Lets be honest here so many website owners understand the need to get visitors to their sites, but they are their own worst enemies and quite often go about it totally in the wrong way. By making the wrong choices at the beginning or not making the right changes, they struggle to rank well in the search engines. The crucial first step to success is finding keywords you can rank well for. Now I know for many of you this sounds really obvious but you’d be amazed how many over look this plain fact all the time.

Ok Here’s Stating The Obvious I Know

The difference between getting ranked on the first page of the major search engines and not being there, even being on the second page, is huge. Even though it is great coming close to the first page for a competitive keyword, it still doesn’t unleash the potential of your site.

Over 95% of all search engine hits happen on webpages on the first page of search results. The higher up you are on the first page, the more hits you get with almost 75% of all clicks going to the websites in the first three positions.

Only The Top Counts

I am sure this makes it clear that you need to be at the top to see the results. This is where it becomes crucial to choose the right keyword that you can rank well for. You will find lots written about targeting long-tail keywords on search engine optimization websites. Long-tail keywords do get less hits than the shorter versions of the words, but in fact bring in much more targeted visitors.

Here’s How:

If you have a site that sells beds, getting ranked for the term “beds” would be wonderful, but a top three positions for “buy orthopaedic beds” will bring you real potential customers. You would also be able to rank well for this a lot easier.

Proven Steps You Should Take

Here are the steps you need to follow when deciding for yourself which keywords you can rank well for: – write down the keywords related to your website (for example beds, mattress, base sets) – think about the different variations of this word that you would search for (orthopaedic bed, queen size bed) – add action words to this (buy orthopaedic bed, online queen size bed sale)

A useful tool which will help in drawing up a workable list is the Google keyword tool which as you know Ive written about many times before here on my blog. Just search for it and it will be the first result that comes up. You can then enter single words or combinations of words in the tool to see exactly how often they get searched globally and in certain countries.

Don’t Get Pulled Into This Common trap

People often try to rank for the keywords with the highest search volume. That is not a bad idea if you can manage it, but the competition is extremely stiff. So it is usually better to try and rank for keywords that have a smaller search volume, but are specifically targeted at the service or products you want to sell.

Once the keyword research is done in this way you will have a list you can confidently say about: “These are keywords I can rank well for”.

To get them to those top rankings you then need to write informative and in depth content on all of the keywords you have selected and add it to your site. This then needs to be followed up with link building to these respective pages. If you don’t choose your keywords wisely you will be wasting weeks and months of your time chasing results that you will never get.

To your success

Tony