SEO - Don't Force the Wrong Keywords

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is really not about the search engine at all.  It begins with a problem, and someone willing to search out the answer to that problem.

When you think about what product or service you provide, what problems are you answering?  The root of knowing what you need to optimize for is based in knowing the problems that people have and the words that they will use to search for an answer.

When we are in a very technical profession, or one that has a lot of industry jargon, the risk we take is optimizing for the wrong words.  We optimize the jargon and not what the end user is searching for.

For example, search engine optimization is a very technical term.  Don’t get me wrong there are many savvy users out there that know that when it comes to getting your web site to rank high in the search engines, they need a little SEO.  However, most of the users out there would not know what to search for, they just have problem…their web site needs to be found.

In short, those potential customers may put a search in their favorite search engine for “market my web site” or “get my website listed on Google” or maybe even “get people to my web site”.  There is a huge difference in the search terms, notice that the terms mentioned don’t even contain the word “search engine” or optimization, and most definitely don’t have “SEO”.

So, when you are thinking about what problem your product or service solves, think about how the customer is going to search to find you.  Sometimes the most important source of this information comes from the customers themselves, especially the new ones.

For the next week, use some of your industry jargon.  See what the response is.  Do they ask you to repeat what you just said?  Do they ask you what it is? Do they guess and ask if they are correct?

Pay particular attention to the customers that will guess, this is information is priceless, as this customer is providing you the misconceptions about your business.

Take search engine optimization as an example.  When we are out networking and attending social events, it is inevitable that people will ask what we do.  Our response always starts with, “Search engine optimization and Internet marketing…” Why? We want to know what people know and don’t know about what we do – again priceless information.

For us, one of the biggest misconceptions about SEO is customers thinking that it means we find the best search engines that work well with their web site, thus listing it higher in the results.

What can we do with this information?  When we are looking at the problem our company solves, and how people may look for that information now we may want to look at a new phrase.  Perhaps we now know that people look for us by typing in “best search engine for my web site”.

Sure, we understand this is not really what we do, but the important part is our potential customer thinks this is what we do.

This does not mean that the phrase is something we will optimize for right away, the keywords get added to our list and we will evaluate other factors to see if the phrase has a high enough search volume.

In short, look to your new customers to find ideas of what phrases they would use to find you online and make sure that you are optimizing for the ones that make sense to.

This of course is just a brief overview of what to do, but in our Total Domination Mentorship program we will show you how to find out if the keywords are the right ones and also give you ways that you can incorporate those keywords into your SEO plan.