Web Marketing all-in-one for Dummies®

Chapter 2. Choosing the Right Keywords

In This Chapter

• Picking keywords your visitors (not you) want

• Discovering keyword tools

• Using the right selection criteria

• Researching your competitors

For now, keywords (or, more accurately, key phrases) are the focus of successful search engine optimization. Someday search engines may be able to index and rank sites based on concepts — by knowing that cars and autos are the same thing — but until then, you need to make some pretty specific choices.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a long-term undertaking. You may wait months before you see any results. Choose the right keywords and you can see a nice lift in traffic after all that effort. Choose the wrong keywords and your months of effort won't help your business. In this chapter, I go over how to pick the right keywords to bring traffic to your business Web site.

Thinking Like Your Visitors

Before I talk about tools, you must understand that you are not optimizing for the keywords you like or think should be associated with your product or service. You are optimizing for the keywords potential customers associate with your product or service.

For example, say you sell salad through the Internet. You've found a miraculous way to keep vegetables crisp and prevent lettuce from wilting, and you ship salad to suburban dwellers everywhere.

You research keywords and find that no one searches for salad. They search for "mixed greens" instead. You have a choice to make. You can insist on optimizing for ...