free tools, it is not the end of the process. There is no “magic bullet” that will pick the most appropriate keywords for your site. Picking the right word for a page also takes a fair amount of knowledge about the product or service your website is providing and sometimes just good common sense and experience with your field can make all of the difference.

On a final note, it is very important to not just choose words that are really popular. The higher searched a term, the more likely it is to be very competitive. This can be tricky, because if a keyword is not popular enough, what are the chances that you will be able to get that precious organic traffic to your site? Always keep the searcher in mind when researching and find the closest match. Once those keywords are selected and you are ready to make the changes to your pages, add them to all the pertinent places on the page for the most optimal results. The key areas to add your targeted primary keyphrases are in the meta data (titles, descriptions and keywords) and in the content of the page. Try to get the primary keyphrase to a keyword density (what is the total occurrence of the keyword in relation to the content) of 3-4%. Of course, the longer the keyphrase is, the harder it will be to utilize in the content and still have it make sense. For “longer-tail” keyphrases, a keyword density of around 1-3% would suffice.

While thinking about what to write, I realized that I had an experience this weekend that is a perfect testimony of why having a presence within the major search engines is so important.

I was racking my brain trying to figure out what I was going to get my mom for Mother’s Day (yes, a little last minute) and the first thing that I did was hop onto Google and search for “Mothers Day Gifts, Raleigh, NC”. Within about 5 minutes I had purchased a gift card from a spa just down the road from my mom’s house and ordered a bouquet of flowers to be delivered to her the very next day. After my sigh of relief that it was taken care of and I could go about enjoying the rest of my weekend, I sat back and realized just how important Search Engine Optimization (SEO) really is. If it wasn’t for that particular spa and florist taking the time to effectively optimize their sites using the keywords that I had searched for (including local keywords), I wouldn’t have stumbled across their site and would have been forced to find another gift. But because both of these links appeared within Google’s organic search results, I found them easily. In addition, my entire shopping experience (a total of about 5 minutes) was quite painless. The ease of making purchases through these websites was almost effortless and very user-friendly.

Having just moved to Florida, I truly appreciated the ability to find something so easily near my hometown. So keep in mind when optimizing your site that you can take advantage of last minute shoppers. I also highly recommend including local keywords as these can help searchers from out of state, like myself, find your products or services.

While I often hear people talking about keyword density and writing original and relevant content, I don’t hear people speak about how important it is to be consistent. How many times have you come across a site where the content is targeted well for a particular key phrase, but there is little or no use of it in the title, description or keyword tags? How about sites that are using entirely different keywords in the Meta data?

The search engines are beginning to look at keyword and description Meta tags again thus making it very important to use them in a way that is going help improve the rankings for a particular site. Title tags have always been important. We have all seen people abuse these tags by keyword stuffing and other spamming techniques. This may have worked years ago, but as the algorithms continue to improve, these techniques are no longer effective. There are however, ways to use these tags to help surpass your competition in the rankings.

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