When optimising a site we need to know what the site owner needs to get from the site, sometimes it is obvious, they sell an item and therefore they need people to purchase it from them via the website.

Other times it is less obvious, they may be a site that offers information, local government and community sites do this a lot, they are not selling things but they still need to be found in the search engines for the correct terms or they will not receive their funding.

Some sites are similar to online catalogs, they show a range of services or products that are available off line, these might include car companies that wish to promote brand awareness but they know the internet is part of the decision making process not the end of it.

The goal for a company like this might be to gather contact information from visitors that can then be used by the off line sales team.

So different techniques and keywords need to be used for each type of site.

When optimising a site you may have picked it up in one of several states;

A new site we have designed for a customer – this has some distinct advantages, we have had chance to meet and speak to the customer about the site, their ambitions and goals for it, from these meetings we know the sort of keywords the customer needs to rank well for.

A new site that was built by someone else that we need to start optimising, care needs to be taken as it is easy to assume that the words used in the text are the correct ones to use in the optimisation, often they are not as they can contain industry terms and abbreviations that are not going to be used when searching for that site.

Sites that have been around and running for a time that are partly optimised, again the danger with these is that you assume the keywords used in the optimisation are correct and just plough ahead with ranking for these, it can be a time consuming and costly error to make these assumptions.

An hour or two spent on keyword research at the beginning of the process can save thousands of pounds in wasted time and effort down the line and can be the difference between retaining a client and seeing the business grow and loosing the client altogether.

Free Keyword research guide

Keyword research is a vital part of site optimisation, with out this aspect of the process being completed properly then there is little chance of getting the desired results.

The correct keyword analysis and selection allows us to rank well and drive traffic from the keywords our customers use.

As an example if we were going to sell a book on “how to buy shares on line” your first thoughts might be to optimise for words like:

Shares
Share dealing
Buy shares
Share trading

These are all good useful words and phrases to optimise for but they are too broad for what we are selling, they might deliver traffic to the site but the sales rate would be very low and the competition for top spot very tough.

So instead we must think what would a perspective purchaser of our “online share trading” book use to find such a product, these might include;

Online share trading
How to trade shares online
Buying shares online
Online share dealing information
Online share trading book

The first thing you will notice is that the phrases used to find this product are longer than the previous example, this is because people who are looking to make a purchase rather than just gathering information use more definite search terms.

The term keyword can also mean key phrase – often phrases are more important to rank for than individual words.

We can use various tools to help in the keyword selection process, these will be gone into in more detail later, the thing to remember is always put your self in the customers position, what search term would they use to find your site, these then become your keywords.

We can use various tools to help in the keyword selection process, these will be gone into in more detail later, the thing to remember is always put your self in the customers position, what search term would they use to find your site, these then become your keywords.

This is part 1 of an ongoing keyword research guide, please return for the next part soon