This article was originally written by Dave Rodenbaugh over at Business Directory I’ve adapted it and give full credit to Dave for this wonderful article
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is something everyone wants but no one wants to do the work for it to be successful. Why? because its dull. It’s not glamorous, it consists of identifying those keyword phrases someone who needs your product or services but yet doesn’t know your, name your businesses name, or you or your products name, but is searching Google or Bing for someone like you and your direct competitors.
Identifying those phrases can make or break your website. But still it is the least most utilized aspect of most websites that site owners let slide or wont pay for a legitimate company to have done for them and trust me there are a ton of scammers out there promising the moon. SEO is not instantaneous either, it takes time. results can take from a month to 6 months or more to be realized and should be ongoing. Here is a new article on our site about maximizing your keyword phrase searches to better optimize your content to be search engine tasty
Dave’s Original Article
Why No One Can Find Your Site on Google (And-How-to-Fix-It)
No matter what business you’re in, if you have an online presence you’re bound to be concerned about ranking on Google (or any applicable search engine). After all, what’s the point of having a website if nobody can find it?
You may have spent plenty of time on your site doing all the typical SEO improvements – you’ve optimized your images, you’ve checked and double-checked your site’s loading speeds, and you’ve developed an eye-catching design that’s mobile-friendly. But you’re still not on the first pages of Google. Why?
Well, it could be your SEO keywords.
SEO keywords are an essential part of getting found on search engines (though that may be changing in the near future, but we’ll get to that), but business owners and creative developers often spend little to no time coming up with effective keywords; they regularly take the most obvious choice and leave it at that. But missing out on the right keywords can make or break your SEO.
With that in mind, here are a few tips to uncovering effective SEO keywords that get you found on Google much, much faster.
Do your research
Choosing the right keywords is not just about picking random words out of a hat. Finding effective word choices is about understanding your business intimately, and using words that help your customers understand your business, too.
The important thing to remember when you’re choosing keywords is that you’re not really picking one word, you’re putting together a phrase – a string of 2-3 words – about your business that you think someone would type into Google’s search bar. The goal to creating effective keywords is to be specific.
The goal to creating effective keywords is to be specific.
keyword-research Be specific
The best keywords are ones that predict what your customers want. What are they thinking when they search for your site? Are they looking for local businesses? Or are they searching for something niche? If you were trying to find your competitors online, what would you type in to find them?
Think about it terms of having an actual, physical storefront. Imagine a customer approaching your sales team and asking for something. What are they after? If you owned a jewelry store, for example, your customers wouldn’t necessarily come in and ask about “jewelry” – they’re already in a jewelry store – they’d ask about “gold watches” or “women’s bracelets” or even specific brand names, like Rolex.
When it comes to searching for things online, the same rules apply. If you want people to find you, you have to break your services down into essential parts. What is your business all about?
If you run a site with a directory, for example, you could use the keyphrase “business directory”, but that’s a little vague. If your customers type “business directory” into any major search engine, they’ll be hit with thousands of results, and none of them will be your site.
Instead of using broad keywords or phrases that are fairly common, focus on something unique or specific about your business. If your directory features businesses from a certain area of the country or includes businesses from certain industries, go with that. Setting your keyphrase as “Chicago business directory” or “graphic design business directory” will improve your chances of being ranked.
Use natural language keyphrases (topics)
Another option to try when researching keywords is to use common language questions or search terms instead of standard keywords. What does that mean?
Well, for the most part, search engine algorithms use keyword-based terms (like “women’s jewelry”) to find relevant results. The problem is these keyword-based systems ignore common words – such as “a,” “an,” “the,” “is,” etc. – which can actually eliminate relative results.
To counteract this, search engines have been introducing natural language algorithms to help give meaning to search results. Unlike keyword algorithms, natural language algorithms focus on the meaning of the phrase – the natural way humans ask and answers questions – in order to generate results. For example, people might be more likely to type in questions like, “Where is the nearest Greek restaurant” instead of simply typing “Greek restaurants Chicago.”
Google has already begun incorporating the use of natural language into what it calls “topics” – groups of similar keywords and phrases that give context or meaning to the search, which many SEO experts consider to be more important than the individual keywords themselves.
Moz recently conducted an experiment to determine whether individual keywords or topics were more effective at getting rankings. They found that the results were mixed: In some categories, topics were more effective at getting sites found, while in others individual keywords played a stronger role. Basically, while traditional keywords are (and will continue to be) vital to SEO, topics and natural language phrases will probably play a major role in the years to come.
So what does this mean for you? It means that both individual keywords and topics will be important to SEO. Ultimately, you’ll probably have to come up with a list of keywords and natural language phrases to use in your site.
Save time with tools
Of course, this might mean double the work. And you’ll also need to be sure your keywords are meaningful (as in, it’s possible no one in the world is really searching for your chosen terms). The best way to save time in your keyword research and to ensure that your keywords are actually effective is to use keyword research tools.
For simple SEO suggestions or variations on keywords you’ve already chosen, or for helping come up with keywords from scratch, try using a free service like Ubersuggest or another alternative to UberSuggest with no ads Simply type in a keyword (like “jewelry”) and it will show you related terms that people are already searching.
