When kicking off SEO services, I often ask the client for a list of potential keywords to get things started. Why would I do that? Aren’t I the professional SEO?
Indeed, I am. However, you know your business much better than any SEO professional. By providing an initial list of keywords, you can steer your SEO provider in the right direction to conduct further keyword research.
Here’s where you can look to create the initial keyword list:
- Look at competitor web sites and online advertising. What language do they use to attract customers? What keywords are they willing to spend money on to sponsor?
- Talk to your customers. How did they find you? How would they describe what your company does? (hint: these may be prime keyword phrases)
- Spend some time with your web analytics (you do have that, don’t you?). This will give you an idea of what keywords bring people to your site and how many searches each keyword produces per month.
- Dig into your on-site searches. What are people typing into the search bar on your site? What are they trying to find? And are they finding it?
- Look at your PPC ad stats. Again, you can see which ads get searched and clicked on most frequently. Most importantly, you can see which keywords have the best conversion rates (you have conversion tracking enabled, right?) This is vital information that your SEO provider doesn’t have access to unless you give it.
Simple methods like these will go a long way to finding the best language to use on your web site.
There are a lot of other methods to find good keywords. What are your favorites?
