The first step to the search engine optimizations to choose the keywords you wish to target with your website. Your task is to determine on which search phrases you wish to have your site listed in the search engine results page. Once you determine a set of such phrases, you should include them in the content and the meta tags of your web page(s)  to have a successful SEO process.

What are keywords?

The keywords are important words that your visitors use to find your site. The prospect visitor will type a keyword (or a combination of words) in the search engine and will get a list of results. In order to have your website displayed by the search engines on a specific search phrase, the search engines should “believe” that your website is relevant for this each phrase. To make your website relevant for a certain keyword you need to choose them carefully and to use them wisely in your website content and metatags.

How to choose successful keywords?

Although this is the most essential question, it is actually simple and very logical. The keywords are words that describe the topic(s) included and discussed on your website. For example, if your website features the surfing lessons that you give, you may use the following keywords and phrases:

surf lessons, surf instructor, surf, surfing, learn surfing, learn to surf, etc.

One thing you should remember, when choosing successful keywords, is that the best keywords are the ones that people will use in their day to day language in describing your service, product or website topic. We recommend that you choose some less general keywords in order to achieve better results. For example in the case of the surfing website, the word “sport” is far too general. If you choose it you will be competing with far too many websites on that word and many of the people who use this word as a search phrase will not be looking for surfing lessons but a totally different sport.

Also, if you are a newbie, the keyword “surf lessons” might be too competitive for you and your not yet authoritative website might not show on first page search results for that word. That is why initially, you may want to focus on smaller in search volume keywords or combination of such where you could more easily pop up on first page and even first spot. If “surf lessons” is too general, you may try “surf lessons Miami beach” for example – adding your geographical location will narrow the search volume but might be easier to fight for high positions.

Get Help from Google Webmaster Tools

When selecting your keywords you may want to check Google Webmaster Tools -> Keyword Tool. When you a type a targeted keyword in that tool, it will display the volume search within a selected region and/or industry, depending on your filters. This will help you compare the reach potential of various targeted keywords. It will also suggest related keywords for your convenience.