Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be a confusing subject. What is organic SEO? Organic SEO is the process of fine tuning (otherwise referred to as optimizing) your web site to reflect specific keywords and phrases that are relevant to your business and for which you want to attract visitors to your site who are searching for such keywords.

This optimization relates to a variety of elements, not only on your website's homepage, but the sub pages as well. Those elements can include things like title tags, Meta tags, alt tags, link structure, link popularity, and the content of the site itself. Search engines "crawl" or scan your web site and normally start with your homepage working their way to other pages of the site.

Step 1: The first step before optimizing your web site is to do your research. Know your web site traffic. How are visitors currently finding your web site? You can use Google Analytics or a log analyzer to get a general idea of your current traffic.

What is a Keyword Research?

You can also conduct a keyword research. What is keyword research? Keyword research is the process of uncovering and selecting the appropriate keywords for your site.

Keywords are the building blocks for SEO. Although the days of the keyword Meta tag being the golden ticket to top rankings are undoubtedly over, keywords themselves are still one of the most important aspects of good SEO. It's not about stuffing a hundred keywords into Meta tags or your copy to get high rankings. It's about uncovering the keywords that make the most sense for your business and using them in a way that drives targeted, qualified traffic to your site.

Very simply, it involves undertaking an often painstaking investigation to discover what terms people search for, how often, how many and which other sites appear for those terms. Keyword research is a strategic exercise that enables you to determine which queries your site is most relevant for and which phrases you can feasibly expect a return, then optimize accordingly.

How do I choose keywords?

You can probably think of at least 10 - 20 keywords off the top of your head that are relevant to your web site. The way you think about your organization or business may be very different than how your customers or the average Joe thinks about it. For example, a financial institution might call their product and "auto loan", but you or I would probably use the term "car loan" when searching online. May be we would search for "car loans" instead of "car loan". Similarly, the terms you automatically think of may be too broad or widely applicable to be appropriate for SEO. There are keyword research tools (both paid and unpaid) that are essential for seeing what users are truly searching for. These tools generally house data on search engine queries that have been conducted over the past month, more often over the past year. They give you an idea of which specific terms are searched for and how often. Keyword research tools typically allow you to enter one term and get back other related terms, including synonyms, variations, plurals, and misspellings.

The best keywords have:

• Strong relevance to your site: terms for which you have content to support.
• Relatively high search volume: terms people are actually using to search.
• Relatively low competition: terms with a small number of search results.

Without criteria, you'll typically land in one of two scenarios.

Scenario 1: you choose highly popular and competitive keywords. You end up with terms so broad that about a billion other sites are competing for them. You don't stand a chance of getting ranking.

Scenario 2: You choose very narrowly targeted or niche keywords. You end up with terms that are so specific that no one actually searches for them. A top ranking is wasted because no one's there to see it.

Again, conducting keyword research is normally not fun but for me, it's something I actually enjoy. If you are interested in having your web site optimized, we always recommends keyword research. We want to make sure that you are using the right keywords for your business. See SEO 101 - Step 2: Keyword Rich Content. To learn more, contact us.