The process of choosing which terms to try and work on and rank for starts with a very simple mindset change for most businesses.
– Whatever you think you should rank for…be prepared to be wrong and to change various things as a result.
This may seem harsh but nearly every business I have ever dealt with thinks they know what they should be ranking for. They base this entirely on what they make or offer the buying public. They do not base it on what the public are actually typing into Google and there lies the problem.
YOU KNOW YOUR BUSINESS!
There is no doubt, business owners and marketing folk know about their products. If they didn’t it would not be much of a business. That being said how they refer to these products and services can often be swathed in jargon and industry knowledge; something the public do not have. There is no point in spending time optimising a page around a legal precedent that happened 20 years ago if you are simply trying to offer a divorce mediation service. Why? well because no one outside of the legal profession would have a clue about it and they would never type it into Google.
TAKE A STEP BACK
The key to getting your keyword strategy right is to take a big step back… no actually take a giant leap back. Get as far away from your own knowledge as you can. the best way to do this is to actually get a third party to help like 427 Marketing of course.
You need to start thinking like someone who doesn’t know anything about what you do or offer and then think about what they would search for. If you offer some kind of chemical carpet cleaning service using steam and flying squirrels tied together and its called “tail cleaning” in the industry then stop right there. What people are actually going to be searching for is “carpet cleaning” or “specialist carpet cleaning”.
It is this distance and almost dumbing down of the terms your site is optimised for that will put you into search results that actually get seen.
This is a very simplistic way of looking at it and there is a lot of research, trail and error and good old fashioned hard work involved but it is the right starting point for any good SEO campaign.