Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your website

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Week 1: Keywords

Ask any SEO pro what the single most important part of an SEO campaign is and we

bet you’ll get this answer: “Keyword choice!” Here’s why: The keywords you choose

this week

will be the focus of your entire optimization process. Keywords (also referred

to as keyword phrases, keyphrases, keyterms, and just terms) are the short, descriptive

phrases that you want to be found with on the search engines. If you put the time into

choosing powerful keywords now, you are likely to be rewarded not only with higher

ranks, but also with these benefits:

• A well-optimized site, because your writers and other content producers will feel

more comfortable working with well-chosen keywords as they add new site text

• More click-throughs once searchers see your listing, because your keywords will

be highly relevant to your site’s content

• More conversions once your visitors come to your site, because the right key-

words will help you attract a more targeted audience

As SEO expert Jill Whalen told us, “There is more than one way to skin the

SEO cat…. There is no special formula that will work for every site all the time.” And

this applies to your keyword targeting strategy. We suggest that by the end of this

week, you should have 10 target keyword phrases in hand. We believe that this is a

reasonable level for an hour-a-day project. But you may be more comfortable with 2 or

20 keywords. We welcome you to adjust according to your individual needs.

Here are your daily assignments for this week:

Monday:

Your Keyword Gut Check

Tuesday:

Resources to Expand and Enhance the Keyword List

Wednesday:

Keyword Data Tools

Thursday:

Keyword Data Gathering

Friday:

Your Short List

Your Name Here

Recently, we were chatting with our friend Mark Armstrong, an auto mechanic in San Francisco.

Hearing that we were working on an SEO book, he shared a common frustration:“All I want to do,”

he said,“is find the official website for this supplier out in Chicago.I know the

name

of the com-

pany, but even when I enter their name in the search engines, their website is nowhere to be

found. Now that is just ridiculous! There should be some system where companies always come up

first for their own name.”

Continues

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