Step 2: Keywords and Content

Keywords are words or phrases that you know people will use to find your website. These are what you want to build your content around.

Finding the Right Keywords

How would you search for your website? A garden supply store in Oregon could use “garden supply Oregon,” “garden supply store Oregon,” or “garden supple near me” as keywords. However, how you would search for your website may not be the same way your potential customers will search for it. Your content and its keywords should be geared toward what people are actually doing, not what seems intuitively correct or what words you think they are using.

Google’s Keyword Planner

The world’s leading search engine has a FREE keyword planner that anyone can use. Type in a phrase, and the planner will come up with several phrases and keywords. It will also tell you how often people search for the keywords in a month and how many websites serve those keywords. Choose keywords that are highly searched for and not serviced by very many websites.

Keyword Length

Don’t let the word “keyword” fool you. “Keywords” can be between one and four words long and don’t count prepositions.  Generally speaking, the one- and two-word keywords will be dominated by larger companies that small businesses can’t compete with. If you choose keywords that are three or four words long, you give yourself a better chance at getting near the top of the search engine rankings. As you improve your content and grow your keyword list, they’ll help you rank better for the keywords that they contain within them. For example, the keyword “Oregon grocery store coupons” will also help rank for “grocery store coupons,” “grocery store” and “coupons.” Be careful not to repeat keywords or your pages will compete with each other for rankings.