Search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN handle 16 Billion searches each month in North America. These three Internet giants control the most popular websites in Canada. Knowing the terms your customers use when searching for your product or service is critical to increase your Online Traffic.

The Best Keywords may not be Obvious

There are as many different ways to search as there are types of people. The specific keywords and phrases that bring in the most online traffic may not be the ones you first assume.

Keyword Research

Not all your website visitors become customers. Keyword Research helps you discover the most valuable keywords for your website. Not just the terms that bring in the most online traffic, but the ones that bring in the most business.

5 Ways to Find the Best Keywords

1) Listen to Your Customers

• Learn their vocabulary
• Understand how they think
• Find out what motivates them

It's about knowing which words will grab the attention of the visitors you're trying to attract.

2) Ask for Suggestions.

Your sales staff and CSR's speak with your customers every day. Ask your employees who have direct contact with your customers which terms your customers are using.

3) Google Analytics

Google Analytics can reveal the most common keywords visitors are currently using to find your website. An excellent starting point for further keyword research.

4) Keyword Research Tools

Tools such as Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery are indispensable to keyword research. I use a free keyword tool called Web CEO. Enter a keyword for your business and the tools will suggest a list of related keywords. They will then tell you the number of searches for that keyword in the past 24 hours, as well as the number of sites currently using that keyword. The less competition there is, the greater the chance of generating online traffic.

5) Google Trends

Enter your potential keyword into Google Trends and you'll see whether a keyword is rising or declining in popularity over time.

The search term SEO has been steadily rising in search volume since 2003. The term World Wide Web has been steadily declining.

Ready to SEO!

Incorporate your keywords that bring in the most online traffic into both the content and structure of your website. Title tags, headings, internal links, inbound links, Alt-tags, are just a few areas to include your keywords.

Search engine game is fun and excited, during which you can see a page goes from nothing to something in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). People tend to spend a lot of time to manually build the links and optimize the pages for optimal search engine placement, and overall it's paid off in a big way.

It isn't really all that hard to obtain a higher ranking in SERPs if you follow some good SEO practice, but maintaining that position is a whole different story.

If you have started promoting your web site and track your positions in SERPs. You will find that your pages can stay quite stable in some key words once you get there, but for another group of key words, they will be rolled out further and further till disappeared in the result.

So, what makes them so different?

Usually, the key words are categorized as Long-Tail key words and Competitive key words. Competitive key words are the popular key words which will bring you a lot of traffic if a page can list high against them. It's competitive since a lot of web site optimize their page and try to get a better position. For those Long-Tail key words, they are related to the competitive key words, but much fewer page talking about them or no too many webmaster would like to optimize their page for them. An example here is that "web hosting" is a competitive key word, but "family web hosting" is much less competitive.

If your page ranks high in the SERPs against a competitive key words, it will drop down quickly if we don't continuously promote your site with that key word. But for the long-tail key words, once you get to the top page, it would be hard to be second since there are less competitors.

A lot of successful stories have told us that obtaining front page rankings for several long-tail keywords can actually drive more traffic and be more profitable in the long run than ranking for a competitive phrase and not having the patience to keep it up there!

Strategy for Competitive Key Words

"Natural link" is the best way to win a better position against the key words. When another site owner links to your site/pages simply because they are a good resource, then you've just received a natural link. When you manually build the back links and no one else is linking to you then you are manually ranking your own site and if the keyword(s) you are targeting is very competitive, you simply will not hold that ranking for long, unless you constantly build those links and never stop!

So, the ways to avoid dropping down for the competitive key word is to provide the good content for that key words, and have the other webmaster give you a vote voluntarily.

Strategy for Long-Tail Key Words

Obtaining front page rankings for several long-tail keywords can actually drive more traffic and be more profitable in the long run than ranking for a competitive phrase and not having the patience to keep it up there!

The reason for this is because your competition, in most cases, for a long-tail keyword will be far less competitive, meaning it will retain top 10 rankings for far longer without constantly having to build links!

Summary

Use article marketing, link exchanges and other link building and SEO strategies to obtain top 10 rankings for long-tail key words, but don't spend your time manually ranking a site or page for a competitive one, it just doesn't pay off in the long run! If the content isn't compelling enough to rise on it's own, it's not worth your time to manually push it to the top.

There is nothing wrong with using articles etc. to get a site off the ground that is targeting a competitive phrase, but it should be the user's interest in the content that brings it to the top, not the Webmasters will to be on top!

If you want to achieve top-10 rankings for a competitive phrase, write good content that invites natural links. It's far less stressful and you're much more likely to hold that ranking for an extended amount of time!