Search
Engine Optimization is a web design art. In a perfect
world, not one byte of code is written prior to in depth
web design planning. You will find a lot of information on this site
about our web design process.
STEP ONE: Keyword Analysis
What
are you promoting? Do you have a product? Do you have a service?
What is your UNIQUE SELLING PROPOSITION. Why should
people buy from you? Let me explain those last two questions. Your
USP is WHY people should buy from you.
"It's
a fact ... if you are going to succeed online you MUST have
a great search engine position." - Charlie
Page, Directory of Ezines |
Do you
remember how Domino's Pizza began? "A fresh, hot pizza delivered
to your door in 30 minutes or less -- OR IT'S FREE!" That guarantee
no longer exists but it served its purpose. It presented the USP
in a grand way.
What
does USP have to do with keyword analysis? Let me simply
give you an example that applies to our web design business.
The natural thought for the keyword is web design.
Potential customers also search for: web site design, custom web
site design, web page design, web site design company, ecommerce
web design, affordable web design, internet web site design, professional
web design, small business web design, web design services -- and
many, many more.
Our
Unique Selling Proposition is that our company
specializes in small business web design for online marketers needing
professional search
engine optimization. We can design an entire site or a page. We're
affordable. We provide web design services. We consider ourselves
professionals.
So we
have quite a few keyword search terms to build into our site. How
do we know what people search for on the Internet? We use a sophisticated
software program that asks the search engines what people have
keyed in as search terms. We receive a weekly report from one of
our partners that shows the "most searched for" keywords in the
past 24 hours as well as a 60-day trend.
We maintain
our own database of keyword trends that we have
built over the past two years. And, yes, sex is still the most
searched for keyword on the Internet, but I wouldn't recommend
trying to break into that business.
We also
must mention the importance of NICHE MARKETING as
it applies to keywords. Web design is a major category. Small business
web design is a niche within that category. Online marketing web
design is a niche within the small business web design niche.
Your
first step, therefore, is to discover and define the appropriate
keywords for your product or service. Let me give you another example.
Tattoos is one of the most searched terms on the Internet. My client
is located in Little Rock, Arkansas. Rather than compete with the
whole world using tattoos as the primary keyword, we used little
rock tattoos and got a number one search engine ranking.
