When designing a plan for their online marketing strategy, every marketer looks for an edge in making sure their content is found. People search services, shop for products, and hunt for information online more and more each day. Keyword optimization allows you to narrow in on your niche market and get content directly in the hands of those intended to see it.

Building the foundation for your SEO campaigns begins with developing your target audience, and then choosing the right keywords that align with this audience. A great place to begin when developing a list of keywords is brainstorming the idea of how many different possibilities there are when people refer to your business, brand, or products. Understanding a typical searcher's persona will help you narrow your focus.

By doing the proper research and covering all of the bases before beginning your SEO project, you can reveal which keywords give you the highest return potential. To find the best strategy, be patient. Search engines can take weeks to update your ranking, especially if your site is not routinely updated.

Keyword Brainstorm

Data must be collected and studied in order to find keywords most fitting to your content. SEO tools help you to gather the essential information needed to project the right keywords. The common misconception is that these tools are out of reach due to cost or complexity.  There are plenty of paid and free tools available to help you optimize your word list to target the audience you want. For options that won’t burn a hole in your wallet try Google AdWords, Analytics, and Keyword Estimator to understand what keywords consumers are searching for and what phrases are creating a buzz in search engines.

Grouping into Niche Phrases

When deciding on words or short phrases, you want to ensure that they aren’t too vague but also aren’t too broad. It’s important to keep your terms general enough that people are actively searching for the area of interest but narrow enough that you are targeting the right people in that focused search. The area that is best to target are short phrases that give small detail to a directed area...one word keywords are too general. For example, instead of searching for “marketing” you might search for “best practices of online content marketing”. Choosing keywords for location based searches are crucial for companies doing business in a geo-targeted area. People using search engines almost always include their location when looking for a service or product in their area. For example, “microbrewery” would most commonly be searched for as “microbrewery in Phoenix, Arizona”.

Evaluating the KEI (Keyword Efficiency Index)

When putting together your list of keywords, the goal is to find the words that will have the largest impact on your website’s visibility to users searching for key terms. The KEI is a formula used to measure the impact of your SEO keywords and how frequent each word is searched by users.  It calculates the value of search volume (popularity squared) divided by the number of competing pages.

Prioritizing Your Keywords

You are only able to highlight a number of keywords per landing page. Be selective when choosing keywords keeping in mind the content for which you are optimizing. From the list that you gather, do your research as discussed in Keyword Brainstorming and pick attainable and powerful words that best describes your content on each page.

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