How to Do Keyword Research for Business Websites
If your objective is to design a website to help you find potential customers, you need to build it with a plan and a strategy in mind. Larger companies with bigger budgets can use web design firms that may have Search Engine Optimization (SEO) specialists, copywriters, graphic designers, and web programmers on the team. But small businesses usually choose a small firm or freelancer, and a surprisingly large proportion of those firms know very little about search engine optimization.
Step-by-Step Process for Keyword Research
➢ The first step is to determine the purpose of the site. For instance, is your goal simply to drive more traffic to the site or is it to get people to sign up for a newsletter, or to buy a product? Often different pages within the site will have different goals, and these need to be kept in mind throughout the SEO process.
➢ With the business goals in mind, the next step is to compile a keyword phrase list. At this point, you determine a list of the phrases that will help you to reach your website goals. It’s important to go through the existing site pages and add to the list any phrases that appear naturally within the copy. With list in hand, it’s time for the detailed keyword research.
➢ The keyword research process done by your SEO specialist, finds keyword phrases that have the optimum combination of good search volume without excessive levels of competition. Hundreds of possible phrases will be researched that will result in a list of 20 to 50 phrases which are highly targeted, relevant keyword phrases that are searched for on the Internet. The list will be used to weed out irrelevant phrases and rank the relevant ones in order of importance to your business
➢ Once this new “short list” is compiled, it’s time to select 2 or 3 phrases to focus on within the copy of each page of the site. The home page of the site should usually focus on the main 2 or 3 phrases that encompass the general theme of the site. Inner pages should each focus on 2 or 3 more specific phrases. If the pages already have some copy to work with (say 150-250 words or more), take a look at the existing words on each page and see which 2 or 3 keyword phrases in your short list will fit best with the current copy. If pages of the site don’t have much copy to begin with, or if there is little to no text on any given page, a rewrite will be necessary.
➢ You cannot optimize a site that has no text. PERIOD. This means all-Flash sites are the kiss of death if you want any search engine traffic. Flash developers may try to tell you otherwise, but don’t believe it.
Select a Website Designer who has knowledge of keywords
If you are talking to a web designer that does not even mention keyword research, or if they think that keyword research means finding a couple of the most popular phrases in your industry, do yourself a favor and interview someone else. A key tip-off is to review the sites in a designer’s portfolio, and if you see that the <TITLE> tag (what you see in the blue title bar at the top of your browser window), is simply the company name with a word or two after it on every page, then you can be sure this person does not know anything about helping your site get traffic.
The secret to successful small business search engine optimization is not only implementing one step …. it really is doing a lot of little steps the right way. BUT, if there is one BIG thing, it is having unique, keyword-rich title tags on every page. If your website goal is to generate business, look for a small business web site designer who also knows about proper keyword research and search engine optimization. Web design has so many aspects to learn that it is harder than you would imagine to find someone with all of the skills necessary to help you build a site that will actually help increase your profits.
Ken Klages, who contributed to this blog posting, is the owner of KlagesWebDesign.com, a small business website design firm. He specializes in small business search engine optimization and website design and started his business in 1998. You can contact him at ken@klageswebdesign.com