When it comes down to it, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is all about driving the right kind of traffic to your site from search engines. Good SEO delivers customers, readers, and potential partners that are relevant and interested in what you and your site have to offer. There are many elements that make up good SEO practices. In this post, we’ll review the foundation of SEO activities: high-performance keywords and phrases. I’ll help you discover what these keywords are and as a result, how you can target in your SEO campaigns to get the maximum return.

The Key to Keywords
It’s a no-brainer – search engine results mean nothing if they aren’t related to what the searcher is looking for. Just as Google and other search engines continually refine their algorithms to understand a person’s search language, so should you refine your word choice when writing content for your site. With the right keywords and phrases placed strategically around your site’s content, for example in menus, page titles, internal and external links, picture captions and Alt-text, you’ll help the search engines to understand why they should put your site closer to the top of search results.

Traffic that Cares
The basic rule of keywords and content is as follows:  the more relevant your site’s language is to the words that people use in searches, the more likely your site will show up in the search results, and the more your site sees traffic that cares about your content. This doesn’t mean that you should overload your pages’ content and tags with as many keywords as possible (in fact, this practice is highly frowned upon). Instead, it means that you should pick specific and high-order key phrases to use throughout your site.

How do I find specific and high-order key phrases to use?
Apart from being a good method to determine keywords, the following exercise is also a great technique to help you communicate your site’s unique selling points.

Imagine you are a new visitor to your site. You’ve just read a few pages and what the menus have to offer. Make a list of 10-20 terms that stick in your head. Anything that can be expressed in one word – erase it. Anything that is more than 6 words, try to boil it down to 3 or 4.

Sample Site: A California-based Web & Graphic Designer

Now you have a list of keywords and phrases that are specific, that is, they relate directly to the content on your site. They are high-order because they can’t be expressed in a single word. Generally speaking, phrases that are more than just 2 words are better for SEO purposes.

SEO; Part of the Marketing Mix
As part of a larger marketing and communications strategy, the above exercise draws from the process of branding, thereby helping you to identify your site’s personality and style of speaking. Remember to stay consistent with your message by using the right keywords when writing your site’s content. When you do so, your visitors will find relevance in what they are reading, and your site will thank you for its high ranking.