How to Determine Keywords for your Website

• Know your site inside and out.  Know what is featured and what is not featured.

• Determine who your customer is. Be as detailed as you can be.

• Think like a searcher - not a business or website owner.   If you are an Attorney - one of your keywords is "Lawyer" since only Attorneys call themselves Attorneys

• Figure out what your customer wants. Write down questions about your product or service that your customers would ask.

• Read your Web copy as if you were your customer. Identify the points that draw you in; make notes.

• Start to brainstorm on generic keywords based on your customer profiles and key features of your site.   Chances are if you are selling jewelry you will want to rank high with the keyword "jewelry" - this is unrealistic.  By understanding your niche you should start to come up with modifiers for your generic keywords.   You can use modifiers based on location, price,  types, or industry.  For example "Handmade Jewelry", "Moroccan Jewelry", "Handmade Tunisian Jewelry".

• Compare your list with the keywords that your competitors use on their sites. Take advantage of the valuable, relevant keywords that these sites use to add to your list of potential keywords and key phrases. Take a look at their source code to see what they are using for meta tags

• Use a search tool like Wordtracker or Overture to determine which of your keywords customers use when searching.

• If you are location dependent - add the names of surrounding cities to your keywords.  If you are a Land Surveyor living in San Diego - Use "Land Surveying San Diego" or "Land Surveyor La Jolla".

• Pay attention to capturing variations.  Use both "Land Surveying" and "Land Surveyor" in your keywords.  Even common misspellings are useful to notice.  This is particularly useful when attempting to carve out a niche from your competitors.  Use variations that your competitors are not using.

• Use the most effective keywords to market your Web site.

• Take a look at your your analytics.  Google Analytics will show you what words visitors are using to find your site.

• Organize your keywords into phrases and be sure to use those phrases in your website pages.