Keywords are the words or short phrases that businesses embarking on a SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION campaign choose because they want to come up at the top of the natural search results when a potential customer types the phrase in to their search engine.  Starting a SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION campaign without first finding the correct keywords is like starting a journey to somewhere that you have never been without using a map.  How do you know that you are going starting out in the right direction?  More importantly, how would you ever know if you arrived at the right place?

 Thorough keyword research is essential for small businesses who are investing resources into making sure that their website appears in the search engine results for potential customers that are interested in buying their products or services.  Though it sounds intuitive, my experience has taught me that people often make mistakes in choosing the right keywords, and sometimes these mistakes are critical and require time and even more resources to correct.

The most common mistakes that small businesses make when selecting their keywords are those having to do with keyword search TRAFFIC.  First, most businesses (and, unfortunately, some SEO companies) do not take the time to use available tools to find out if keywords actually have any search traffic coming to them.   There are tools (some free, some at a nominal cost) that can tell you how many searches there are each month for any combination of keyword phrases.

For those businesses that do look at the raw search volume numbers, there is a temptation to optimize the website for only those keywords which show massive amounts of monthly searches, and not necessarily those that have modest search volume but are most RELEVANT.  Remember, you cannot make your site valuable to someone who has absolutely no interest in buying your product or service.   Be specific when you start your campaign and start with the very low hanging fruit – for those people specifically looking for your exact product or service.  One is far more likely to have a conversion rate of over 90% of consumers looking for your exact model (“Fender American Vintage Stratocaster ’57) than even 1% of consumers searching for a large broad category term (“electric guitars”).

Also, very broad terms tend to be extremely competitive.  If the level of COMPETITION is too high for a broad term, a very good professional search engine optimization program could make you number one in those search results, but it may take a very large investment in an SEO program and certainly a lot of time.  Many of the same tools that measure search term traffic also measure the competition level for keyword phrases.  A good approach is to keep those broad search terms in mind, but focus on achievable rankings on well trafficked, targeted and relevant keywords in the short term, and this will make it easier to rank high for highly competitive broad terms in the long term.

The best approach is to balance the TRAFFIC, the RELEVANCE, and the COMPETITION in order to find a set of keywords that will work best for YOUR business.  By doing the right amount of research at the beginning of the search engine optimization process, you can save lots of time, money, and frustration later.