Having a strong understanding of your most relevant keywords is arguably the most important aspect of any SEO plan. Strong keywords drive traffic to your website, ensure you are indexed properly by search engines, and increase your ranking in search engine queries. In the following blog I’ve outlined a few tools and techniques for optimizing your keywords.

1. Google Keyword Tool

Google to the rescue once again. Google has a keyword generation tool which you can access here (Google Keyword Tool). By searching keywords related to your business you are able to retrieve a number of related keywords. For this example I typed in “Web Design” and I received a result that looked something like this.

This search identifies the most searched keywords within my industry, giving me a solid foundation from which to start making my keyword list. By clicking the “Add’ button on the right side of the interface you are able to compile a list of keywords to use later.

Before we leave this interface I’d like to talk about a few other parameters you can search relating to keywords.

You are also able to filter the results to show:

Show Estimated Ad Position

Show Estimated Avg. Cost Per Click

Show Search Volume Trends

Show Highest Volume Occurred In

This information will further strengthen your list of keywords, providing you with quantitative data. This is truly the start of building a successful online advertising campaign.

2. Competitive Analysis

So you have a started a list of keywords, now what? Well the next step is seeing what your competition are up to. By typing your keywords into a search engine like Google you can find out which companies rank the highest. Websites that control the first, second, or third positions in any search results usually have a few things going for them like high ranking back links, and excellent meta data. The great thing is, is that you can view what keywords and meta data information they are using, and you can apply it to your newly formed list.

So once again I’ve search web design, and this is what displayed:

I’ve got some steep competition to say the least, but let’s take a look at what these websites are using for keywords, and find a way to capitalize on what is working for them. Usually the first three results will give you a sufficient keyword sample to draw from.

Once you are on your competitors website you need to view the source code. To do that, click “View” in your browser, from the drop down list select “View Source”. A plain text window will open that looks like this:

The information highlighted in yellow is what we are after, the keyword meta data, and the description meta data. So from this quick review of my competition I know that this particular web design company is using the following keywords:

Calgary web design, web design Calgary, Calgary web designers, Calgary website promotion, Calgary web company, Calgary web companies, Alberta web design, Alberta web designers, web designers in Calgary, Calgary web designers, website design, website promotion, Calgary web design specialists

From this info I can further strengthen my keyword list.

3. I’ve Made My Keyword List, Now What?

This is where online marketing becomes fun. You now get to fine-tune your website with the keyword list you’ve created. You will want to start by adding your keyword list to the meta data information on your site (this includes the title tags, keyword meta data and description meta data). This will help search engines properly index your website, and because you’ve created such a solid list of keywords based on quantitative information, you know they will be successful.

We aren’t done quite yet. Keywords should also be scattered throughout the content on your website. Don’t overdue it but use the keywords as consistently as possible without degrading the readability of your content. Keywords used on your site should also be bolded, italicized, or linked to other sections of your website. Giving more weight to keywords tells the search engines that this is important information to your website, and you will be ranked more highly because of it.

4. Google Adwords

Creating a Google Adwords campaign is all about knowing which keywords will be the most successful. Although I won’t go into detail about how to create an Adwords campaign in this post, I would like to mention a few key points.

Google will compare the keywords you have in your Adwords ads, against the content you have on your landing page. So if your ad reads something like this “Calgary Website Design – Calgary’s premier source for website design and development” and the same keywords are located on your landing page, Google will give your ad a more positive ranking. There are other factors that come into play when creating Adwords campaigns, such as CPC (Cost-Per-Click) but every little bit of optimization helps.

5. Conclusion

There are many other ways to optimize your keywords to improve your SEO, however, this is an excellent starting point for any company interested in building a successful keyword list for their online marketing campaign.