Keyword Selection and SEO

Keyword selection is a vital building block in any SEO campaign. With so many different sites on the web and so many different terms being entered into search engines, choosing the best terms to target has become a complex process.

Whilst any business would love to be ranked on the first page of Google's search results for widely-searched 'trophy' keywords, for businesses with all but the largest budgets for SEO this is financially inviable. Often users searching these keywords are looking for information on a broad topic rather than a specific business or service. This means that your web site will be in competition with both informative and commercial sites for the traffic associated with those terms. As with any other business proposition, potential return on investment (ROI) is the most important thing to bear in mind. The investment required to target these key terms will be high and the return often lower than expected.

It is important to consider the conversion rate of the key terms you choose to target; in other words the percentage of users searching these terms that will end up purchasing something at your web site. Conversion rates vary widely between terms so there are no hard and fast rules, but in general specific terms are more likely to convert than vague ones.

Once you have discounted these 'trophy' keywords, it might seem like a good idea to target the remaining terms that are searched most frequently. These key terms will be extremely competitive, so highly ranked businesses spend a lot of money to stay that way. Depending on the size of your business and the size of your budget, this might be an effective strategy, but for many smaller businesses these terms will be too competitive to yield a satisfactory ROI.

At the other end of the scale, there is little to be gained from targeting key words that are searched very infrequently. Whilst ranking for these terms is often easy, it still takes an investment of time, effort and most importantly money. Targeting keywords that fall between these two extremes will often be the best way to proceed with your campaign - in terms of traffic, this will give you the best balance between difficulty and usefulness.

Once you have selected the best key terms or asked a business with the relevant expertise to do so on your behalf, you will be ready to start work. There are a number of different techniques used to optimise a web site for search engines, but the most effective and widely used is link building. If link building features in your SEO campaign, you will also have to consider keyword profiles when choosing which terms to target. Your web site will look unnatural to search engine crawlers if back links are limited to one or two terms. This can result in ranking penalties and in extreme cases even de-indexing.

There are so many different things to consider when selecting keywords for an SEO campaign that it is often best to leave the decision to an experienced and reputable agency.