Finding the right keywords for your website

So you are thinking about your website and want to know how to optimise your website for search engine keywords or what keywords you should target in order to benefit from organic search engine optimisation (SEO).

You have just made one very smart move to moving your business to the next level. Up until recently many people and businesses thought that having a website would mean more visibility and more business. While a website helps you acheive all of this it can’t do this without search engine optimisation. SEO starts with keyword research, which then determines the keywords you should probably target for your website.

An E-Koncept example case study

Let’s say that you run an website about retail golf shop and want to launch your website selling your products online. Sounds simple doesn’t it? Well it is, if you do it correctly.

Lets use the Google keyword tool to see what people are searching for related to the keyword ‘Golf’.

Google keyword tool results

Note: I have regionalised the search to ‘New Zealand’ reflecting a New Zealand market share. I also changed the match type to exact.

You can see that the keyword ‘Golf’ is the most common keyword searched around our market, but this is probably not a term that should be targeted on its own as this will be portrayed throughout your website anyway.

Relevant keywords for your online retail store would be:

Golf Clubs – roughly 1,300 searches per month (likely to be a lot more)
Golf Equipment - roughly 880 searches per month
Golf Balls – roughly 480 searches per month
Golf shop - roughly 590 searches per month

Other Keywords you could target through an article or relevant content:

Golf course and golf courses – combined roughly 1800 searches.
PGA golf - roughly 720 searches.

Another thing to note about this tool is the level of competition in the online market for these search terms. A full green bar gives the indication that there is a lot of competition for that keyword and may require more work over time to rank for that search term. Usually the highly searched terms are more competitive, which of course makes sense.

As you can see you now have about 4 – 6 keyword phrases you can optimise your website for. Does this mean you are going to get instant traffic? No it doesn’t. This is the first step to optimising your website for common keyword searches.

Optimising an exisiting website or building an optimised website for these search terms is the next step to getting some credible online search engine results.