You must now select the right keywords for each of your individual pages (keywords, or search terms, are what you expect search engine users will type in the search box to find a page like yours).
The best keywords will be those that are popular search terms (terms that people actually search for), and that clearly describe the purpose and the content of your pages. They will also have to be keywords for which there is relatively low competition.
There is no sense in trying to optimize your pages for super-competitive keywords where you don't stand a chance of ranking well (most one-word keyphrases fall into this category: for example, it would be impossible to rank well for the keyword 'book'). It would be better to target phrases like:
* 'cook book' - easier but still competitive
* 'italian cook book' - easier and less competitive
* 'northern italian cook book' - easier and not as competitive.
The more specific your keyphrase, the easier it will be for your site to rank well. You should therefore target keyphrases with three or more words to significantly improve your chances.
Choosing the wrong keywords can throw off your entire search engine optimization strategy. It will force you to re-work your pages for new keywords and wait for the search engines to re-crawl your site. For this reason, a few hours trying to pick the right keywords is time well spent.
To start, take a look at your pages. Look at them carefully and write down the words and phrases that best define your site. Try to build a list of two or three word phrases. Once you have developed this list of potential keyphrases you are ready for the next step: to analyze the demand and supply for those keyphrases, and choose the best ones (those with good demand and not enough supply).
Checking keyword demand
We will first check the demand for your selected keyphrases using a popular free tool: Overture's Search Term Suggestion Tool:
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
This tool will show you how many people search for those terms in a month's period in Overture , a popular pay per click search engine. This tool will show you only those searches conducted in Overture, however, the relative popularity of search terms will be very similar in other search engines as well (there are also other more sophisticated tools like Wordtracker , the tool of choice of most search engine optimization experts).
In addition to telling you if your selected keyphrases are popular search terms, Overture's search term tool will show you other keyphrases that you may not have thought about, which may be even more relevant to your site.
For example, if your first keyphrase was "Italian Restaurant", the Search Term Suggestion Tool will also display other popular related search terms, like:
* "Gourmet Italian Restaurant"
* "Northern Italian Restaurant"
* "Italian Restaurant Pizzeria"
* "Italian Restaurant Miami", etc.
You may also try other keyphrases, for example: "Italian Cuisine", and the Search Tool may come up with more specific keyphrases, like:
* "Fine Italian Cuisine"
* "Italian Cuisine Miami"
* "Northern Italian Cuisine"
* "Italian Cuisine Fine Dining"
* "Gourmet Italian Cuisine", etc.
What you have done is to validate and enlarge your pool of popular, in-demand, potential keyphrases for your web page. The next step is to check the supply, or, in other words, how much competition there is for your selected keywords in the actual search engines.
Checking Keyword Supply
Now, get your list of keyphrases, go to Google ( http://www.google.com ) and type-in each of your keyphrases in the search box. Enter your keyphrases within quotation marks (to filter-out less relevant results), and see how many results each individual query produces, making a note of those with a relatively small number of results (less competition). You will stick with the keyphrase that:
1. Best describes the topic and content of your page
2. Is a popular search term according to Overture's Search Term Suggestion Tool
3. Generates a relatively small number of results after performing the Google search.
If "Gourmet Italian Restaurant" is the keyphrase that best meets these three criteria, it will become your primary keyphrase. To get even better results, you can choose a second keyphrase to make your page more relevant to an even more specific niche. For example, if your restaurant is in Miami, you can consider "Miami" a second keyphrase (also called a 'qualifier'). Once you have chosen the keyphrases for your main page (homepage) do the same for the other pages on your site.
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