Most people believe that the way to a successful Internet business is to attract as many visitors as possible to their website. They flood their web pages with keywords that lead to tons of hits, but they’re not necessarily focusing on visitors who are in the market for their particular product. Sure, it’s great to bring in 500 hits a day to your website, but if only 50 of them are from potential clients, that means 450 of those people probably hit the back button as soon as your page loaded. What’s the point of that?
When you’re choosing which keywords to use for search engine optimization, it’s good to think of it like fishing. For example, let’s say you’re fishing for fluke. If you cast a wide enough net in the right waters, you’ll get a fluke or two, but you’ll have to dig through a ton of other fish and sea life that you’re not interested in to get to them. However, if you do some research so that you can use the particular bait fluke like and fish in the specific spots where fluke hang out, you’ll be a lot more successful.
Here are some tips for identifying your target market and pinpointing which keywords will attract your ideal clients to your site:
- Be specific. Rather than using “cooking classes,” use “baking classes for pastry chefs.”
- Identify your niche. If you’re a singer, what kind of singer are you? Using “a wedding singer who specializes in 80s dance hits” will attract people looking for your particular services and not someone who wants to hire a new lead for their opera.
- Use keywords that indicate “buying”. A person searching for “electrical” might be doing do-it-yourself research; a person searching for “electrician” is looking for a contractor.
- Check the competition for ideas. What keywords do they use?
- Don’t go overboard. Repetition of keywords and phrases comes off “spammy” and repels potential clients and search engines alike.
- Do use your keywords in titles, links, meta tags and headlines. Give your clients and search engines a way to find and identify you and your specific services.
Be sure to use the proper keywords for your particular market and pay attention to your keyword density. Keyword density is the percentage of times your keyword or key phrases show up in comparison to the total number of words on your page. Most expert recommendations hover between the 1-6% mark, but you don’t need to get overly formulaic about your keyword usage. Just use common sense and keep your target market in mind.
Tags: keywords, target market