One of the most common mistakes by the new website owner is targeting the wrong keywords.  I will cover a few definitions and then we will dive right in to understanding how to know which keywords to target for your particular market.

The focus of your marketing campaign will be based around your Major Term Keywords.  These terms are your primary focus and will bring the highest amount of traffic to your website.  This could be organic SERP’s traffic or paid advertising.  Secondary Terms or Keyword Modifiers are the terms that will be related to your major terms but not your primary focus.  There are also keywords known as the Long-Tail, which are terms that are searched for less and not worth targeting with a specific campaign.  However, if done right, Long-Tail terms are great for increasing targeted traffic (I’ll cover that at another time).

Brainstorming – The very first step in doing proper keyword research is to brainstorm a massive “Seed List” from which all of your keywords will be selected.  For instance, if you are selling SEO Services (which I am, and I’m giving you an example of how to use a major term), then you will want to list everything that has anything to do with search engine optimization.  So my list includes the following: seo, search engine optimization, seo services, seo consultant, seo company, professional seo, seo guy, seo specialist, etc..

You will also want to think in terms of how your product answers questions in your market.  How does it solve a problem?  What does it do?  What is it used for?  You may want to think about specific keywords such as product terms, category terms, brand names, features/benefits, related terms, etc.

Your goal here is to simply generate a massive list.  It doesn’t need to be too difficult and you don’t have to overthink it, just build a big list.

Collecting Search Counts – After you have generated your list it’s time to make sense of it all.  Choose your favorite keyword tool (Wordtracker, Google, Keyword Universe, etc.) and start getting the counts for all of the terms.  It’s best to stick with one tool so you have consistent counts on all your terms.  We are going to list all of your keywords in a spreadsheet from most searched to least searched.

Make a spreadsheet with five columns.  The headings for all of your columns will be as follows: Search Term, Count, Relevance, Weighted, Entry URL 1, Entry URL 2.

Now drop in all your terms into the list.  The easiest way to do it is to download a .csv file and insert it straight into your spreadsheet.

Once listed, gauge the relevance of each term to your website.  If the term is “definitely” related to your website, give it a 100% in the Relevance column.  If the term is “maybe” related, give it a 50%.  If it’s “not” related, mark 0%.  Now simply carry the keyword count over into the Weighted column by multiplying it by its relevance.  So if your term gets 12,000 searches with a 50% relevance, then the Weighted count will be 6,000 (it will be 12,000 at 100%).  This will give you an accurate reading for how much traffic the keyword really brings.

You will now have a wonderful list with accurate counts for each keyword term.  Focus the majority of your effort on the terms that bring the most relevant, weighted traffic to your website!  You may be tempted to go after the “less competetive” terms, but don’t fall into that trap.  Why are they less competetive?  Because they won’t bring the traffic!  Go to where the people are.  There are excellent strategies for bringing in the less competetive terms, but your focus should be on the highest weighted relevant keywords, and we’ll cover how to get the rest of the terms later.

Enjoy!  More to come soon!

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I would like to introduce you to some basic terminology and concepts before diving into tactics and methods to drive more traffic to your website.  If you ever see an abbreviation or acronym in another post, simply come back here and find out what it means.

What does SEO stand for?  And what does that mean exactly?  It’s simple.  SEO simply means Search Engine Optimization.  Doing SEO on your website is what will bring natural traffic from organic search engine results pages (SERPs).  Organic traffic is free traffic.  It’s not Pay Per Click (PPC), it’s not affiliate marketing, it’s FREE.

When you type in any search term on a search engine (Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.) you are given a list of results.  Some results across the top and right hand side are PAID for – they are Pay Per Click, which can get extremely expensive if not done correctly.  The remaining results are natural listings that the spider or bot (search engines use these to crawl the web and create their listings) has created.

The Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) will list what they believe are the best and most relevant pages to your search term.  Click-thru rates are exponentially higher for the first page of results than they are for the second page.  Then, the first listing on the first results page has a click-thru rate exponentially higher than the remaining listings on the page.  So when someone talks about getting a #1 ranking on Google, you better believe it’s a good thing.  You will receive tons of free traffic to your website without having to pay a dime!

Now this all sounds well and good, unless you target the wrong keywords to optimize for.  Suppose you sell paintball equipment and want to generate more traffic.  You are excited and want the local paintball players to find your website, so you do some intense SEO on your website using the keyword “local paintball.”  After a few hours of work you find your listing is #1 on Google!  You’re ecstatic!  But… you still don’t have very much website traffic and your sales have not increased.  What happened?  For starters, the keyword “local paintball” only had a total of 1,900 searches worldwide in the month of August, 2009.  That’s only about 62 daily searches for that term across the entire globe!  Not exactly a money maker.

Proper SEO will include the following:  Keyword Research, Keyword Plan, Mapping Keywords to Content, Competition Research, On-Page Optimization, Off-Page Optimization, Page Rank Flow, Site Structure, Incoming Links, Anchor Text, Crawlability, and more.

I will create more posts describing these things in detail.  Don’t get overwhelmed either, it’s easier to understand than it looks!

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Seth Morrison here.  Just wanted to give you a quick understanding of who I am.  For the past few years I have searched out the best of the best in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Internet Marketing, Social Network Marketing, Small Business Management Principles, and How To Make Money Online.  I’ve opted into countless email lists, watched training videos, read books, subscribed to experts websites, and more.  I’ve paid for information, I’ve checked out the free stuff – I’ve done my homework.  Believe me, if you start looking through everything I have it will take you years as well!  What I have done here is pulled out the most useful information and compiled it for you.  Don’t waste your time googling a new term every day, looking for new information.  I’ve done that for you.

The reason I have brought all of this information together is simple.  You cannot, I repeat, you cannot run a successful business without understanding the right way to run a business.  You cannot be successful online without having a legitimate business.  My goal is to walk you, step-by-step, from the beginning to running a succesful business – whether online or offline.

If you’re interested in making money, and who isn’t, then subscribe to my blog and keep your eyes peeled for the information as good as gold.  I’ll do my best to bring you useful information that you can actually use.

Thanks,

Seth Morrison

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