Keywords are words and phrases that web surfers put into search engines when they are looking for websites that cover particular topics or sell certain products. Optimizing your website so that it turns up near the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs) for keywords can help build your business, but only if you choose the right ones.Keywords are search queries visitors use on search engines. Keywords are one to six words in length, with a few longer exceptions.
Free Keyword Research Tools are a big helper: Here is one for an example
Google Keyword Tool - Search for keywords in over 50 languages. It features a very high quality, clean and frequently updated keyword database, with estimated search volume. The down side – keywords that don’t meet Google’s search volume criteria don’t make it to the database, rendering this tool useless for long keyword phrases (four to eight words in length). Regardless, this is one of the best keyword research tools.
How do I do keyword research?
Basic research is easy. Enter a word or a phrase that describes your business/ web site and keyword research tools will give you the results, including synonyms.
Try to use a phrase that matches your website EX: Atlantic City Crystal
From here you can check the list that is generated for you. But please remember when choosing the most popular results it may take years for your aite to get ranked high on the charts. High results are used by millions of folks so try and be very creative and through in the phrase that you use to get the best keywords possible.
Testing Your Keywords With Pay Per Click Before Search Engine Optimization
If you’re skeptical about search engine optimization, you can test its effectiveness. Here’s how to do it.
Research your keywords (described above).
Set up a pay-per-click account with Google Adwords.
Run a campaign with your selected keywords for a week or so, and measure the results.
Research more keywords if you don’t like the results.
When you test keywords, make sure you have effective landing pages. A landing page is a page that users see after they click on your advertisement. It’s important to create a separate page for pay-per-click advertisements (and SEO) instead of directing visitors to your home page because:
A landing page can contain and expand upon the content your advertisement had, giving a strong information scent to visitors.
A landing page can have clear calls to action such “buy it now,” “call us now,” “fill out a form,” etc.
It’s been proven that landing pages are more effective in converting visitors into customers than home pages.
