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Got a new website or looking to develop one soon? Great!! Now…if only your customers could find it on Google or Yahoo. To attract good traffic to your site, you’ll need great content and to do some homework on keywords. Keywords are those words (or phrases) that your potential customers are typing into that search box to find something on the internet. Here are some steps you can take to make sure your content matches up with what your customers are looking for:

speak their language

Put yourself in your customers’ shoes. Are your customers looking for “low fares” or are they looking for “cheap flights”; for “property insurance” or “home insurance”? Use the words your customers would use, rather than industry jargon, and you’ll stand a better chance of getting them to your website.

understand their concerns

When people shop on the internet, they might be looking for general information as well as for specific products. What questions are they likely to ask (and that your product or service can help them answer)? What problem are they trying to solve? Again, put yourself in their shoes: along with looking for “financial planning services,” some customers might instead ask “how to retire early.”

make a list

Start your list of keywords by answering the questions above, and, if it makes sense, get local. If you sell to a specific region, adding that region’s name to your phrase can help get more focused results. For instance, “IT support” gets thousands of searches every day, but if you live in LA, “IT support Los Angeles” is likely to get your site more relevant traffic.

Need more help generating keywords? Try Google’s free keyword tool to get your creative juices flowing!

prioritize

Once you’ve got a good list, prioritize the items according to what is most relevant to your product or service and, last, incorporate them into your website.

Tags: keywords, search

This entry was posted on Friday, May 29th, 2009 at 7:42 am and is filed under getting started, keywords, search engines. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.