OPTIMIZE

Content and META-data:
Keyword Research

Before you start optimizing your website, you need to know what keywords your target group is using. Your keywords are the words and phrases that people might use to find your products, brands, services, or information via search engines.

You can probably come up with a few ideas very quickly. If you run a travel portal, keywords such as: "travel," "vacation," and "holiday" might be good ideas. But there is more. In fact, a lot more! A deep research into the topic of "travel" would probably show more than 100,000 different keywords people use when they search for travel information.

Does that mean you have to target all those keywords? No, absolutely not. You should use such research only as a good starting point - to learn the search behavior of your audience. Find out what they call things, how they identify subjects, and how precisely or broad they generally search.

You may find out that the majority of searches for "travel" come from people using combinations of "travel" and a certain city, country or region. Or you may verify that people use "travel" more than "vacation."

All this should be used in the way you tailor your web pages and the way you write your text, titles and META-tags. If most people in your target group use the term "travel" to describe your product, then so should you.

TIP:
Your most important keywords will often include some of the following:

• Your company name and all used synonyms and abbreviations of it
• All product and brand names that you feature on your website
• Countries, regions, or cities you have an association with - often in combination with the one of the words above
• Relevant generic terms for your business, brands, or services (e.g. car, house, or boat)
• Combinations of 2 and 3 keywords - many people search for phrases rather than single words

We recommend using WordTracker.com to research keywords, or go to the keyword tools category in ODP to get a list of most of the available tools and services.

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