Optimising for the right key phrases is like knocking on the doors of people that will become your best customers. Optimise for the wrong ones and you might as well be talking to yourself - because no one is listening!

What are Keyphrases?

Internet Search Engines (e.g. Google, Yahoo) are there to help people find information they are looking for. People will enter a few words that relate to what they are looking for (a Keyphrase) and the search engine will find web pages with the best match for that keyphrase in order of relevance, most relevant first – simple as that. Use 2-4 words, e.g. ‘lavender oil’, ‘precision engineer Sheffield’, etc…

What about my company website?

The thing to remember is that the search engines work on behalf of the searcher (your potential customer), not the searched (You). The more relevant the search results (to the searcher) the more likely the searcher is to use the search engine.

Your best strategy is to give the search engine highly relevant information about the key phrases most relevant to your ‘A’ grade customers.

Start with your best guess

As a start point, you will need up to 10 business key phrases. You need to make you best guess using the following sources:

  • You and colleagues – just write them down, agree on your best ten.
  • Get someone technical to look at your competitors’ meta data.
  • Online keyword suggestion tools – can be a bit hit and miss though.
  • Ask someone you know in another business.

Your ‘A’ grade customers know best - The BEST way is to ask one of your ‘A’ grade customers the following question for you MAIN product or service:

“What would you type in to a search engine if you were looking for XXX products or services?” Where XXX is your MAIN product of service. You need their first answer quickly off the top of their head, not too much thinking! Then ask again:

“If that didn’t work, what else would you type?” Repeat until they run out of ideas, then repeat the whole lot with 4 other ‘A’ grade customers.

Now test your key phrases - In brief, your next steps are to optimise for your 10 best guess key phrases, check where they rank and finally use your website visitor stats to see if they are actually bringing traffic – this will be covered in more detail in the next issue…

I hope this helps take the guess work out of discovering your best business key phrases.

Alan Easter • Arkom Creative Technology • t 0844 375 0742 • w www.arkom.co.uk