So you have created your new website? Fantastic! Now we need to get as many of your target customers as possible to visit your site.

The first step is always to use Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising on Google. If you’re not sure what PPC is or why I recommend PPC before Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), please read my article on Using Paid Advertising on Google to Increase Traffic to Your Website.

Once you have your Pay Per Click in place, you should have a good idea of what keywords are driving better quality traffic to your website, which serves as a great place to start. Remember, one of the biggest keys to Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is good keyword research. You want to ensure that you optimise for the “right keywords”, the keywords that your target customer group are searching for. Otherwise, you are wasting your time. Imagine you have created a website promoting holidays to Java Indonesia. And you optimise your website for “Java” and it ranks #3 on Google – on initial thoughts you have done well.

However, if the people searching for “Java” are looking for Java coffee beans, then your site is of no relevance to them. You’ve optimised for a keyword that makes sense to you, but not your customers. They are not searching for “Java”, they might be searching for “Indonesia holidays”. You are missing out on all that traffic, because of poor keyword research and you have wasted all your time optimising for “Java”. This is what I call the “SEO Sucker Punch!” You think you’re doing well but in reality you’re competitors are laughing at you. Never presume that you know what you’re customers are searching for – always ensure that you do your research or ensure that your Search Engine Optimsation (SEO) consultants are doing their research for you.

When it comes to keywords, there are lots of SEO gurus out there who recommend optimising your site for up to 5 keywords. To me, that’s the basement level of SEO. Why would you only optimise your site for 5 keywords if your customer base was searching for 25 different keywords that relate to your product offerings? You’re missing out on 80% of your potential traffic.

And what about Long Tail? Long Tail keywords often contain 3 or more keywords in their search phrase and don’t give you high search volumes every day but they are extremely targeted, have high conversions and can be quite profitable. For example, in the case of I.T. on Tap, a long tail keyword is “Customer Relationship Systems for Accountants.” Not something that is searched for in high volumes but a keyword that is highly targeted and people that are looking for something that meet their needs. If you have not optimised for these keywords (again, this should come out of your research), then you’re missing out on dollars!

Remember as well, that Google will only ever show two pages from your site for a particular keyword. So don’t get over exuberant and optimise every single page for the same bunch of keywords. Instead, you want to look at your site and each keyword (or group of keywords) and then pick the best two pages that have the most compelling content with regards to your keywords. And these are the two pages you want to optimise.

For example, one of my first clients was an insurance company that offered a range of different insurance products. We optimised their home page for such products as car insurance and home insurance, plus one other page of relevance. However, for business insurance, we created and optimised the business insurance landing page and a lower level page. Of course we then used good internal linking with quality anchor text and as a result my client ranked in the top 5 on Google for all their relevant search terms.

So you can hopefully see just how important keywords are to you in order to get large numbers of high quality, targeted customers coming to your website. Ensure that whatever agency you use to take care of your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) spends adequate time doing their research. Otherwise, you’re failing to get the maximum return on your spend. Good luck!

Internet Marketing Manager

I.T. on Tap

December 02, 2008